Subir Roy: Living with the left enemy

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The threat to the UPA government posed by the left over the Indo-US nuclear deal seems to have passed for just now. But there is every reason to believe that the government will remain in a perpetual state of uncertainty, with periodic crises, until elections are held again, whenever that might be. This political uncertainty comes at a particularly inopportune moment as the global markets keep getting rocked, shaking the Indian markets with them, over the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US. The resultant stemming of liquidity flows is likely to affect both stock market sentiment in the short run, as it is already doing, and corporate India's expansion plans in the longer term. All this poses a clear threat to the near 9 per cent growth prospects that were being confidently foreseen till barely two months ago.

This scenario dictates a clear agenda for the Congress: understand what the left is up to, use that understanding to predict what is likely to happen, visualise the shape of the alliance that it is likely to lead into the next elections and start writing the manifesto for them. To understand the left mindset it is necessary to focus on the CPI(M) and its general secretary, Prakash Karat. The country's leading left party remains about the only unreformed and unrepentant Stalinist party in the world. Its mindset, as that of its leader, remains frozen in history, its tactic dictated by past habit and taken out of the dusty pages of history.

The tactic that Karat and other left leaders are using owes its origin to the Comintern, under the leadership of Bulgarian leader Gregori Dimitrov, when in 1935 it first endorsed the idea of a popular front against fascism, which could go beyond a united front of working class parties. The key manifestation of this in Asia was the united front formed in China between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party, which ultimately ended in the defeat of the Kuomintang and the success of the Chinese communist revolution. In India the leftists joined the Bangla Congress in West Bengal to form the United Front government in 1967. The process ultimately led to the formation of the Left Front government, consisting of only the left parties, in 1977, which has ruled ever since.

The idea is to have an alternative path, other than the revolutionary one, to establish communist rule, via the parliamentary democratic or jana ganatrantic route, as it was termed in West Bengal. Under this a communist party will join a coalition of forces, work within it to get an upper hand and eventually sabotage it to gain power for itself. This usually takes the form of a united beginning, followed by a series of crises through which the left distances itself from its allies and eventually deserts them. This is the strategy with appropriate Stalinist pedigree which is being followed. Karat, who has never faced an election and has been an ideologue of sorts and speech writer for successive party leaders, can think only along such orthodox lines and now heads a Stalinist party which falls in line with alacrity behind the leader of the day.

But the 21st century is hardly the heyday of communist parties and there is trouble within the CPI(M) over prospects of early elections. The party is split down the middle in one of its two main bastions, Kerala, leading to the sacking of two faction leaders, Chief Minister Achuthanandan and reformist P Vijayan, from the state committee as a disciplinary measure. The feeling within and outside the party is that in the case of early elections, its strength will go down.

The situation for the party in its other bastion, West Bengal, is no better. There the undeclared dissident vis-à-vis the central leadership is none other than Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee. He wants investment and jobs to take the state forward, openly calls himself a realist as opposed to a communist, sees much investment-friendly decisions coming from the Centre and appears keenly unhappy at the prospects of polls. Further, crucial panchayat elections are due early next year, with the party handicapped in at least two districts, Hooghly (Singur) and Medinipur East (Nandigram), over the issue of land for factories. The last thing the party wants is state elections right now.

So why on earth is the left leadership in Delhi threatening to withdraw support to the UPA government? Well, it has threatened but has it acted on its threat? This is the logic for expecting more destabilisation by the left with an open ended agenda: test the waters as you go along and act when you feel the time is right.

The Congress keenly needs an agenda beyond its traditional single-point one of hanging on to power for as long as possible. It must start putting together a platform for the next elections which will remain valid irrespective of whether the left is on its side or not. It has earned some mileage among the middle class by not capitulating to the leftist threat and abandoning the nuclear deal or putting it in cold storage. But the middle class doesn't win general elections in India.

The obvious electoral plank number one is secularism. Plank number two is its performance, the fact that the poorest Indians have done no worse, or probably a little better, since 2004. To sell this the government can use whatever time it gets to make a key initiative like the rural employment guarantee programme work much more and better. It can also announce some more pro-poor initiatives. Plank number three is the message for the middle class, pointing to the record growth of the last few years and seeking another chance to deliver.

Will the poor buy the Congress record? We do not know. The anti-incumbency trend of recent years points in one direction, the divided and dispirited BJP in the other. Whatever be the eventual outcome, Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh should really be at peace with themselves. Between themselves they have done a decent job. While the prime minister has pursued growth, the Congress party president has supported initiatives like the employment guarantee programme and the Right to Information Act, which, if doggedly pursued, has the potential to change the way the country is governed. Other ruling parties have done worse in under four years.

subir.roy@bsmail.in