The Sad Demise of Left Politics in India

The Left Front government’s fall in West Bengal in 2012 was in many ways the death knell of Left politics in India. It was a moment reminiscent of the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Political events in India since then have only highlighted how the Indian communist factions have been unable to adjust to the emerging realities of the subcontinent. Their propensity to hold on to the past and be its prisoner has been seen as a clear indication of escapism, while communism elsewhere, from China to Nepal, has changed unrecognizably.

The leading voice of the Left, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), is still stuck in a time warp as it tries in its own redundant fashion to once again bring together a third front in Indian politics. This tried, tested and failed strategy is only doomed to fail again as the realities of political opportunism by other parties, like Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, remains unknown to the Left comrades.

The Left parties have not even been able to agree on a unified course of action in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election, and are still building over their past successes in West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala- successes that are no longer realities today.

Singur and Nandigram were the Waterloo for the Left government in West Bengal, and it has been in a steady decline since its historic rout in the state. The Left has failed to even take advantage of Mamata Banerjee’s tenure of misgovernance under which the state has seen a sharp rise in crime, corruption, state repression of civil liberties, and financial scandals like the Saradha Savings scam. Didi’s vehement opposition to land acquisition for private industries has also perpetuated West Bengal’s economic decline, despite onerous public debt.

The reasons for this rapid decline of the Left are rather clear. Its unflinching patronage system, rigid party hierarchy, subordination of the state unit to the Polit Bureau, and its unfriendly industrial and land acquisition policies were clearly a recipe for disaster. Many otherwise loyal observers considered it heretical when the land-grab scandals emerged as they bore the hallmarks of a more neo-liberal orientation than a leftist one.  This led to the Left losing its grassroots level support base, which has translated into losses at village panchayat and municipal elections.

From the way things are shaping, it appears that any further losses, which the Left is sure to face this election, will have tremendous implications for Indian politics and society. This is because the Left seems to have abandoned the noble ideals and aims with which it had set foot in Indian politics. Their commitment to the welfare of the poor, and their support for the devolution of power to local governments, had earned them widespread support for several decades. Its consistent opposition to feudal-communalism also attracted the entire spectrum of progressive and secular forces.

Today its initiatives in mobilizing grassroots people have lost their vigor, and this was evident in the debacles it suffered in Singur, Lalgarh and Nandigram. The Left’s electoral strategy is not based on people’s participation anymore. It’s all about rallying against the Congress and BJP-led alliances to form a third front. Yet there is no central governing policy or ideology that has evolved that can keep such a new third alliance together. This motley group for parties is still at conflict over the issue of separate statehood for Telangana.  All this can be attributed to the Left Front’s reluctance to update its ever-statist view of socialism based on antiquated Soviet models despite its many glaring problems.

The Left has also refused to acknowledge the ever-increasing income disparities in the country and was eventually seen to fall victim to the same corporate greed that it accused others of when it gave away parcels of agricultural land for industrialization in Singur and Nandigram. This dented the credibility of the Left in a catastrophic way as it struck at the very root of its pro-poor and pro-welfare image. There is also an inherent flaw in the party’s working mechanism. The doctrine of Democratic Centralism prohibits the members of the party from engaging in critical reflection and policy debate within the party.

A drastic course correction for the Left is the need of the hour, and only when it is able to rethink its ideological position in a pragmatic way will things start to look up.  Issues such as caste, gender patriarchy and others will have to be seamlessly integrated into the class-based Marxist worldview of the Left. The Left today needs to radically realign its identity along the lines of European socialist parties, and must initiate free internal debate and honest introspection within the party. Only a complete overhaul of things can bring the Left in India back from near extinction.

Is Sharad Pawar the next Prime Minister-in-waiting forever?

A rally at Ghanswangi in Maharashtra, the NCP supremo Sharad Pawar made a disparaging remark against BJP’s Prime Ministerial Candidate, Narendra Modi saying that he should undergo treatment at a mental hospital for talking “rubbish”.  He also expressed his angst at the prospect of a mass murderer at the helm of India’s prime executive post, saying that Modi was a man shorn of any emotions as he never bothered to visit the victims of the 2002 riots or express sympathy with them.

Sharad Power is a man who hardly needs any introduction. He is known to have gone overboard with expressing his hostility. Perhaps, in this respect, it could be said that his reputation precedes him.  He has always had something on his mind and he is known in all the circles as being a rather ambitious politician. However, the way it’s going from bad to worse for the UPA alliance, there is every likelihood that his seething resentment and anger towards Modi would spill-over. It is important this issue in context here. He has been known earlier for chiding Modi on his poor sense of history and for how the latter’s state administration filed an FIR for diverting the feed stock that it had earlier extended to Maharashtra to cope with the drought, thus clearly demonstrating the narrow-mindedness of the Gujarat government.

He followed that with an irksome comment as to how Narendra Modi was in a rush to grab the Prime Minister’spost and how it was unprecedented for a party to announce its candidate in advance in India’s history of representative democracy.

All this perhaps stems from a deep sense of disillusionment he has had with his bid for the post of the prime minister. Sushil Kumar Shinde in early January commented how Pawar would have become one as back as 1992, but since there were certain elements within Congress who decided otherwise, he could not meet the destiny that he had fashioned for himself. Perhaps it is also because his sway over Maharashtra politics is now seen to be on the decline. He is no longer hailed by the local media as the ‘Maratha Strongman’ nor does his health favour him. A surgery for mouth cancer has left his jaw contorted indefinitely. With the onset of the general elections, he was quick to persuade his partymen to nominate state PWD minister Chagan Bhujbal as his replacement in the Lok Sabha. He has staged an unrequited exit from the lower house and has ever since not looked back. Perhaps it is this very disenchantment borne over his repeated failures that he has now focused his attention on taking up the post of the President and to that extent destiny smiled on him and allowed him to get elected to the Rajya Sabha unopposed.

Persistent charges of corruption, especially during the Lokpal uproar have stuck and his integrity as an upstanding public servant has taken a beating. Moreover, in his entire political career, he has changed his allegiances at the throw of hat, and this has added further to his ignominy as he no longer enjoys the trust of the many. He is known to have opportunistically move camps as and when a favourable situation has presented itself. All manner of backroom deals have rid him of any modicum of credibility that was left in him.

His most visceral blow of bitterness came when Rahul Gandhi was elevated to the second-in-command in the Congress. Thinking that all his years of loyalty and political acumen would have gone in his favour, Pawar was visibly hurt by the Gandhi scion’s aggressive posturing.  History has a way of repeating himself and Pawar is seen to be the proverbial “Jyeshthaputra Karna” as he had earlier broken from party ranks and formed the party with Tariq Anqar and PA Sangma in 1999 due to a conflict of opinion over Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin.

Beset by a fear of losing his grip on reality, Pawar today is riddled with insecurity as he cannot even trust his own nephew, Ajit Pawar or daughter, Supriya Sule to take over the reins of NCP’s leadership. Questions have been raised over his leadership capacity within party circles due to his fledgling health.

His increasing isolation, as has been mentioned before, added to his disaffection with party politics and any prospects he may have had this time around, has been permanently marred by the string of corruption scandals and realignments that have been the highlight of his public life.

He also knows for a fact that his strategy of keeping his options open and keeping observers guessing with his unpredictability has lost its novelty. Perhaps, which is why, one can surmise that he has gone all-out against Modi with his brazen attacks as his last swan song before he makes his final grand departure from competitive politics.

He has made more foes than friends. No Congress leader, leave alone any of his domestic allies in Maharashtra are ready to bet on him. His repeated overtures to the BJP every now and then, especially his muted silence on Modi’s complicity in the Gujarat riots has irked most members in the rank and file of allies.

The charges of complicity in the corruption scams against Pawar is not going to fade away soon, and he knows it. Until that time, Pawar will continue to come out with all guns blazing against the only adversary that he deems worthy of a contest.

My initiation into the behemoth that is the World Wide Web

hmmmmmm..........quite a start..I was initially a trite incredulous about treading this path which happens to be quite a commonplace for the average Netizen....some of my friends counsel that it's pretty slick to maintain a blog of ur own these days.....but what they fail to comprehend is that i am quite an Average Joe when it comes to dealing with these techno-geeky stuff...i would rather be on the oppposite end of the curve. The most unsettling fact about this whole scheme is that i am going to end up as just another puppet being tied to the unfathomable string of this prosaic,mundane lifestyle of the new generation Indian man who claims to look high up and challenge that unforgiving minute and filling it up with a 60 seconds distance run so that the whole world and everything that's in it becomes his own and he metamorphises into a man as Kipling put it(pretty inspiring for an English boy those days who would grow up all his life feeding on dundee cakes and lucerbate and dissect on the verses of Joyce and Eliot and suddenly in his prime being asked to extend his services to the Queen by sailing off to that ever elusive,exotic land of the snake charmers called India where inevitably the sheer incongruity and irony of life smacks him right on his face),......but anyway u must be wondering that I am that just another hopeless romantic idealist who believes that he can put an end to all wrongs in the world just by the twist of Gabriel's wand.....albeit it escapes his mind that it is this very wrong that somehow acts as a sedative to keep up his hopes and aspirations alive that may seem