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.
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