T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan The dilemma of the Left liberal

LINE & LENGTH

Contrary to popular impression, the CPM and the government may well be acting in concert

Two actions by the Left in recent weeks have caused considerable confusion in the public mind. One of these, as an editorial in this paper pointed out some days ago, had to do with the strike or bandh on September 29.

The other is the extraordinarily vigorous defence of Iran, and in consequence, the attack on the Prime Minister over the way India voted against the latter at the IAEA meeting in Vienna.

There are three ways of looking at the strike.

One, it was genuine, which one must doubt since there were no specific demands and in the end, it didn't really hurt the economy. There was a lot of bluster but little real damage.

Two, it was the result of some internal power struggle within the CPM. This is possible, given the economic policy preferences of Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the chief minister of West Bengal, and the fact that it was West Bengal that was the most badly affected.

And, three (altogether cynically) it was the result of some sort of mutual back-scratching understanding between the government and the CPM.

After all, the strike was over a non-issue and, more importantly, since then the government has decided to drop the privatisation of BHEL, the PM has written to Sonia Gandhi that it has done so, and she in turn has "requested" the CPM to return to the coordination committee meetings.

All this has happened in just a few days, which should make one wonder.

Likewise, the sharp attack by CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat on Manmohan Singh can also be seen in another light. Other Prime Ministers before him have used simulated in-house attacks for specific policy purposes, both domestic and foreign.

Dr Singh, too, can now use the CPM's vehement opposition""why so much vehemence, anyway?""for fending off future pressure by the US. Whether he does so or not is not the issue. What matters is that he has the option now.

Here it is worth adding something that a former colleague, K P Nayar, who is a veteran foreign policy journalist, has pointed out in an article in The Telegraph of October 5. In 1990, writes Nayar, the V P Singh government had offered Iran a 5 MW nuclear reactor for research. Iran had asked India for it.

Nayar broke the story in The Economic Times when the Iranian delegation arrived in India. Later, under intense pressure from the US, the government withdrew the offer.

The Communists were supporting that government, as usual from "outside". But they did not raise any hue and cry. Now, as KP says, Mr Karat wants India to reverse itself. What's changed?

Be that as it may, it is not only the government that has gained from these episodes. The strike has strengthened Mr Karat as well. He now has the full backing of the unions.

These unions are to the CPM what the RSS is to the BJP, namely, the machinery of election. Just as any head of the BJP has to keep the RSS happy, any boss of the CPM, especially a new one, has to keep the unions on his side.

In short, the theatre (for that is what it now looks like) of the last two weeks has seen Dr Singh, Mr Karat, the government, and the unions, all emerge better off for reasons enumerated above. Such fully realised win-win outcomes should not be put down to mere coincidence, I think.

There are other reasons why the whole thing looks like theatre. Many have argued, naively, I think, that the CPM is huffing and puffing before the West Bengal and Kerala elections.

But why would it want to do that when the result is already known? The Left will comfortably win in both states, so why the posturing?

It cannot also be that the Left is not alive to the dangers of another, so to speak, Islamic bomb in the region (unless it thinks that the Sunni Pakistani bomb must be countered by a Shia Iranian one, which is unlikely). Nor can it be that it genuinely believes that Iran is not being clever, just as India was when it was doing its nuclear number.

The Left's antics, which are firmly rooted in practical politics, have left Left liberals (not to be confused with the Karat brand of CPM) in something of a daze. Their present predicament was pointed out by Amartya Sen way back in 1970 in a paper called "The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal".

It generated a lot of debate and still does. It is now known as Sen's Paradox. Broadly, the paradox says that efficiency comes at the expense of liberalism, whose centrepiece is individual liberty and a moral imperative not to make anyone worse off.

The problem arises because efficiency requires some people will be made worse off (say, the unions or Iran) while the liberal principle requires that that should not happen. The counter-argument that everyone will be better off in the future if they are efficient in the present doesn't cut much ice.

The dilemma is inherent in politics. Since the politics will not change, it is the Left liberals who must move to the Right.