The Manmohan Singh government completes 6 years in office today. Alas, it has nothing to show by way of achievement except making India an American satellite. As the following assessment by Prakash Karat underlines, if there is an impression of drift and being directionless, the Congress government has only itself to blame for this plight. After thinking it can go ahead with its own policy prescriptions, it now finds itself in a position where its partners in Government often look at things differently and assert themselves.
The present UPA government is completing one year of its tenure on May 22. Unlike the first UPA government, its second edition did not spell out a common minimum programme. Instead, the Congress-led government began by reiterating its commitment to pursue the neo-liberal agenda. It announced that it would take up those policy measures which it could not push through in its first term in office.
The government also promised to bring in some welfare measures for the aam aadmi. On foreign policy, the government stated that it would adhere to the path taken by the first UPA government of aligning India's foreign policy in tune with the strategic alliance with the United States of America.
The one-year of the UPA government has been notable for the following:
Firstly, it has totally failed to tackle the relentless price rise of essential commodities particularly food items. This has been the biggest cause for people's suffering in the past year; for the poor it has meant less food and more hunger and malnutrition.
This is not a "failure" as such but an outcome of the determination to pursue neo-liberal policies. Food items and other essential commodities are traded and speculated in the market in a big way. The forward trading system is the playground for big trading companies and corporates. The government is in the least interested in curbing these interests who are making huge profits.
Secondly, the Congress-led government is in the grip of finance capital and the sway of big business. It believes in cutting taxes for the rich; providing a tax bonanza for big business and maintaining favourable terms for foreign finance speculators.
The Direct Taxes Code which the government proposes to usher in will make India one of the least taxed countries as far as the rich are concerned. In the last financial year, the government provided Rs. 80,000 crore of tax concessions to the corporates. The disinvestment of shares in the profitable public sector units is the favoured agenda of both Indian big business and the US corporate interests.
Every sphere of policy making, whether it concerns the pricing of gas, the allocation of telecom spectrum, opening up of mining and minerals, the financial sector, retail trade or allowing foreign educational institutions into the country - bears the imprint of a government pandering to big business and their foreign finance collaborators.
Thirdly, this type of growth under the neo-liberal regime has spawned crony capitalism. The nexus between big business and politics has become the hallmark of the Congress regime. The legitimacy provided to foreign capital flows from dubious sources through the Mauritius route and other tax havens; the huge illegal mining business flourishing under political protection; the refusal to discipline and penalize law breaking and tax evasions on a large scale on the part of the super rich - all this has promoted a unhealthy and perverted capitalism which is celebrated as India's growth story.
What this has produced is corruption and illegality on a large scale which affects every sphere of society. The first year of the government has seen the IPL affair, the 2G spectrum allocation scam and the mining scandal of the Reddy brothers. All this can be directly sourced to the nexus between big business and ruling politicians.
Fourthly, the UPA government's concern for the aam aadmi has proved to be shallow. The Congress and the UPA government are conscious that some relief has to be provided to the people who are the worst victims of the neo-liberal policies.
During the UPA I tenure, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the farm loan waiver and the Forest Rights Act were some such measures. These were part of the Common Minimum Programme and came into being mainly due to the consistent pressure and struggles waged by the Left parties.
However, under the UPA II, the government has failed to legislate even one substantial measure for relief. The proposed Food Security Bill would have in no way enhanced food security for the people.
After one year, the government is still debating how to bring about such a measure. The Public Distribution System has been further weakened and curtailed. The plight of the farmers does not seem to concern the government which has cut the fertilizer subsidy by Rs. 3000 crore in the current Union budget.
The Common Minimum Programme of the first UPA government had promised to increase public expenditure in education to 6 per cent of the GDP and in the sphere of health to 2 to 3 per cent of the GDP.
As far as education is concerned the combined central and state expenditure is still below 4 per cent. In the case of health the combined budgetary allocation of the Union and state budgets was a meager 1.06 per cent of the GDP in 2009-10, far below the target of 2-3 per cent.
Fifthly, the UPA government has failed to utilize the favourable political atmosphere and the strength of the secular forces in parliament to push for firm anti-communal measures. It seems visibly reluctant to come to terms with the Ranganath Mishra Commission report recommending reservation for the minorities on the basis of their socio-economic backwardness. There has been a noticeable lack of political initiative in dealing with the simmering problem of Kashmir.
As far as tackling the Maoist violence is concerned, the UPA government tends to treat it solely as a law and order problem without realizing that some of its own policies like the licence for indiscriminate mining in the forest areas is alienating the tribal people.
Moreover, it finds itself hampered by its own partner in government, the TMC. Mamata Banerjee has declared that there are no Maoists in West Bengal and therefore there is no need for joint operations against them.
Sixthly, foreign policy under the Manmohan Singh Government has remained steadfast in its fealty to the United States. As a quid pro quo for the nuclear deal, India has agreed to buy billions of dollars of US arms and equipment.
The End Use Monitoring Agreement which would allow American inspections on Indian soil was signed. The Civil Nuclear Liability Bill which has been introduced in parliament to meet the demand of the United States is patently against the interests of the Indian people. The growing military and security collaboration with the US and Israel affects the pursuit of an independent policy.
India has gone along with the United States which is targeting Iran on the nuclear issue. It once more voted against Iran in the IAEA, unlike other non-aligned countries. India is not playing the role of a leading non-aligned country.
In contrast, President Lula De Silva of Brazil has stood up to the United States and refused to go along with the campaign for further sanctions on Iran. President Lula has visited Tehran for talks with the Iranian leadership to find a way out of the impasse and to come to some agreement with the help of Turkey.
One of the few positive aspects in foreign policy is the Prime Minister's refusal to adopt a confrontationist stance towards Pakistan despite what sections in his government and party wish.
The great potential of shaping an independent foreign policy and strengthening of multi-polarity by India's vigorous diplomacy and energising forums like the BRIC, IBSA and the trilateral meetings of the foreign ministers of Russia, China and India is being underplayed.
Politically, the striking outcome of the first year of the UPA government is its increasing vulnerability. In May 2009, the UPA won the elections but failed to get a majority. The Congress leadership ignored this reality and became complacent with the unilateral declaration of support by parties like the BSP, SP, RJD and the JD(S). By the end of the first year that complacency has been shattered.
During the last budget session, the Congress had to adopt the tactic of bargain and striking deals to garner support from amongst these parties. The last three weeks of the budget session have witnessed the manouevres to prop up the government's majority against the cut motions and the struggle to ensure the passage of legislations.
The cynical use of the CBI for political purposes is undermining the credibility of the agency. The wheeling and dealing that saw the postponement of the Women's Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha and the introduction of the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill - all portend a tortuous path for the future.
If there is an impression of drift and being directionless, the Congress government has only itself to blame for this plight. After thinking it can go ahead with its own policy prescriptions, it now finds itself in a position where its partners in Government often look at things differently and assert themselves. There is growing opposition within parliament.
As far as the people are concerned, their experience is of a government increasingly callous to their sufferings due to price rise, while it showed great solicitude for big business and the corporates when it felt the impact of the global recession.
After the first six months of the government, there has been the rising tempo of popular struggles and movements. A peak in this struggle was reached with the April 27 hartal called by the 13 opposition parties. A spate of struggles of different sections of the working people have taken place. The struggle is on against the harmful policies of the government and to defend the livelihood and the rights of the working people. The question is whether the UPA government has learnt any lessons from its first year in office.
Showing posts with label Left Front. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Left Front. Show all posts
Friday, May 21, 2010
Friday, June 12, 2009
EU Voters Turn Back On Social Democracy
When millions of workers turn their back on social democracy in the middle of an economic crisis, it shows one thing: they no longer expect any solution to their problems from these parties
The most notable result of the European elections held last weekend is the dramatic decline of social democracy. On average across Europe, social democratic parties received only 22 per cent of the vote, six per cent less than in the previous European election in 2004. With a turnout of just 43 per cent, this means that less than one in ten of the electorate voted for these parties.
Average European figures distort the real extent of the decline. In the major industrial countries of Western Europe, where social democratic parties have led governments for decades or functioned as the main opposition party, their losses were huge—irrespective of whether the parties are currently in government or opposition.
In Great Britain, where the Labour Party has been in power for the past twelve years, Labour’s support plummeted to a record low of 16 per cent—lower than the vote received by the extreme right-wing UK Independence Party.
In Spain, the ruling Socialist Party lost five percentage points and trailed the right-wing Peoples Party.
In Germany, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which has been in government for eleven years, recorded an historic low of 21 per cent.
In Portugal, support for the ruling Socialist Party fell from 45 to 27 per cent.
In France, where the Socialist Party has been in opposition for the past seven years, the party received just 17 per cent—a decline of 12 percentage points compared to five years ago.
In Italy, support for the Democratic Party, which is a successor organisation to the Italian Communist Party and other “left” parties, plunged from 31 per cent to 26 per cent.
In Denmark, the opposition Social Democrats lost 12 percentage points and finished with a total of 21 per cent.
The vote for the Dutch Labour Party was halved to 12 per cent, and in Austria it sank from 33 per cent to 24 per cent.
This decline is all the more remarkable when one bears in mind that the election took place in the midst of the most severe world economic crisis since the 1930s. Although unemployment is rising rapidly and the living conditions of broad layers of the population have worsened considerably, voters are deserting the social democrats in droves.
The cause for this shift is to be found in the politics and character of the social democratic parties, which have for many years functioned like any other bourgeois party. In the past two decades, they have used their influence, in close alliance with the trade unions, to carry out the sort of social attacks that had provoked massive resistance when attempted by conservative governments.
In Britain, the Labour Party led by Tony Blair adopted the program of the Conservative Party’s “iron lady,” Margaret Thatcher, while the German SPD led by Gerhard Schröder passed the anti-welfare Hartz laws and carried out more attacks on social rights than all previous conservative governments put together.
The 'Financial Times' in an editorial on June 9 pointed to the seeming anomaly of massive electoral losses for parties historically associated with socialism under conditions of growing popular disillusionment with capitalism. It correctly notes that, in fact, there are no serious differences in economic and social policy between the social democratic and conservative parties.
The newspaper wrote: “At a time when ‘the end of capitalism’ is raised as a serious prospect, the parties whose historical mission was to replace capitalism with socialism offer no governing philosophy. Their anti-crisis policies are barely distinguishable from those of their rivals.”
When millions of workers turn their back on social democracy in the middle of an economic crisis, it shows one thing: they no longer expect any solution to their problems from these parties.
The election result also expressed a broad rejection of the European parliament. The job of the parliament is to provide a pseudo-democratic cover for the institutions of the European Union and the army of 40,000 well-paid bureaucrats in Brussels who, in turn, serve at the beck and call of a comparable army of business lobbyists.
Vast numbers of voters, especially from the working class, refrained from casting ballots. The biggest party in the election was the party of non-voters. At 43 per cent, voter participation was 2.5 percentage points lower than the previous record low turnout, in 2004. In Holland, Great Britain and most Eastern European countries, turnout was less than 40 per cent.
The resulting political vacuum was exploited by conservative and right-wing parties. This has led many commentators to speak of a “turn to the right” in Europe. Such a conclusion is unwarranted and superficial. Right-wing parties were able to exploit the collapse in support for social democracy and the low turnout. In most cases, however, they failed to increase their vote and in some cases saw their support decline significantly.
Even extreme right, xenophobic parties that gained significantly—such as Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in Holland (17 per cent), the UK Independence Party (17 per cent), and the British National Party (6 per cent)—have, based on the low voter turnout of 35 per cent in the two countries, less support than their results suggest.
What is evident in the European election is a sharp social polarisation. Until now, the ruling classes have been able to rely on the social democratic parties and the trade unions to suppress social struggles. The decline of these organisations means that future class confrontations will take a more open and explosive form.
Peter Schwarz
The most notable result of the European elections held last weekend is the dramatic decline of social democracy. On average across Europe, social democratic parties received only 22 per cent of the vote, six per cent less than in the previous European election in 2004. With a turnout of just 43 per cent, this means that less than one in ten of the electorate voted for these parties.
Average European figures distort the real extent of the decline. In the major industrial countries of Western Europe, where social democratic parties have led governments for decades or functioned as the main opposition party, their losses were huge—irrespective of whether the parties are currently in government or opposition.
In Great Britain, where the Labour Party has been in power for the past twelve years, Labour’s support plummeted to a record low of 16 per cent—lower than the vote received by the extreme right-wing UK Independence Party.
In Spain, the ruling Socialist Party lost five percentage points and trailed the right-wing Peoples Party.
In Germany, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which has been in government for eleven years, recorded an historic low of 21 per cent.
In Portugal, support for the ruling Socialist Party fell from 45 to 27 per cent.
In France, where the Socialist Party has been in opposition for the past seven years, the party received just 17 per cent—a decline of 12 percentage points compared to five years ago.
In Italy, support for the Democratic Party, which is a successor organisation to the Italian Communist Party and other “left” parties, plunged from 31 per cent to 26 per cent.
In Denmark, the opposition Social Democrats lost 12 percentage points and finished with a total of 21 per cent.
The vote for the Dutch Labour Party was halved to 12 per cent, and in Austria it sank from 33 per cent to 24 per cent.
This decline is all the more remarkable when one bears in mind that the election took place in the midst of the most severe world economic crisis since the 1930s. Although unemployment is rising rapidly and the living conditions of broad layers of the population have worsened considerably, voters are deserting the social democrats in droves.
The cause for this shift is to be found in the politics and character of the social democratic parties, which have for many years functioned like any other bourgeois party. In the past two decades, they have used their influence, in close alliance with the trade unions, to carry out the sort of social attacks that had provoked massive resistance when attempted by conservative governments.
In Britain, the Labour Party led by Tony Blair adopted the program of the Conservative Party’s “iron lady,” Margaret Thatcher, while the German SPD led by Gerhard Schröder passed the anti-welfare Hartz laws and carried out more attacks on social rights than all previous conservative governments put together.
The 'Financial Times' in an editorial on June 9 pointed to the seeming anomaly of massive electoral losses for parties historically associated with socialism under conditions of growing popular disillusionment with capitalism. It correctly notes that, in fact, there are no serious differences in economic and social policy between the social democratic and conservative parties.
The newspaper wrote: “At a time when ‘the end of capitalism’ is raised as a serious prospect, the parties whose historical mission was to replace capitalism with socialism offer no governing philosophy. Their anti-crisis policies are barely distinguishable from those of their rivals.”
When millions of workers turn their back on social democracy in the middle of an economic crisis, it shows one thing: they no longer expect any solution to their problems from these parties.
The election result also expressed a broad rejection of the European parliament. The job of the parliament is to provide a pseudo-democratic cover for the institutions of the European Union and the army of 40,000 well-paid bureaucrats in Brussels who, in turn, serve at the beck and call of a comparable army of business lobbyists.
Vast numbers of voters, especially from the working class, refrained from casting ballots. The biggest party in the election was the party of non-voters. At 43 per cent, voter participation was 2.5 percentage points lower than the previous record low turnout, in 2004. In Holland, Great Britain and most Eastern European countries, turnout was less than 40 per cent.
The resulting political vacuum was exploited by conservative and right-wing parties. This has led many commentators to speak of a “turn to the right” in Europe. Such a conclusion is unwarranted and superficial. Right-wing parties were able to exploit the collapse in support for social democracy and the low turnout. In most cases, however, they failed to increase their vote and in some cases saw their support decline significantly.
Even extreme right, xenophobic parties that gained significantly—such as Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in Holland (17 per cent), the UK Independence Party (17 per cent), and the British National Party (6 per cent)—have, based on the low voter turnout of 35 per cent in the two countries, less support than their results suggest.
What is evident in the European election is a sharp social polarisation. Until now, the ruling classes have been able to rely on the social democratic parties and the trade unions to suppress social struggles. The decline of these organisations means that future class confrontations will take a more open and explosive form.
Peter Schwarz
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Meaning Of The Verdict
By Prakash Karat
What is the meaning of this verdict? How is it to be interpreted? The first point to be noted is that while there has been a pro-Congress trend in some parts of the country, taken overall, there is no big shift in favour of the Congress. In terms of vote share, the Congress has got just about 2 per cent more than in 2004.
According to the Election Commission's figures, the Congress party has got 28.55 per cent of the vote. In 2004, it had got 26.53 per cent. The Congress made big gains in Kerala and Rajasthan and improved its position in Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.
Its allies like the DMK in Tamil Nadu and the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal were also successful. That there was no wave or a strong all-India shift in favour of the Congress can be seen by the party losing ground in states like Orissa, Jharkhand, Assam, Gujarat, Chattisgarh and Karnataka to mention a few. Here the Congress vote share and seats have gone down compared to 2004. In Andhra Pradesh, while its seats increased, the vote share of the Congress has gone down.
Another feature is that while Congress gained 2 per cent, the BJP lost around 3 per cent. The loss of the BJP has gone to the Congress but the combined percentage of vote of both parties stands more or less as it was in 2004. In 2004, the two parties combined got 48.69 per cent of the vote and in 2009 it stands at over one per cent less at 47.35 per cent.
This is at a time when the Congress and the BJP fought more seats than in 2004. This is particularly significant since it shows no reversal in the long term decline of the two parties. The non-Congress, non-BJP parties continue to have more than 50 per cent share of the vote.
BJP Rejected
The second point to note in interpreting the verdict is the failure of the BJP and its political platform. The people have rejected the BJP's claim of providing good governance and defending national security. What they saw in the election campaign was the recurrence of communal rhetoric and the ingrained penchant for communalising all problems including terrorism.
Varun Gandhi's virulent hate speeches and the eulogising of Narendra Modi as the future leader symbolised this campaign. The failure to capitalise on a host of issues such as price rise, unemployment and the continuing agrarian distress by the major opposition party underlines the depth of the rejection of the BJP.
The only NDA partner to do well was the JD (U) in Bihar and that is not due to the BJP but the positive impact of the Nitish Kumar government and the care he took to demarcate himself from the communal platform of the BJP.
Another pointer to the rejection of the BJP comes from Orissa. The BJD, which broke from the BJP just two months before the election, won a spectacular victory getting 103 of the 145 seats in the assembly. In the 2004 assembly election, the BJD-BJP alliance won 93 seats. Thus, the BJD improved its performance after breaking with the BJP.
Reasons for Congress Success
The third point to understand the verdict is that despite the neo-liberal predilections of the Congress-led government, some of the measures adopted have had a positive impact on the people. These are the NREGA, which now extends to the entire country, the Tribal Forest Rights Act and the increase in the minimum support price for rice and wheat, the loan waiver scheme for farmers and some such measures, many of whom were brought under the pressure of the Left parties.
Despite the agrarian crisis, such measures provided some relief to the rural people. Along with this should be seen the measures taken by some of the state governments such as the Rs 2 per kg of rice scheme in Andhra Pradesh and the Re 1 per kg scheme in Tamilnadu and other social welfare measures.
In Orissa too, the Rs 2 per kg of rice bolstered the support for the Navin Patnaik government. At the same time, the fact that four years of high growth of the GDP did not lead to redistribution of resources and incomes and instead sharply increased economic inequalities did play a role in restricting the Congress's capacity to expand its popular base.
The Congress gained more support amongst the minorities who were keen to ensure that the BJP does not make a come back. The non-Congress, non-BJP parties were not seen as a viable alternative in most parts of the country and this accentuated the shift in minority support to the Congress.
The Congress party has also benefited from the concern of the people that the country should face unitedly the threat of terrorism and their fear that communalism can only aggravate the situation.
Setback for the Left
The CPI (M) and the Left have suffered a serious setback with the losses in West Bengal and Kerala. It was expected that the Left would get a lesser number of seats in these elections given the fact that in Kerala, the LDF had won an unprecedented 18 out of the 20 seats and the Congress got none in the 2004 elections.
In West Bengal too, the odds were heavier given the Trinamool Congress and Congress combining and all the anti-Communist forces launching a concerted attack against the CPI (M) and the Left Front. But the extent of the defeat in both these states has led to the CPI(M) getting only 16 seats, the lowest ever in the Lok Sabha.
This calls for a serious examination of the causes for these reverses. We have to conduct a self-critical review to ascertain what are the factors which are responsible for this poor performance.
Both national and state level factors have to be analysed. The electoral-tactical line formulated by the Party at the national level and the national political situation which influenced the Lok Sabha polls must be studied. Along with that, the specific state factors in both West Bengal and Kerala must also be taken into account.
The Politburo, in its meeting held on May 18, 2009, has initiated such a review which will be completed by the Central Committee in its meeting to be held in June. After identifying the reasons for the failure, the Party will have to take the necessary political and organisational measures to overcome the shortcomings and mistakes.
On this basis, the Party will strenuously work to regain the support of those sections of the people who were alienated from the Party and the Left-led fronts. Such a self-critical exercise will also pave the basis for the Party taking up the organisational tasks set out in the Party Congress to strengthen the Party and to expand its mass influence.
Third Front Alliance
In the discussions held in the Politburo, there was a preliminary review of the Party's effort to forge a non-Congress, non-BJP alliance and present it as an electoral alternative. The Central Committee, in its meeting held in Kochi in January 2009, had worked out the electoral-tactical line and given the direction that “the Left parties along with the secular parties should work together to make a non-Congress, non-BJP alternative realizable.”
The CPI(M) and the CPI had an electoral understanding with some of the non-Congress, non-BJP parties in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa and seat adjustments in Karnataka. On the basis of these state level understandings forged on the eve of the elections, we attempted to project them as a national level non-Congress, non-BJP alternative.
The defeat of the Left in West Bengal and Kerala and the failure of the alliance in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to win a majority of the seats undermined any effective presence of the “Third Front” at the national level. It is evident that such a combination which had its relevance in the concerned states was not a credible and viable alternative at the national level. Further, the electoral combinations, which were forged state-wise, precluded any national policy platform being projected.
There have been two consequences of the projection of a Third Front. Firstly, the BJP-led NDA was adversely affected by the formation of a non-Congress secular combination. The BJP and the NDA's tally has come down since they were denied any significant ally in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.
The second point to be noted is that the secular non-Congress combination has got 21 per cent of the vote and this shows the potential for building up a third alternative on the lines suggested by the CPI (M) in its Party Congress. That is, an alternative which is not merely an electoral alliance but a coming together of the parties and forces on a common platform through movements and struggles for alternative policies distinct from that of the Congress and the BJP.
Money Power
A disturbing feature of this Lok Sabha election was the use of money on a scale not seen before. States like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka saw an unprecedented use of illegal money. The Madurai constituency in Tamil Nadu was the worst example of the brazen use of money.
In other states too, this trend has grown which is vitiating the democratic process. More and more tickets are being given to moneybags and parties are collecting huge sums of money to be deployed for bribing voters. This is a threat to the entire democratic process and is particularly inimical to the Left's interests which cannot indulge in such unscrupulous use of money power.
What is the meaning of this verdict? How is it to be interpreted? The first point to be noted is that while there has been a pro-Congress trend in some parts of the country, taken overall, there is no big shift in favour of the Congress. In terms of vote share, the Congress has got just about 2 per cent more than in 2004.
According to the Election Commission's figures, the Congress party has got 28.55 per cent of the vote. In 2004, it had got 26.53 per cent. The Congress made big gains in Kerala and Rajasthan and improved its position in Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.
Its allies like the DMK in Tamil Nadu and the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal were also successful. That there was no wave or a strong all-India shift in favour of the Congress can be seen by the party losing ground in states like Orissa, Jharkhand, Assam, Gujarat, Chattisgarh and Karnataka to mention a few. Here the Congress vote share and seats have gone down compared to 2004. In Andhra Pradesh, while its seats increased, the vote share of the Congress has gone down.
Another feature is that while Congress gained 2 per cent, the BJP lost around 3 per cent. The loss of the BJP has gone to the Congress but the combined percentage of vote of both parties stands more or less as it was in 2004. In 2004, the two parties combined got 48.69 per cent of the vote and in 2009 it stands at over one per cent less at 47.35 per cent.
This is at a time when the Congress and the BJP fought more seats than in 2004. This is particularly significant since it shows no reversal in the long term decline of the two parties. The non-Congress, non-BJP parties continue to have more than 50 per cent share of the vote.
BJP Rejected
The second point to note in interpreting the verdict is the failure of the BJP and its political platform. The people have rejected the BJP's claim of providing good governance and defending national security. What they saw in the election campaign was the recurrence of communal rhetoric and the ingrained penchant for communalising all problems including terrorism.
Varun Gandhi's virulent hate speeches and the eulogising of Narendra Modi as the future leader symbolised this campaign. The failure to capitalise on a host of issues such as price rise, unemployment and the continuing agrarian distress by the major opposition party underlines the depth of the rejection of the BJP.
The only NDA partner to do well was the JD (U) in Bihar and that is not due to the BJP but the positive impact of the Nitish Kumar government and the care he took to demarcate himself from the communal platform of the BJP.
Another pointer to the rejection of the BJP comes from Orissa. The BJD, which broke from the BJP just two months before the election, won a spectacular victory getting 103 of the 145 seats in the assembly. In the 2004 assembly election, the BJD-BJP alliance won 93 seats. Thus, the BJD improved its performance after breaking with the BJP.
Reasons for Congress Success
The third point to understand the verdict is that despite the neo-liberal predilections of the Congress-led government, some of the measures adopted have had a positive impact on the people. These are the NREGA, which now extends to the entire country, the Tribal Forest Rights Act and the increase in the minimum support price for rice and wheat, the loan waiver scheme for farmers and some such measures, many of whom were brought under the pressure of the Left parties.
Despite the agrarian crisis, such measures provided some relief to the rural people. Along with this should be seen the measures taken by some of the state governments such as the Rs 2 per kg of rice scheme in Andhra Pradesh and the Re 1 per kg scheme in Tamilnadu and other social welfare measures.
In Orissa too, the Rs 2 per kg of rice bolstered the support for the Navin Patnaik government. At the same time, the fact that four years of high growth of the GDP did not lead to redistribution of resources and incomes and instead sharply increased economic inequalities did play a role in restricting the Congress's capacity to expand its popular base.
The Congress gained more support amongst the minorities who were keen to ensure that the BJP does not make a come back. The non-Congress, non-BJP parties were not seen as a viable alternative in most parts of the country and this accentuated the shift in minority support to the Congress.
The Congress party has also benefited from the concern of the people that the country should face unitedly the threat of terrorism and their fear that communalism can only aggravate the situation.
Setback for the Left
The CPI (M) and the Left have suffered a serious setback with the losses in West Bengal and Kerala. It was expected that the Left would get a lesser number of seats in these elections given the fact that in Kerala, the LDF had won an unprecedented 18 out of the 20 seats and the Congress got none in the 2004 elections.
In West Bengal too, the odds were heavier given the Trinamool Congress and Congress combining and all the anti-Communist forces launching a concerted attack against the CPI (M) and the Left Front. But the extent of the defeat in both these states has led to the CPI(M) getting only 16 seats, the lowest ever in the Lok Sabha.
This calls for a serious examination of the causes for these reverses. We have to conduct a self-critical review to ascertain what are the factors which are responsible for this poor performance.
Both national and state level factors have to be analysed. The electoral-tactical line formulated by the Party at the national level and the national political situation which influenced the Lok Sabha polls must be studied. Along with that, the specific state factors in both West Bengal and Kerala must also be taken into account.
The Politburo, in its meeting held on May 18, 2009, has initiated such a review which will be completed by the Central Committee in its meeting to be held in June. After identifying the reasons for the failure, the Party will have to take the necessary political and organisational measures to overcome the shortcomings and mistakes.
On this basis, the Party will strenuously work to regain the support of those sections of the people who were alienated from the Party and the Left-led fronts. Such a self-critical exercise will also pave the basis for the Party taking up the organisational tasks set out in the Party Congress to strengthen the Party and to expand its mass influence.
Third Front Alliance
In the discussions held in the Politburo, there was a preliminary review of the Party's effort to forge a non-Congress, non-BJP alliance and present it as an electoral alternative. The Central Committee, in its meeting held in Kochi in January 2009, had worked out the electoral-tactical line and given the direction that “the Left parties along with the secular parties should work together to make a non-Congress, non-BJP alternative realizable.”
The CPI(M) and the CPI had an electoral understanding with some of the non-Congress, non-BJP parties in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa and seat adjustments in Karnataka. On the basis of these state level understandings forged on the eve of the elections, we attempted to project them as a national level non-Congress, non-BJP alternative.
The defeat of the Left in West Bengal and Kerala and the failure of the alliance in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to win a majority of the seats undermined any effective presence of the “Third Front” at the national level. It is evident that such a combination which had its relevance in the concerned states was not a credible and viable alternative at the national level. Further, the electoral combinations, which were forged state-wise, precluded any national policy platform being projected.
There have been two consequences of the projection of a Third Front. Firstly, the BJP-led NDA was adversely affected by the formation of a non-Congress secular combination. The BJP and the NDA's tally has come down since they were denied any significant ally in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.
The second point to be noted is that the secular non-Congress combination has got 21 per cent of the vote and this shows the potential for building up a third alternative on the lines suggested by the CPI (M) in its Party Congress. That is, an alternative which is not merely an electoral alliance but a coming together of the parties and forces on a common platform through movements and struggles for alternative policies distinct from that of the Congress and the BJP.
Money Power
A disturbing feature of this Lok Sabha election was the use of money on a scale not seen before. States like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka saw an unprecedented use of illegal money. The Madurai constituency in Tamil Nadu was the worst example of the brazen use of money.
In other states too, this trend has grown which is vitiating the democratic process. More and more tickets are being given to moneybags and parties are collecting huge sums of money to be deployed for bribing voters. This is a threat to the entire democratic process and is particularly inimical to the Left's interests which cannot indulge in such unscrupulous use of money power.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Yechury Admits Leadership's Failure
Sitaram Yechury's interview to Karan Thapar for the programme Devil’s Advocate
Karan Thapar: Prakash Karat has accepted that the election results are a major setback, but the truth is actually much worse than that. Can you deny that this is the worst electoral performance in your party's 45-year-history?
Sitaram Yechury: Not at all. I don’t deny it. This is the worst debacle we have had. Soon after we were formed in 64, the first election we contested in 1967 we won 19 seats--today we won 16.
Karan Thapar: So you have literally gone back below your starting point.
Sitaram Yechury: And this is a serious matter. It is a matter which the politburo has admitted is a very big debacle and we have to understand why this happened and seriously introspect.
Karan Thapar: Let’s for a moment pause over the statistics of your performance. You have gone from your best ever electoral performance to your worst ever in just five straight years. This time around you have lost 63 per cent of the seats you had, or to put it differently you have lost 68 percent more seats than you have won. Those statistics are worrying and actually they are appalling.
Sitaram Yechury: Statistics are statistics and you can always manipulate them but that is not the point. The fact is that you cannot escape from this reality that this has been a very big debacle for us. It’s been the worst performance electorally by the party.
Karan Thapar: Let’s then come to why you did so badly. To begin with, can you accept that breaking with the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) was a mistake? The voters didn't understand why you did it and worst of all it made CPI-M look like a party which was promoting instability.
Sitaram Yechury: All these issues we have decided will be discussed--both national and state-level issues—introspected upon and a very serious, honest, self-critical review will be made by us.
Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you what your defeated MPs are saying. Prashant Pradhan, your defeated MP from Kontai, says: "People have not taken kindly to the withdrawal of support from the UPA government. The poor and the farmers never understood why we wanted to topple the government."
Sitaram Yechury: You see these are points of views which have come across. As I said all issues will be discussed by us and on all of them we will come to some honest, self-critical conclusion.
Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you Amitabh Nandi, a defeated MP from Dumdum. He says: "From day one of withdrawing support from UPA our slogans, our activities have proved we are against stability."
Sitaram Yechury: These are opinions that have come and as I said all these issues will be discussed thoroughly and that process has already begun. By the middle of June I think we will come to our conclusion.
Karan Thapar: But can you accept that these are very valid opinions?
Sitaram Yechury: These issues will be discussed, definitely.
Karan Thapar: These are not inexperienced, foolish people talking. These are some of your most senior, cherished MPs, now defeated. They know what they are talking about.
Sitaram Yechury: They have been our leaders in Parliament. There is no way we are going to discount anything anybody says within the party. Everything will be taken seriously and discussed.
Karan Thapar: Now the second problem with breaking with the UPA was that you forced the Congress into the arms of the Trinamool Congress, thus creating a coalition that was able to attract the anti-Left votes in West Bengal at a time when you were yourself suffering from Nandigram, Singur and beginning to realise that the Muslim population could be disaffected. Rather than divide your opponents you ended up uniting and strengthening them.
Sitaram Yechury: But remember that the Congress and the Trinamool always had a ground-level understanding even without an alliance. What happened this time was that the de facto converted itself into de jure.
Karan Thapar: Which was a disaster for you...
Sitaram Yechury: This had its impact, definitely. There’s no doubt about it. We anticipated that this would have an impact on the marginal seats, but there are other reasons why this defeat has occurred in Bengal and those have to be seriously examined.
Karan Thapar: Absolutely. No one denies there are other reasons in Bengal. But given those other reasons, the worst tactic for you was to unite your opponents on a single platform. You should have divided them, not united them.
Sitaram Yechury: Like I said we will review all of this.
Karan Thapar: But can you accept this was bad tactics?
Sitaram Yechury: Not just this, all other questions will be discussed and reviewed. All that I can say right now is that on any one of these issues we have not come to any conclusive decision.
Karan Thapar: But you accept that given that you already had problems in Bengal, devising a strategy that unites your opponents was a pretty silly thing to do?
Sitaram Yechury: But it could well be that our opponents were going to unite any way?
Karan Thapar: Maybe but you prodded them into it. If you hadn’t broken with Congress they might not have gone with Trinamool and then you would have faced a divided opposition not a united one.
Sitaram Yechury: In the last elections, remember, of the 61 Left MPs 54 came to the Lok Sabha defeating Congress candidates. So going into elections with the Congress was never the issue.
Karan Thapar: But the problem was that this time, by breaking with the UPA, you pushed the Congress into the arms of the TMC and thus created a platform of unity against you which otherwise would have been two divided parties.
Sitaram Yechury: That is the reason why I am saying that what was de facto has become de jure.
Karan Thapar: And that was a disaster...
Sitaram Yechury: We will review that...
Karan Thapar: Is it true that Jyoti Basu advised the CPI-M leadership not to break with the UPA?
Sitaram Yechury: He may have had his opinions within the committees but there is no advice that has come to us.
Karan Thapar: What opinion did he express in the committees?
Sitaram Yechury: That I can't tell you. That is something which even he won't tell you.
Karan Thapar: Can I infer that within the committees he expressed a measure of dissent about breaking with the UPA?
Sitaram Yechury: You see breaking from the UPA was not a one-time decision or which happened one-off. It was a series of developments which were taking place as a result of which it culminated in our withdrawing support. On various steps in this process he had some issues to tell us which he told.
Karan Thapar: So there were various moments when he expressed his opinion; there were issues he had to speak about which he did speak about.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes, definitely. Inside the party all of us will give our opinion but once we collectively decide that is our party matter.
Karan Thapar: Thank you, I think you have said it all. You can't confirm it but within the party at various stages he had opinions to express and he did express them.
Sitaram Yechury: He conveyed what he felt at a number of times.
Karan Thapar: He conveyed what he felt at a number of times, not (just) once or twice.
Sitaram Yechury: Even today he does.
Karan Thapar: The second biggest mistake was in fact the Third Front. We all knew what it didn't stand for--it was anti-Congress, anti-BJP—but no one actually knew what it stood for. As a result of which it lacked credibility and it projected negativity.
Sitaram Yechury: We in the politburo have come to the conclusion that the Third Front …. you understand how this Third Front emerged? It was state-level alliances in various states. Now this was brought together as a national alternative, which people obviously found had neither credibility or viability. Both were lacking. Thus the result. That is what we have accepted.
Karan Thapar: Finish the sentence you half began before you interrupted yourself: “We in the Politburo have to come a conclusion about the Third Front” and then you stopped. What is that conclusion?
Sitaram Yechury: That it was neither viable nor credible...
Karan Thapar: Would you therefore say that it was a mistake?
Sitaram Yechury: The way it was projected was a mistake. I’ll tell you why. The CPI-M always had this opinion, which we still continue to have, that India requires a third political alternative. This third political alternative will have to bring about a shift in the policy trajectory in the country. But that cannot be a cut-and-paste job on the eve of elections.
Karan Thapar: This was a hastily put together cut-and-paste job?
Sitaram Yechury: A cut-and-paste job, and to achieve our objective of a third alternative there are no short cuts. It will have to be done through sustained, prolonged, popular struggles. .
Karan Thapar: This was an attempt at putting together a Third Front, not just by cut and paste but by short-cut methods and that was a mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes. That is something which will be a subject of our review in the central committee (of the CPI-M).
Karan Thapar: But in fact it was not just the projection of the Third Front, it was not just the haste and the cut-and-paste manner in which it was put together. Even the composition of the Third Front was wrong. To begin with, almost all its members were former BJP allies. Two of them, Jayalalithaa and Mayawati, face serious charges of corruption. As a result of its composition this front undermined your cherished principles of probity and secularism. These people should have never been your allies.
Sitaram Yechury: That is why in retrospect we are saying that people didn't find it credible. They did not find this front credible.
Karan Thapar: No doubt the people did not find it credible. The election results prove that. But can you accept that at a prior stage you chose the wrong allies? You should not have approached people like Jayalalithaa, like Mayawati.
Sitaram Yechury: In the states we had electoral understandings—with Jayalalithaa it was an understanding in Tamil Nadu; with the TDP it was an understanding in Andhra Pradesh. But we brought all this together as a national alternative. That did not find credibility with the people.
Karan Thapar: You’re accepting that projecting a state level understanding into a national understanding was a mistake. But even at the state level it was a mistake. Just look at the speed with which Jayalalithaa left you. She left you immediately after the elections and before the counting. The TRS left you after the voting and before the counting. As soon as the counting was over the JD-S and the BSP left you. They showed no loyalty to you at the state or national level.
Sitaram Yechury: The AIADMK has not left us formally, but you are right about the BSP, JD-S and TRS. That is precisely the point I am making--the front was neither credible nor viable. This (election result) has only confirmed that.
Karan Thapar: One other thing. At a time when the country was yearning for a strong and stable government, no one believed that the Third Front could offer it and more importantly the prospect of Mayawati as Prime Minister put a lot of people off, maybe even frightened them.
Sitaram Yechury: I don't think it was only a question of stability that people wanted. If it was stability then they would have found little to choose between the UPA and the NDA. They wanted stability with a commitment to the secular, democratic foundations of India. This was the combination which they found the Third Front lacked the credibility to give. And Commitment to secular, democratic foundations the NDA would never give. Hence the result.
Karan Thapar: The reason you lacked credibility in terms of secular foundations of India is not just because of the composition of the Third Front. But if you look at what your party did in Kerala your alliance with (PDP leader) A N Madhani was another mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: There was no alliance with Madhani.
Karan Thapar: Your own local partymen in Kerala have called it an alliance and say it is a mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: In Kerala, not only Madhani, various other issues that have impacted on these elections, all of them will be reviewed.
Karan Thapar: Let us briefly talk about the manner in which your two bastions--of West Bengal and Kerala--undermined your performance. To begin with, how did you permit yourself to go into an election when your entire Kerala unit was not just feuding but acrimoniously tearing itself apart?
Sitaram Yechury: But remember in Kerala this sort of situation prevailed in the 2006 elections and that time there were street-level demonstrations (as well).
Karan Thapar: Except that the situation had got much worse. On the eve of elections your state secretariat wanted V S Achutanandan removed as Chief Minister.
Sitaram Yechury: No, that was not true. That was only a media-created rumour. But the point is in 2006 what was seen as acrimony between our leaders resulted in a two-third majority victory in the Assembly.
Karan Thapar: Except that by 2009 you were no longer the beneficiary of doubts in the minds of the people. They were convinced by then 3 years of feuding meant that you were tearing yourself apart and you were allying with people like Madani. You were losing credibility.
Sitaram Yechury: Remember the elections in 2009 were for the Central government not state government. In Kerala and Bengal people are very conscious, they know what choices they want and whom they want where (i.e. at the Centre).
Karan Thapar: All right let me quote to you Hanan Mollah, one of your defeated MPs. This is what he told several papers: "We have been severely punished. Did we lose touch with ground reality?" What is your answer to that question?
Sitaram Yechury: That is precisely what we are examining. That is the answer we will give in our Central Committee when we meet in June.
Karan Thapar: What is your hunch? You are a political man, no doubt a definitive answer will come after the analysis but what is your instinct?
Sitaram Yechury: Obviously we have lost touch otherwise this sort of result would not have come. But to what degree, why we lost touch, what were the inadequacies, that is something we are seriously examining.
Karan Thapar: But you agree that you lost touch?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course, the results show that.
Karan Thapar: Now let’s come to the question: where does responsibility lie. I want to quote to you what one of your defeated candidates, Amitabh Nandy, has said. He says: "When we complete our introspection it will certainly emerge that the party's top leadership has failed." Would you agree?
Sitaram Yechury: Please understand one thing that this has been a very big debacle for us. Also understand the fact that this is for the first time in the last two decades that a secular government is being formed in India in which the CPI-M has no role. This is a big setback. People, therefore, are expressing their disappointment. All these sentiments
will be taken into account by us.
Karan Thapar: When you say this is the first time a secular government is being formed in India for two decades without any role or presence of CPI-M, you are underlining how irrelevant or marginalised you have become. So let us come back to Amitabh Nandy. Will you accept that the party's top leadership has failed?
Sitaram Yechury: That is what we are examining. Of course the top leadership of the party will have to take the leaderships role, I mean play the leaderships role. That it will.
Karan Thapar: Will the question when you do your examination be raised:has the leadership failed? Will that question be raised?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course it will come. Of course it will be discussed. Remember a Communist party functions by what we call the Leninist principles of organisation, where it is collective functioning with individual responsibility.
Karan Thapar: Both the collective functioning of the leadership will be inquired into as well as the issue of individual responsibility?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course. Yes. All of this will come in to the review. Definitely.
Karan Thapar: Your allies have absolutely no compunction at all in pointing the finger of blame straight at the Delhi leadership of CPI-M. Debabrata Biswas has done it, Abani Roy has done it and now increasingly AB Bardhan is doing it. They say the CPI-M leadership was arrogant and it had lost touch with the masses.
Sitaram Yechury: We have also heard these comments but all of them were party to all the decisions that were taken together in the Left parties' meeting.
Karan Thapar: No doubt but is there any truth in their claim that your leadership was arrogant?
Sitaram Yechury: If our allies are saying all this we will definitely take that into account in our review. Definitely.
Karan Thapar: You won’t turn a deaf ear?
Sitaram Yechury: No, definitely not.
Karan Thapar: You won't sweep it under the carpet?
Sitaram Yechury: No, it is for our own survival to get back the people who have been alienated from us and to advance further that we have to be candid, honest and rigorously honest in this self-critical examination.
Karan Thapar: If you want to be candid and rigorously honest then I put this to you: after facing a similar disastrous electoral performance, LK Advani offered his resignation to the BJP as Leader of Opposition. Why in similar circumstances in the CPI-M has Prakash Karat not found fit to make a similar gesture?
Sitaram Yechury: Leader of Opposition is a position in Parliament and that Parliament has ceased - the 14th Lok Sabha. And that Parliament has ceased to be. So whether he resigns or not that Parliament has finished.
Karan Thapar: We are talking about the need for candidness, for transparency and for winning back the people you have lost. Surely therefore Prakash Karat must make the gesture of accepting responsibility as General Secretary.
Sitaram Yechury: The point again here is that it will have to be a collective assessment that we will make of these results, of why these results have resulted in this sort of manner. And remember, resignation also can be escape from responsibilities.
Karan Thapar: You said a very interesting thing. A collective assessment will be made.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes.
Karan Thapar: Now your Central Committee is due to meet in June. At that meeting what are the chances that Prakash Karat will either step down voluntarily or be stripped of his responsibilities.
Sitaram Yechury: Again let me tell you the Central Committee is going to discuss the reasons for our debacle.
Karan Thapar: And they are going into the question of leadership?
Sitaram Yechury: Leadership of course. In that process. But it will not be on the basis of who is going to resign or not--that is not the issue. The issue is what are the mistakes, why were they committed and how can they be corrected.
Karan Thapar: But can you rule out the possibility of Prakash Karat accepting responsibility at that stage and resigning?
Sitaram Yechury: The Central Committee, as I said, will comprehensively review. Beyond that I cannot go today.
Karan Thapar: Let me put this to you. There is no doubt that the two issues on which you ended up losing seats were the break with the UPA and creation of a less than credible Third Front. Of both those Prakash Karat was the central architect. Is it not therefore the case that, as the Press is saying, he has the greatest measure of direct responsibility for this defeat?
Sitaram Yechury: Prakash Karat is the General Secretary of the CPI-M. These were the decisions of the CPI-M and he as General Secretary will articulate these decisions, naturally.
Karan Thapar: In most organisations when things go wrong the man at the top takes the responsibility.
Sitaram Yechury: But I think that is also one way of escaping responsibility.
Karan Thapar: Are you going to hold him to the job to punish him rather than let him go?
Sitaram Yechury: It is not a question of an individual. As I said, we will collectively assess what are our mistakes.
Karan Thapar: And therefore if you are going to collectively assess his future depends on the outcome and decisions of the central committee.
Sitaram Yechury: Well, the future of the party depends on it.
Karan Thapar: Prakash Karat has accepted that the election results are a major setback, but the truth is actually much worse than that. Can you deny that this is the worst electoral performance in your party's 45-year-history?
Sitaram Yechury: Not at all. I don’t deny it. This is the worst debacle we have had. Soon after we were formed in 64, the first election we contested in 1967 we won 19 seats--today we won 16.
Karan Thapar: So you have literally gone back below your starting point.
Sitaram Yechury: And this is a serious matter. It is a matter which the politburo has admitted is a very big debacle and we have to understand why this happened and seriously introspect.
Karan Thapar: Let’s for a moment pause over the statistics of your performance. You have gone from your best ever electoral performance to your worst ever in just five straight years. This time around you have lost 63 per cent of the seats you had, or to put it differently you have lost 68 percent more seats than you have won. Those statistics are worrying and actually they are appalling.
Sitaram Yechury: Statistics are statistics and you can always manipulate them but that is not the point. The fact is that you cannot escape from this reality that this has been a very big debacle for us. It’s been the worst performance electorally by the party.
Karan Thapar: Let’s then come to why you did so badly. To begin with, can you accept that breaking with the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) was a mistake? The voters didn't understand why you did it and worst of all it made CPI-M look like a party which was promoting instability.
Sitaram Yechury: All these issues we have decided will be discussed--both national and state-level issues—introspected upon and a very serious, honest, self-critical review will be made by us.
Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you what your defeated MPs are saying. Prashant Pradhan, your defeated MP from Kontai, says: "People have not taken kindly to the withdrawal of support from the UPA government. The poor and the farmers never understood why we wanted to topple the government."
Sitaram Yechury: You see these are points of views which have come across. As I said all issues will be discussed by us and on all of them we will come to some honest, self-critical conclusion.
Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you Amitabh Nandi, a defeated MP from Dumdum. He says: "From day one of withdrawing support from UPA our slogans, our activities have proved we are against stability."
Sitaram Yechury: These are opinions that have come and as I said all these issues will be discussed thoroughly and that process has already begun. By the middle of June I think we will come to our conclusion.
Karan Thapar: But can you accept that these are very valid opinions?
Sitaram Yechury: These issues will be discussed, definitely.
Karan Thapar: These are not inexperienced, foolish people talking. These are some of your most senior, cherished MPs, now defeated. They know what they are talking about.
Sitaram Yechury: They have been our leaders in Parliament. There is no way we are going to discount anything anybody says within the party. Everything will be taken seriously and discussed.
Karan Thapar: Now the second problem with breaking with the UPA was that you forced the Congress into the arms of the Trinamool Congress, thus creating a coalition that was able to attract the anti-Left votes in West Bengal at a time when you were yourself suffering from Nandigram, Singur and beginning to realise that the Muslim population could be disaffected. Rather than divide your opponents you ended up uniting and strengthening them.
Sitaram Yechury: But remember that the Congress and the Trinamool always had a ground-level understanding even without an alliance. What happened this time was that the de facto converted itself into de jure.
Karan Thapar: Which was a disaster for you...
Sitaram Yechury: This had its impact, definitely. There’s no doubt about it. We anticipated that this would have an impact on the marginal seats, but there are other reasons why this defeat has occurred in Bengal and those have to be seriously examined.
Karan Thapar: Absolutely. No one denies there are other reasons in Bengal. But given those other reasons, the worst tactic for you was to unite your opponents on a single platform. You should have divided them, not united them.
Sitaram Yechury: Like I said we will review all of this.
Karan Thapar: But can you accept this was bad tactics?
Sitaram Yechury: Not just this, all other questions will be discussed and reviewed. All that I can say right now is that on any one of these issues we have not come to any conclusive decision.
Karan Thapar: But you accept that given that you already had problems in Bengal, devising a strategy that unites your opponents was a pretty silly thing to do?
Sitaram Yechury: But it could well be that our opponents were going to unite any way?
Karan Thapar: Maybe but you prodded them into it. If you hadn’t broken with Congress they might not have gone with Trinamool and then you would have faced a divided opposition not a united one.
Sitaram Yechury: In the last elections, remember, of the 61 Left MPs 54 came to the Lok Sabha defeating Congress candidates. So going into elections with the Congress was never the issue.
Karan Thapar: But the problem was that this time, by breaking with the UPA, you pushed the Congress into the arms of the TMC and thus created a platform of unity against you which otherwise would have been two divided parties.
Sitaram Yechury: That is the reason why I am saying that what was de facto has become de jure.
Karan Thapar: And that was a disaster...
Sitaram Yechury: We will review that...
Karan Thapar: Is it true that Jyoti Basu advised the CPI-M leadership not to break with the UPA?
Sitaram Yechury: He may have had his opinions within the committees but there is no advice that has come to us.
Karan Thapar: What opinion did he express in the committees?
Sitaram Yechury: That I can't tell you. That is something which even he won't tell you.
Karan Thapar: Can I infer that within the committees he expressed a measure of dissent about breaking with the UPA?
Sitaram Yechury: You see breaking from the UPA was not a one-time decision or which happened one-off. It was a series of developments which were taking place as a result of which it culminated in our withdrawing support. On various steps in this process he had some issues to tell us which he told.
Karan Thapar: So there were various moments when he expressed his opinion; there were issues he had to speak about which he did speak about.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes, definitely. Inside the party all of us will give our opinion but once we collectively decide that is our party matter.
Karan Thapar: Thank you, I think you have said it all. You can't confirm it but within the party at various stages he had opinions to express and he did express them.
Sitaram Yechury: He conveyed what he felt at a number of times.
Karan Thapar: He conveyed what he felt at a number of times, not (just) once or twice.
Sitaram Yechury: Even today he does.
Karan Thapar: The second biggest mistake was in fact the Third Front. We all knew what it didn't stand for--it was anti-Congress, anti-BJP—but no one actually knew what it stood for. As a result of which it lacked credibility and it projected negativity.
Sitaram Yechury: We in the politburo have come to the conclusion that the Third Front …. you understand how this Third Front emerged? It was state-level alliances in various states. Now this was brought together as a national alternative, which people obviously found had neither credibility or viability. Both were lacking. Thus the result. That is what we have accepted.
Karan Thapar: Finish the sentence you half began before you interrupted yourself: “We in the Politburo have to come a conclusion about the Third Front” and then you stopped. What is that conclusion?
Sitaram Yechury: That it was neither viable nor credible...
Karan Thapar: Would you therefore say that it was a mistake?
Sitaram Yechury: The way it was projected was a mistake. I’ll tell you why. The CPI-M always had this opinion, which we still continue to have, that India requires a third political alternative. This third political alternative will have to bring about a shift in the policy trajectory in the country. But that cannot be a cut-and-paste job on the eve of elections.
Karan Thapar: This was a hastily put together cut-and-paste job?
Sitaram Yechury: A cut-and-paste job, and to achieve our objective of a third alternative there are no short cuts. It will have to be done through sustained, prolonged, popular struggles. .
Karan Thapar: This was an attempt at putting together a Third Front, not just by cut and paste but by short-cut methods and that was a mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes. That is something which will be a subject of our review in the central committee (of the CPI-M).
Karan Thapar: But in fact it was not just the projection of the Third Front, it was not just the haste and the cut-and-paste manner in which it was put together. Even the composition of the Third Front was wrong. To begin with, almost all its members were former BJP allies. Two of them, Jayalalithaa and Mayawati, face serious charges of corruption. As a result of its composition this front undermined your cherished principles of probity and secularism. These people should have never been your allies.
Sitaram Yechury: That is why in retrospect we are saying that people didn't find it credible. They did not find this front credible.
Karan Thapar: No doubt the people did not find it credible. The election results prove that. But can you accept that at a prior stage you chose the wrong allies? You should not have approached people like Jayalalithaa, like Mayawati.
Sitaram Yechury: In the states we had electoral understandings—with Jayalalithaa it was an understanding in Tamil Nadu; with the TDP it was an understanding in Andhra Pradesh. But we brought all this together as a national alternative. That did not find credibility with the people.
Karan Thapar: You’re accepting that projecting a state level understanding into a national understanding was a mistake. But even at the state level it was a mistake. Just look at the speed with which Jayalalithaa left you. She left you immediately after the elections and before the counting. The TRS left you after the voting and before the counting. As soon as the counting was over the JD-S and the BSP left you. They showed no loyalty to you at the state or national level.
Sitaram Yechury: The AIADMK has not left us formally, but you are right about the BSP, JD-S and TRS. That is precisely the point I am making--the front was neither credible nor viable. This (election result) has only confirmed that.
Karan Thapar: One other thing. At a time when the country was yearning for a strong and stable government, no one believed that the Third Front could offer it and more importantly the prospect of Mayawati as Prime Minister put a lot of people off, maybe even frightened them.
Sitaram Yechury: I don't think it was only a question of stability that people wanted. If it was stability then they would have found little to choose between the UPA and the NDA. They wanted stability with a commitment to the secular, democratic foundations of India. This was the combination which they found the Third Front lacked the credibility to give. And Commitment to secular, democratic foundations the NDA would never give. Hence the result.
Karan Thapar: The reason you lacked credibility in terms of secular foundations of India is not just because of the composition of the Third Front. But if you look at what your party did in Kerala your alliance with (PDP leader) A N Madhani was another mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: There was no alliance with Madhani.
Karan Thapar: Your own local partymen in Kerala have called it an alliance and say it is a mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: In Kerala, not only Madhani, various other issues that have impacted on these elections, all of them will be reviewed.
Karan Thapar: Let us briefly talk about the manner in which your two bastions--of West Bengal and Kerala--undermined your performance. To begin with, how did you permit yourself to go into an election when your entire Kerala unit was not just feuding but acrimoniously tearing itself apart?
Sitaram Yechury: But remember in Kerala this sort of situation prevailed in the 2006 elections and that time there were street-level demonstrations (as well).
Karan Thapar: Except that the situation had got much worse. On the eve of elections your state secretariat wanted V S Achutanandan removed as Chief Minister.
Sitaram Yechury: No, that was not true. That was only a media-created rumour. But the point is in 2006 what was seen as acrimony between our leaders resulted in a two-third majority victory in the Assembly.
Karan Thapar: Except that by 2009 you were no longer the beneficiary of doubts in the minds of the people. They were convinced by then 3 years of feuding meant that you were tearing yourself apart and you were allying with people like Madani. You were losing credibility.
Sitaram Yechury: Remember the elections in 2009 were for the Central government not state government. In Kerala and Bengal people are very conscious, they know what choices they want and whom they want where (i.e. at the Centre).
Karan Thapar: All right let me quote to you Hanan Mollah, one of your defeated MPs. This is what he told several papers: "We have been severely punished. Did we lose touch with ground reality?" What is your answer to that question?
Sitaram Yechury: That is precisely what we are examining. That is the answer we will give in our Central Committee when we meet in June.
Karan Thapar: What is your hunch? You are a political man, no doubt a definitive answer will come after the analysis but what is your instinct?
Sitaram Yechury: Obviously we have lost touch otherwise this sort of result would not have come. But to what degree, why we lost touch, what were the inadequacies, that is something we are seriously examining.
Karan Thapar: But you agree that you lost touch?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course, the results show that.
Karan Thapar: Now let’s come to the question: where does responsibility lie. I want to quote to you what one of your defeated candidates, Amitabh Nandy, has said. He says: "When we complete our introspection it will certainly emerge that the party's top leadership has failed." Would you agree?
Sitaram Yechury: Please understand one thing that this has been a very big debacle for us. Also understand the fact that this is for the first time in the last two decades that a secular government is being formed in India in which the CPI-M has no role. This is a big setback. People, therefore, are expressing their disappointment. All these sentiments
will be taken into account by us.
Karan Thapar: When you say this is the first time a secular government is being formed in India for two decades without any role or presence of CPI-M, you are underlining how irrelevant or marginalised you have become. So let us come back to Amitabh Nandy. Will you accept that the party's top leadership has failed?
Sitaram Yechury: That is what we are examining. Of course the top leadership of the party will have to take the leaderships role, I mean play the leaderships role. That it will.
Karan Thapar: Will the question when you do your examination be raised:has the leadership failed? Will that question be raised?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course it will come. Of course it will be discussed. Remember a Communist party functions by what we call the Leninist principles of organisation, where it is collective functioning with individual responsibility.
Karan Thapar: Both the collective functioning of the leadership will be inquired into as well as the issue of individual responsibility?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course. Yes. All of this will come in to the review. Definitely.
Karan Thapar: Your allies have absolutely no compunction at all in pointing the finger of blame straight at the Delhi leadership of CPI-M. Debabrata Biswas has done it, Abani Roy has done it and now increasingly AB Bardhan is doing it. They say the CPI-M leadership was arrogant and it had lost touch with the masses.
Sitaram Yechury: We have also heard these comments but all of them were party to all the decisions that were taken together in the Left parties' meeting.
Karan Thapar: No doubt but is there any truth in their claim that your leadership was arrogant?
Sitaram Yechury: If our allies are saying all this we will definitely take that into account in our review. Definitely.
Karan Thapar: You won’t turn a deaf ear?
Sitaram Yechury: No, definitely not.
Karan Thapar: You won't sweep it under the carpet?
Sitaram Yechury: No, it is for our own survival to get back the people who have been alienated from us and to advance further that we have to be candid, honest and rigorously honest in this self-critical examination.
Karan Thapar: If you want to be candid and rigorously honest then I put this to you: after facing a similar disastrous electoral performance, LK Advani offered his resignation to the BJP as Leader of Opposition. Why in similar circumstances in the CPI-M has Prakash Karat not found fit to make a similar gesture?
Sitaram Yechury: Leader of Opposition is a position in Parliament and that Parliament has ceased - the 14th Lok Sabha. And that Parliament has ceased to be. So whether he resigns or not that Parliament has finished.
Karan Thapar: We are talking about the need for candidness, for transparency and for winning back the people you have lost. Surely therefore Prakash Karat must make the gesture of accepting responsibility as General Secretary.
Sitaram Yechury: The point again here is that it will have to be a collective assessment that we will make of these results, of why these results have resulted in this sort of manner. And remember, resignation also can be escape from responsibilities.
Karan Thapar: You said a very interesting thing. A collective assessment will be made.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes.
Karan Thapar: Now your Central Committee is due to meet in June. At that meeting what are the chances that Prakash Karat will either step down voluntarily or be stripped of his responsibilities.
Sitaram Yechury: Again let me tell you the Central Committee is going to discuss the reasons for our debacle.
Karan Thapar: And they are going into the question of leadership?
Sitaram Yechury: Leadership of course. In that process. But it will not be on the basis of who is going to resign or not--that is not the issue. The issue is what are the mistakes, why were they committed and how can they be corrected.
Karan Thapar: But can you rule out the possibility of Prakash Karat accepting responsibility at that stage and resigning?
Sitaram Yechury: The Central Committee, as I said, will comprehensively review. Beyond that I cannot go today.
Karan Thapar: Let me put this to you. There is no doubt that the two issues on which you ended up losing seats were the break with the UPA and creation of a less than credible Third Front. Of both those Prakash Karat was the central architect. Is it not therefore the case that, as the Press is saying, he has the greatest measure of direct responsibility for this defeat?
Sitaram Yechury: Prakash Karat is the General Secretary of the CPI-M. These were the decisions of the CPI-M and he as General Secretary will articulate these decisions, naturally.
Karan Thapar: In most organisations when things go wrong the man at the top takes the responsibility.
Sitaram Yechury: But I think that is also one way of escaping responsibility.
Karan Thapar: Are you going to hold him to the job to punish him rather than let him go?
Sitaram Yechury: It is not a question of an individual. As I said, we will collectively assess what are our mistakes.
Karan Thapar: And therefore if you are going to collectively assess his future depends on the outcome and decisions of the central committee.
Sitaram Yechury: Well, the future of the party depends on it.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Coping With Victory And Defeat
By Siddharth Varadarajan
With the poorly conceived Third Front promising little more than political instability and the Bharatiya Janata Party standing for greater social turmoil and division, the victory of the Congress is a vote for calm, centrist stability of the kind the country has not seen for more than two decades.
That voters have attached a premium to both the formation of a stable government and to the pursuit of social-democratic policies should come as no surprise given the spectres of economic hardship, terrorist violence and communal polarisation that haunt our collective psyche today.
The only irony is that the Left and the Congress, whose partnership for four out of the past five years provided the United Progressive Alliance both the aura of stability and the caché of populism, should have ended up such bitter rivals on the eve of the election.
On the eve of the general election, the coming together of major challenges like the world financial crisis, the implosion of Pakistan and the rising tide of religious intolerance within India and the region had shifted the matrix of rational policy in such a manner that the issues on which the Left and the Congress had parted company last year made no sense at all to voters in 2009.
On most issues of consequence, domestic and foreign, the distance between centrist and leftist policy was getting eroded. Having resisted the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme when activists first mooted the idea in 2004, the Congress took it up seriously only after the Left parties made it a priority.
Even then, conservative elements within the ruling establishment like Montek Singh Ahluwalia of the Planning Commission remained sceptical and sought to limit the Central government’s fiscal commitment to it.
Only when the economic slowdown hit India in 2008 — and the importance of NREGA as both a politically convenient safety net for the poor and an accelerator-multiplier to kickstart the economy became apparent — did the Congress make its implementation a priority.
The Congress may have been a late and even reluctant convert; but what matters finally is that the party and the Left ended up on the same page.
On other economic matters which divided the Congress and the Left like financial sector liberalisation, the fact that the Indian banking and insurance sectors were insulated from the global turmoil which felled giants like AIG and Lehman Brothers provided a further basis for the two sides to speak the same broad language.
Instead of celebrating the return of the social-democratic paradigm and using this to leverage a further shift away from neo-liberal dogma, however, the Left found itself holding the can on the one free-market policy its rural support base viscerally opposed: land acquisition.
If nationally, the CPI(M) and its allies were pilloried for a leftism that was largely declaratory, the Left Front paid the price in its bastion of West Bengal for the “rightism” of its policies that allowed Mamata Banerjee to emerge as a defender of the peasantry’s right to till the soil.
Consider the irony: the Left broke with the Congress because it felt the latter had deviated from the Common Minimum Programme of 2004. But in 2009, it allied itself to a diverse set of political parties without any programme other than the desire to establish a “non-Congress, non-BJP” government.
So it was that the Left found itself at election time with allies such as the Telugu Desam Party, the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Biju Janata Dal and the Bahujan Samaj Party — groups that had no interest in pushing the direction of national economic policy one way or the other and which had all, in recent times, been closely associated with the BJP and its communal politics.
This programmatic dilution of the ‘Third Front’ allowed the grouping to look strong on paper but it was devoid of any political ballast. But even this might not have proved fatal except for another factor: As a result of its break with the Congress over an issue that was not so decisive to the direction of Indian foreign policy in the long run — the nuclear deal — the Left facilitated the creation of a coalition that went on to storm the seemingly impregnable red fortress of Bengal.
To be sure, there were and are valid reasons for the CPI(M) to have wanted to build a Third Front. But its failure to articulate a positive pro-people programme around which such a front could be established rendered the exercise electorally and politically futile.
As it looks towards rebuilding itself in Kerala and West Bengal and enlarging its prospects as a genuinely national alternative, the Left will have to be self-critical about its preference for conjuring up expedient top-down coalitions rather than organic, bottom-up alliances based on the kind of struggles and movements the communists know best.
Unless it does so, the parliamentary communist movement will find itself increasingly squeezed by Maoist extremism on the left and the electoral machine of ‘bourgeois’ parties on the right against which it cannot easily compete. If the Left needs to introspect, what of the BJP, which paid the price for believing that the Indian voter would prefer divisiveness and strife to the comforting anchor of centrism?
The rot in the party runs so deep that it cannot be reversed by the resignation of LK Advani. The very fact that its spokesmen thought Narendra Modi’s name would generate a wave in favour of the BJP despite the Supreme Court ordering a probe into his role in the 2002 mass killing of Muslims in Gujarat shows the extent to which they are out of touch with the pulse of the country.
But since the party did relatively better in Gujarat and Karnataka, especially the coastal region where Christians, Muslims and ‘immoral’ Hindus have been targeted by the Sangh Parivar, it is possible the RSS will conclude that religious polarisation is a good electoral strategy for the BJP to pursue. If this is the direction the party takes, its capacity to generate tension and insecurity in civil society will increase even if its national political prospects continue to remain dim.
As for the Congress, the party needs to guard against the hubris that usually accompanies the kind of dramatic, unexpected victory it has just received. The INC defeated the Left fair and square but must realise that its success owes more to the social-democratic elements of its economic policies than to the ‘reforms’ the party’s more affluent backers espouse.
Second, vanquishing the politics the BJP stands for requires more than electoral success. The socio-economic and administrative support structures on which the politics of communalism thrives need to be dismantled through careful, sensitive intervention.
The party must resist the old Congress way of pandering to identity politics as a low-cost way of doing the right thing by India’s diverse electorate. India’s Muslims, for example, want equal opportunities and justice, not the banning of a book or the expulsion of a Taslima Nasreen. Providing these will involve taking on entrenched interests and attitudes, especially in the police and administration, something the
Congress has always shied away from doing.
Finally, the re-election of the UPA must not be seen as a licence to indulge in the ‘Congress culture’ of the past. The public got a glimpse of that culture when some leaders started pushing for Rahul Gandhi to be made Prime Minister as soon as the scale of the party’s victory became apparent.
Sonia Gandhi did well to nip these demands in the bud. If she can go further by pensioning off entrenched interests and democratising the functioning of the party’s leadership, the Congress will be better placed to meet the expectations of those who have voted for it.
Courtesy: The Hindu
With the poorly conceived Third Front promising little more than political instability and the Bharatiya Janata Party standing for greater social turmoil and division, the victory of the Congress is a vote for calm, centrist stability of the kind the country has not seen for more than two decades.
That voters have attached a premium to both the formation of a stable government and to the pursuit of social-democratic policies should come as no surprise given the spectres of economic hardship, terrorist violence and communal polarisation that haunt our collective psyche today.
The only irony is that the Left and the Congress, whose partnership for four out of the past five years provided the United Progressive Alliance both the aura of stability and the caché of populism, should have ended up such bitter rivals on the eve of the election.
On the eve of the general election, the coming together of major challenges like the world financial crisis, the implosion of Pakistan and the rising tide of religious intolerance within India and the region had shifted the matrix of rational policy in such a manner that the issues on which the Left and the Congress had parted company last year made no sense at all to voters in 2009.
On most issues of consequence, domestic and foreign, the distance between centrist and leftist policy was getting eroded. Having resisted the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme when activists first mooted the idea in 2004, the Congress took it up seriously only after the Left parties made it a priority.
Even then, conservative elements within the ruling establishment like Montek Singh Ahluwalia of the Planning Commission remained sceptical and sought to limit the Central government’s fiscal commitment to it.
Only when the economic slowdown hit India in 2008 — and the importance of NREGA as both a politically convenient safety net for the poor and an accelerator-multiplier to kickstart the economy became apparent — did the Congress make its implementation a priority.
The Congress may have been a late and even reluctant convert; but what matters finally is that the party and the Left ended up on the same page.
On other economic matters which divided the Congress and the Left like financial sector liberalisation, the fact that the Indian banking and insurance sectors were insulated from the global turmoil which felled giants like AIG and Lehman Brothers provided a further basis for the two sides to speak the same broad language.
Instead of celebrating the return of the social-democratic paradigm and using this to leverage a further shift away from neo-liberal dogma, however, the Left found itself holding the can on the one free-market policy its rural support base viscerally opposed: land acquisition.
If nationally, the CPI(M) and its allies were pilloried for a leftism that was largely declaratory, the Left Front paid the price in its bastion of West Bengal for the “rightism” of its policies that allowed Mamata Banerjee to emerge as a defender of the peasantry’s right to till the soil.
Consider the irony: the Left broke with the Congress because it felt the latter had deviated from the Common Minimum Programme of 2004. But in 2009, it allied itself to a diverse set of political parties without any programme other than the desire to establish a “non-Congress, non-BJP” government.
So it was that the Left found itself at election time with allies such as the Telugu Desam Party, the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Biju Janata Dal and the Bahujan Samaj Party — groups that had no interest in pushing the direction of national economic policy one way or the other and which had all, in recent times, been closely associated with the BJP and its communal politics.
This programmatic dilution of the ‘Third Front’ allowed the grouping to look strong on paper but it was devoid of any political ballast. But even this might not have proved fatal except for another factor: As a result of its break with the Congress over an issue that was not so decisive to the direction of Indian foreign policy in the long run — the nuclear deal — the Left facilitated the creation of a coalition that went on to storm the seemingly impregnable red fortress of Bengal.
To be sure, there were and are valid reasons for the CPI(M) to have wanted to build a Third Front. But its failure to articulate a positive pro-people programme around which such a front could be established rendered the exercise electorally and politically futile.
As it looks towards rebuilding itself in Kerala and West Bengal and enlarging its prospects as a genuinely national alternative, the Left will have to be self-critical about its preference for conjuring up expedient top-down coalitions rather than organic, bottom-up alliances based on the kind of struggles and movements the communists know best.
Unless it does so, the parliamentary communist movement will find itself increasingly squeezed by Maoist extremism on the left and the electoral machine of ‘bourgeois’ parties on the right against which it cannot easily compete. If the Left needs to introspect, what of the BJP, which paid the price for believing that the Indian voter would prefer divisiveness and strife to the comforting anchor of centrism?
The rot in the party runs so deep that it cannot be reversed by the resignation of LK Advani. The very fact that its spokesmen thought Narendra Modi’s name would generate a wave in favour of the BJP despite the Supreme Court ordering a probe into his role in the 2002 mass killing of Muslims in Gujarat shows the extent to which they are out of touch with the pulse of the country.
But since the party did relatively better in Gujarat and Karnataka, especially the coastal region where Christians, Muslims and ‘immoral’ Hindus have been targeted by the Sangh Parivar, it is possible the RSS will conclude that religious polarisation is a good electoral strategy for the BJP to pursue. If this is the direction the party takes, its capacity to generate tension and insecurity in civil society will increase even if its national political prospects continue to remain dim.
As for the Congress, the party needs to guard against the hubris that usually accompanies the kind of dramatic, unexpected victory it has just received. The INC defeated the Left fair and square but must realise that its success owes more to the social-democratic elements of its economic policies than to the ‘reforms’ the party’s more affluent backers espouse.
Second, vanquishing the politics the BJP stands for requires more than electoral success. The socio-economic and administrative support structures on which the politics of communalism thrives need to be dismantled through careful, sensitive intervention.
The party must resist the old Congress way of pandering to identity politics as a low-cost way of doing the right thing by India’s diverse electorate. India’s Muslims, for example, want equal opportunities and justice, not the banning of a book or the expulsion of a Taslima Nasreen. Providing these will involve taking on entrenched interests and attitudes, especially in the police and administration, something the
Congress has always shied away from doing.
Finally, the re-election of the UPA must not be seen as a licence to indulge in the ‘Congress culture’ of the past. The public got a glimpse of that culture when some leaders started pushing for Rahul Gandhi to be made Prime Minister as soon as the scale of the party’s victory became apparent.
Sonia Gandhi did well to nip these demands in the bud. If she can go further by pensioning off entrenched interests and democratising the functioning of the party’s leadership, the Congress will be better placed to meet the expectations of those who have voted for it.
Courtesy: The Hindu
Monday, May 18, 2009
Money Mantra Makes MPs
By Roger Alexander
With as many as 300 crorepatis — nearly double of 154 in the last Lok Sabha – becoming MPs, the 15th Lok Sabha can no longer be called the House of the People. With 55.25% crorepati members, it is now the House of the Privileged!
If more than half of the MPs are crorepatis, you can be sure that the rest are equally rich for many have benami and hidden assets that are not known. In fact the Election Commission has confirmed that a large number of candidates did not file their PAN details, meaning they do not pay Income Tax. So the number of crorepatis could be much higher.
There have been reports that many of these worthies bought their nominations from the parties they now represent. Indeed, money can't buy you love, but it can buy you power and pelf.
As news reports indicate, these crorepatis spent vast sums to buy votes to get 'elected' to the Lok Sabha. To put it differently, it is akin to buying sex for pleasure. This not only scandalous but disgusting as well and nothing short of the prostitution of Parliament.
And given the class character of the ruling alliance it comes as no
surprise that eight of the 10 richest MPs in the list belong to the Congress and its ally NCP. In all, all 45% of the crorepati MPs belong to Congress (137).
The Opposition benches are also adorned by crorepatis, exposing the class character of India's body politic. 20% of crorepati MPs belong to the BJP (58), a shade less than 5% to the Samajwadi Party (14) and more than 4% to the BSP (13).
These parties are followed by DMK and Shiv Sena. Interestingly, the JD(U) has the seventh biggest group of crorepatis in the new House.
The Rajya Sabha too boasts of similar figures, with half the members in the crorepati bracket.
The wealthiest MP in the new Lok Sabha (sic) is Namma Nageswara Rao of TDP, elected from Khammam in Andhra Pradesh. He is worth Rs 173 crore. Rao is followed by steel baron Naveen Jindal (Congress) from Kurukshetra with assets of Rs 131 crore.
Others at the top of the crorepati club are L Rajagopal (Congress), Praful Patel (NCP), Supriya Sule (NCP), Rajkumari Ratna Singh of Pratapgarh (Congress) and Andhra chief minister YSR Reddy's son YS Rajamohan Reddy.
Amongst states, the most crorepatis are from UP (52), followed by Maharastra (37), Andhra Pradesh (31) and Karnataka (25), Bihar (17), Tamil Nadu (17) and MP (15). Gujarat, at number 10, has sent 12 crorepatis to the new House this time.
All the 7 Congress MPs from Delhi are crorepatis. All the 13 MPs from Punjab are crorepatis. Both winners from Arunachal Pradesh are crorepatis. Three of the four Himachal MPs are crorepatis, and three of five from Uttarakhand are also in the same league.
Even Bengal and Kerala, where the Congress and its allies scored a thumping victory over the Left, elected 10 and 4 crorepatis respectively. And in India's poorest states – Bihar (17/40), Rajasthan (14/25), Orissa (6/21), Jharkhand (5/14), and Chhattisgarh (2/11) – crorepatis virtually 'bought' their way to the Lok Sabha.
Small states and Union Territories that elect only one MP each – Sikkim, Meghalaya, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu, Puducherry, Chandigarh, and Lakshdweep – have the dubious distinction of returning only crorepati candidates, making it a 100% strike rate for the moneybags.
Unlike previous years, the class character of the 15th Lok Sabha now mirrors the Indian state. Only fat-cat capitalists and landlords will control the levers of the state and swagger in the corridors of power for the next five years.
Not surprisingly, it is party-time for the rich, richer, and richest. News reports have revealed just who was partying after the victory of their candidates in the general election. This party was caught on TV cameras at Dalal Street (home of the Bombay Stock Exchange) on Monday, May 18 – the first day of trading after the results were announced.
On 'Memorable Monday' the 30-share Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark Sensex posted its biggest ever gain of over 2,100 points in just one-minute trade.
Cheering the decisive win of the Congress, 'investors' – who constitute less than 2% of India's population that invests in stocks - became richer by a whopping Rs 6,500,000,000,000 (Rs 6.5 trillion) in just 60 seconds!
Investor wealth, measured in terms of the combined market capitalisation of all the listed companies, increased by over Rs 6,564,770,000,000 crore (Rs 6.56 trillion) in a minute to Rs 44,634,209,700,000 (Rs 44.634 trillion).
If this money was to be distributed among the entire populace – men, women, and children – every Indian would be richer by about Rs 45,000, i.e. six years of income earned through blood, sweat and tears for each of India's 835 million citizens who subsist on Rs 20 per day!
Unfortunately, that's not how capitalism works. The 30 Sensex companies that account for over 47 per cent of the total market capitalisation of all the firms, saw their combined market valuation rise by over Rs 3,160,000,000,000 (Rs 3.16 trillion).
The combined market capitalisation of the 30 blue-chip stocks rose to Rs 21,535,900,900,000 (Rs 21.536 trillion) on Monday, from Rs 183,684,133,000,000 (Rs 183.68 trillion) at the end of trade on May 15 when it was assumed that it would be a hung Parliament.
And who were the biggest gainers? The top five were the Anil Ambani's firms Reliance Communication and Reliance Infrastructure, engineering major Larsen & Toubro, the flagship company of Jaypee Group Jaiprakash Associates and the country's largest private sector lender ICICI Bank.
Other major gainers in the index were Kushal Pal Singh's DLF (16.62%), Anil Agarwal's Sterlite Industries (16.53%), Kumar Mangalam Birla's Hindalco Industries (15.06%), and Sunil Mitta's Bharti Airtel (14.53%). Partially privatised PSUs BHEL and SBI also posted gains.
Indeed, there is an unprecedented sense of jubilation among the super-rich because with the Left losing heavily, all the so-called reforms that all of Manmohan Singh's pet schemes that were scuttled by the Left for five years – disinvestment of all PSUs, especially navaratnas, FDI in retail, opening of the insurance sector to foreign companies, sale of public sector banks, hire-and-fire labour policies, speculative trading in foodgrains and other commodities (in short every sector where easy money is to made selling the family silver) – will now be rolled out with much fanfare in the name of economic reforms to fuel India's 'growth story'.
Market pundits say during the coming week foreign institutional investors will start pumping in fresh funds to avail the golden opportunity to loot India.
The Congress's Left-less victory over the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has revived hopes of a slew of pro-market policy changes that would take Indian markets to new highs in the coming days. Understandably, the mood is that of "Jai Ho!", as many headlines in the corporate media and blogs suggest.
In the last Lok Sabha, the Left was in a position to force the government to launch pro-poor measures like the NREG, RTI, Forest Rights Act, and farm loan waivers besides increased spending in the social sector and agriculture - ironically measures that paid the Congress handsome dividends in this election - despite resistance from the likes of Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia who complained “there was no money to fund such 'populist' schemes”.
But now that the number of crorepatis in the Lok Sabha has doubled, there are hardly and votaries of the toiling masses who will protest against injustices meted out to the poor and marginalised.
Indeed, because of the Left Front's poor showing, there will hardly be anyone other than the 24 Left MPs who will raise their voice on behalf of the over 77 per cent of the populace, or an estimated 836 million people, who earn an income of Rs 20 per day and over 300 million living below the poverty line.
Since the Left parties now constitute only a droplet in an ocean of crorepatis in Parliament, they have no choice other than taking the people's struggles to the streets and farms in the interest of a just society, not a Crorepati Club.
(This entry has been edited after it was first posted)
Roger And Out
With as many as 300 crorepatis — nearly double of 154 in the last Lok Sabha – becoming MPs, the 15th Lok Sabha can no longer be called the House of the People. With 55.25% crorepati members, it is now the House of the Privileged!
If more than half of the MPs are crorepatis, you can be sure that the rest are equally rich for many have benami and hidden assets that are not known. In fact the Election Commission has confirmed that a large number of candidates did not file their PAN details, meaning they do not pay Income Tax. So the number of crorepatis could be much higher.
There have been reports that many of these worthies bought their nominations from the parties they now represent. Indeed, money can't buy you love, but it can buy you power and pelf.
As news reports indicate, these crorepatis spent vast sums to buy votes to get 'elected' to the Lok Sabha. To put it differently, it is akin to buying sex for pleasure. This not only scandalous but disgusting as well and nothing short of the prostitution of Parliament.
And given the class character of the ruling alliance it comes as no
surprise that eight of the 10 richest MPs in the list belong to the Congress and its ally NCP. In all, all 45% of the crorepati MPs belong to Congress (137).
The Opposition benches are also adorned by crorepatis, exposing the class character of India's body politic. 20% of crorepati MPs belong to the BJP (58), a shade less than 5% to the Samajwadi Party (14) and more than 4% to the BSP (13).
These parties are followed by DMK and Shiv Sena. Interestingly, the JD(U) has the seventh biggest group of crorepatis in the new House.
The Rajya Sabha too boasts of similar figures, with half the members in the crorepati bracket.
The wealthiest MP in the new Lok Sabha (sic) is Namma Nageswara Rao of TDP, elected from Khammam in Andhra Pradesh. He is worth Rs 173 crore. Rao is followed by steel baron Naveen Jindal (Congress) from Kurukshetra with assets of Rs 131 crore.
Others at the top of the crorepati club are L Rajagopal (Congress), Praful Patel (NCP), Supriya Sule (NCP), Rajkumari Ratna Singh of Pratapgarh (Congress) and Andhra chief minister YSR Reddy's son YS Rajamohan Reddy.
Amongst states, the most crorepatis are from UP (52), followed by Maharastra (37), Andhra Pradesh (31) and Karnataka (25), Bihar (17), Tamil Nadu (17) and MP (15). Gujarat, at number 10, has sent 12 crorepatis to the new House this time.
All the 7 Congress MPs from Delhi are crorepatis. All the 13 MPs from Punjab are crorepatis. Both winners from Arunachal Pradesh are crorepatis. Three of the four Himachal MPs are crorepatis, and three of five from Uttarakhand are also in the same league.
Even Bengal and Kerala, where the Congress and its allies scored a thumping victory over the Left, elected 10 and 4 crorepatis respectively. And in India's poorest states – Bihar (17/40), Rajasthan (14/25), Orissa (6/21), Jharkhand (5/14), and Chhattisgarh (2/11) – crorepatis virtually 'bought' their way to the Lok Sabha.
Small states and Union Territories that elect only one MP each – Sikkim, Meghalaya, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu, Puducherry, Chandigarh, and Lakshdweep – have the dubious distinction of returning only crorepati candidates, making it a 100% strike rate for the moneybags.
Unlike previous years, the class character of the 15th Lok Sabha now mirrors the Indian state. Only fat-cat capitalists and landlords will control the levers of the state and swagger in the corridors of power for the next five years.
Not surprisingly, it is party-time for the rich, richer, and richest. News reports have revealed just who was partying after the victory of their candidates in the general election. This party was caught on TV cameras at Dalal Street (home of the Bombay Stock Exchange) on Monday, May 18 – the first day of trading after the results were announced.
On 'Memorable Monday' the 30-share Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark Sensex posted its biggest ever gain of over 2,100 points in just one-minute trade.
Cheering the decisive win of the Congress, 'investors' – who constitute less than 2% of India's population that invests in stocks - became richer by a whopping Rs 6,500,000,000,000 (Rs 6.5 trillion) in just 60 seconds!
Investor wealth, measured in terms of the combined market capitalisation of all the listed companies, increased by over Rs 6,564,770,000,000 crore (Rs 6.56 trillion) in a minute to Rs 44,634,209,700,000 (Rs 44.634 trillion).
If this money was to be distributed among the entire populace – men, women, and children – every Indian would be richer by about Rs 45,000, i.e. six years of income earned through blood, sweat and tears for each of India's 835 million citizens who subsist on Rs 20 per day!
Unfortunately, that's not how capitalism works. The 30 Sensex companies that account for over 47 per cent of the total market capitalisation of all the firms, saw their combined market valuation rise by over Rs 3,160,000,000,000 (Rs 3.16 trillion).
The combined market capitalisation of the 30 blue-chip stocks rose to Rs 21,535,900,900,000 (Rs 21.536 trillion) on Monday, from Rs 183,684,133,000,000 (Rs 183.68 trillion) at the end of trade on May 15 when it was assumed that it would be a hung Parliament.
And who were the biggest gainers? The top five were the Anil Ambani's firms Reliance Communication and Reliance Infrastructure, engineering major Larsen & Toubro, the flagship company of Jaypee Group Jaiprakash Associates and the country's largest private sector lender ICICI Bank.
Other major gainers in the index were Kushal Pal Singh's DLF (16.62%), Anil Agarwal's Sterlite Industries (16.53%), Kumar Mangalam Birla's Hindalco Industries (15.06%), and Sunil Mitta's Bharti Airtel (14.53%). Partially privatised PSUs BHEL and SBI also posted gains.
Indeed, there is an unprecedented sense of jubilation among the super-rich because with the Left losing heavily, all the so-called reforms that all of Manmohan Singh's pet schemes that were scuttled by the Left for five years – disinvestment of all PSUs, especially navaratnas, FDI in retail, opening of the insurance sector to foreign companies, sale of public sector banks, hire-and-fire labour policies, speculative trading in foodgrains and other commodities (in short every sector where easy money is to made selling the family silver) – will now be rolled out with much fanfare in the name of economic reforms to fuel India's 'growth story'.
Market pundits say during the coming week foreign institutional investors will start pumping in fresh funds to avail the golden opportunity to loot India.
The Congress's Left-less victory over the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has revived hopes of a slew of pro-market policy changes that would take Indian markets to new highs in the coming days. Understandably, the mood is that of "Jai Ho!", as many headlines in the corporate media and blogs suggest.
In the last Lok Sabha, the Left was in a position to force the government to launch pro-poor measures like the NREG, RTI, Forest Rights Act, and farm loan waivers besides increased spending in the social sector and agriculture - ironically measures that paid the Congress handsome dividends in this election - despite resistance from the likes of Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia who complained “there was no money to fund such 'populist' schemes”.
But now that the number of crorepatis in the Lok Sabha has doubled, there are hardly and votaries of the toiling masses who will protest against injustices meted out to the poor and marginalised.
Indeed, because of the Left Front's poor showing, there will hardly be anyone other than the 24 Left MPs who will raise their voice on behalf of the over 77 per cent of the populace, or an estimated 836 million people, who earn an income of Rs 20 per day and over 300 million living below the poverty line.
Since the Left parties now constitute only a droplet in an ocean of crorepatis in Parliament, they have no choice other than taking the people's struggles to the streets and farms in the interest of a just society, not a Crorepati Club.
(This entry has been edited after it was first posted)
Roger And Out
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Left Out
By Roger Alexander
The results are out and the verdict is unambiguous. Contrary to predictions and analysis, including that of this writer, there is only one winner – the Congress, even though it has won just 205 seats. And every other party, including the Congress's own allies, are losers.
Till the night of May 15 it was believed the Congress would have to beg estranged friends, especially the Left, to return to the UPA fold to reach the halfway mark. Nothing of the sort was required for the Left has been decimated. Indeed, the Left is the biggest loser in this election.
While details of voting patterns and other details will be available only after a few days to enable an in-depth analysis, it is evident that in Kerala factionalism led to a rout of the Left. Indeed, a faction-ridden Communist party is an oxymoron. And that's what seems to have dismayed even die-hard supporters outside the party fold, not to speak of disgruntled allies and disenchanted workers who seemed to be working at cross-purposes during the campaign.
No amount of semantics over pre-poll hiccups over seat sharing, community preferences, or minor swings can explain the debacle especially since the Kerala state government was supposed to be doing a decent job.
But it is the storming of the Left citadel, West Bengal, that has everyone - party bosses, sympathisers and independent observers alike – flummoxed. Indeed, all exit polls predicted around 26 seats for the Left Front. The result is worse – a paltry 15 seats.
This performance is worse than its previous low of 16 in 1984 when the election was fought in the shadow of Indira Gandhi's assassination. And the argument that the Left was against a formidable Trinamool-Congress 'mahajot' does not explain the crushing defeat.
It will be remembered that a similar 'mahajot' existed in the 2001 state assembly elections. But the Left Front easily met that challenge. Even in the panchayat elections last year, the Left Front emerged victorious – though battered and bruised - with a 52 per cent vote share.
So it all boils down to the failure of the CPI(M)'s fabled party machinery to convince the Left's traditional supporters – the working class, farmers, sharecroppers, and other poor sections – to once again vote for the Left.
Remember, the Left citadel was built on the land reforms post 1977 when it won a decisive victory in the assembly elections after the Emergency. Though the Zamindari system was abolished by an enactment in the West Bengal State Assembly way back in 1957, the land holding pattern had undergone little change.
A vast majority of the cultivators had little or no land in their possession. In an effort to penetrate and widen its support base in the rural areas, the CPI(M), after coming to power, initiated steps to correct the existing imbalance in land relations.
For this adopted a two-prong strategy. On the one hand, it stressed the empowerment of the landless and marginal farmers – ‘Operation Barga’. Additionally, it tried to complete the unfinished task of distributing surplus land vested from the landlords.
On the other, the Left Front government introduced a three-tier panchayat system and in 1978 held its first election. The panchayat system was important for it was expected to give the people a participatory role in the process of rural development.
So along with its deep roots in the working class movement the CPI(M) also won the allegiance of the rural poor as Operation Barga empowered not only the tillers of the land but the rights of sharecroppers as well. And that's the way it remained for the next 30 years.
But when the CPI(M) decided to take economic development to the next higher plane through industrialisation as the gains of land reforms were petering out, it made a monumental tactical blunder: it failed to convince farmers and sharecroppers that land acquisition for industrialisation was in their interest.
For this the CPI(M) does not have anyone to blame but itself. First, the Left Front was divided over land acquisition with the Forward Bloc and RSP bitterly opposing the policy.
Second, even after the Doubting Thomases within the Left Front were arm-twisted into accepting the new reality, the party cadre were neither ideologically equipped nor trained to take the all-important message to the grassroots.
In fact, the whole exercise was entrusted to the government bureaucracy without the participation of the gram panchayats and zilla parishads, led by party members, that were supposed to be part of the decision-making process.
Ironically, the very forces led by the Congress that had determinedly fought for the 'rights' of the jotedars (landlords) when their holdings were expropriated in the Seventies have now emerged as the 'saviours' of the beneficiaries of the land reforms undertaken by the Left.
The farmers, of course, have no future as land fragmentation has made most holdings economically unviable. It will be remembered that compensation for the 1000 acres acquired for the Tata Nano plant in Singur was distributed amongst 10,000 title holders, meaning one family eking out a living on one-tenth of an acre.
Yet the party cadres at the village level failed to convince the farmers that they could become more prosperous if industry came up on their land. Politically that was a fatal error.
Of course there are other issues – arrogance of party cadres, complacency, revisionist tendencies, an unhealthy reliance on bourgeois democracy to achieve revolutionary goals, and revisionism - that contributed to the rout of the Left, but at the moment
the failure to address the concerns of farmers seems to be the biggest factor that led to the shock result.
Imagine, if in a politically conscious state like West Bengal where the choice is between a pro-poor and progressive Left Front and a mercurial and retrograde Mamata Banerjee, the electorate chooses the latter, there must be something really wrong with the politics of the CPI(M) and its allies.
(If there is one lesson to be learnt from this election, it is this: Electoral arithmetic does not always work. That is why the Left Front decisively lost an election this writer earlier felt was a no contest.)
The results are out and the verdict is unambiguous. Contrary to predictions and analysis, including that of this writer, there is only one winner – the Congress, even though it has won just 205 seats. And every other party, including the Congress's own allies, are losers.
Till the night of May 15 it was believed the Congress would have to beg estranged friends, especially the Left, to return to the UPA fold to reach the halfway mark. Nothing of the sort was required for the Left has been decimated. Indeed, the Left is the biggest loser in this election.
While details of voting patterns and other details will be available only after a few days to enable an in-depth analysis, it is evident that in Kerala factionalism led to a rout of the Left. Indeed, a faction-ridden Communist party is an oxymoron. And that's what seems to have dismayed even die-hard supporters outside the party fold, not to speak of disgruntled allies and disenchanted workers who seemed to be working at cross-purposes during the campaign.
No amount of semantics over pre-poll hiccups over seat sharing, community preferences, or minor swings can explain the debacle especially since the Kerala state government was supposed to be doing a decent job.
But it is the storming of the Left citadel, West Bengal, that has everyone - party bosses, sympathisers and independent observers alike – flummoxed. Indeed, all exit polls predicted around 26 seats for the Left Front. The result is worse – a paltry 15 seats.
This performance is worse than its previous low of 16 in 1984 when the election was fought in the shadow of Indira Gandhi's assassination. And the argument that the Left was against a formidable Trinamool-Congress 'mahajot' does not explain the crushing defeat.
It will be remembered that a similar 'mahajot' existed in the 2001 state assembly elections. But the Left Front easily met that challenge. Even in the panchayat elections last year, the Left Front emerged victorious – though battered and bruised - with a 52 per cent vote share.
So it all boils down to the failure of the CPI(M)'s fabled party machinery to convince the Left's traditional supporters – the working class, farmers, sharecroppers, and other poor sections – to once again vote for the Left.
Remember, the Left citadel was built on the land reforms post 1977 when it won a decisive victory in the assembly elections after the Emergency. Though the Zamindari system was abolished by an enactment in the West Bengal State Assembly way back in 1957, the land holding pattern had undergone little change.
A vast majority of the cultivators had little or no land in their possession. In an effort to penetrate and widen its support base in the rural areas, the CPI(M), after coming to power, initiated steps to correct the existing imbalance in land relations.
For this adopted a two-prong strategy. On the one hand, it stressed the empowerment of the landless and marginal farmers – ‘Operation Barga’. Additionally, it tried to complete the unfinished task of distributing surplus land vested from the landlords.
On the other, the Left Front government introduced a three-tier panchayat system and in 1978 held its first election. The panchayat system was important for it was expected to give the people a participatory role in the process of rural development.
So along with its deep roots in the working class movement the CPI(M) also won the allegiance of the rural poor as Operation Barga empowered not only the tillers of the land but the rights of sharecroppers as well. And that's the way it remained for the next 30 years.
But when the CPI(M) decided to take economic development to the next higher plane through industrialisation as the gains of land reforms were petering out, it made a monumental tactical blunder: it failed to convince farmers and sharecroppers that land acquisition for industrialisation was in their interest.
For this the CPI(M) does not have anyone to blame but itself. First, the Left Front was divided over land acquisition with the Forward Bloc and RSP bitterly opposing the policy.
Second, even after the Doubting Thomases within the Left Front were arm-twisted into accepting the new reality, the party cadre were neither ideologically equipped nor trained to take the all-important message to the grassroots.
In fact, the whole exercise was entrusted to the government bureaucracy without the participation of the gram panchayats and zilla parishads, led by party members, that were supposed to be part of the decision-making process.
Ironically, the very forces led by the Congress that had determinedly fought for the 'rights' of the jotedars (landlords) when their holdings were expropriated in the Seventies have now emerged as the 'saviours' of the beneficiaries of the land reforms undertaken by the Left.
The farmers, of course, have no future as land fragmentation has made most holdings economically unviable. It will be remembered that compensation for the 1000 acres acquired for the Tata Nano plant in Singur was distributed amongst 10,000 title holders, meaning one family eking out a living on one-tenth of an acre.
Yet the party cadres at the village level failed to convince the farmers that they could become more prosperous if industry came up on their land. Politically that was a fatal error.
Of course there are other issues – arrogance of party cadres, complacency, revisionist tendencies, an unhealthy reliance on bourgeois democracy to achieve revolutionary goals, and revisionism - that contributed to the rout of the Left, but at the moment
the failure to address the concerns of farmers seems to be the biggest factor that led to the shock result.
Imagine, if in a politically conscious state like West Bengal where the choice is between a pro-poor and progressive Left Front and a mercurial and retrograde Mamata Banerjee, the electorate chooses the latter, there must be something really wrong with the politics of the CPI(M) and its allies.
(If there is one lesson to be learnt from this election, it is this: Electoral arithmetic does not always work. That is why the Left Front decisively lost an election this writer earlier felt was a no contest.)
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Getting The Left Right
By Roger Alexander
For the Left the Day of Judgement has arrived. Starting today, April 30, polling starts in West Bengal over three phases. With Nandigram and Singur (and also Lalgarh and Darjeeling) staring them in the face, the comrades will get their just deserts. And rightly so, sing the choirboys of the corporate media.
The refrain over the past month has been that, thankfully, the Left will be unable to “call the shots”, or enjoy “power without responsibility” anymore. This will be the last charge of the Red Brigade. And Prakash Karat, we are told, will be lucky to put even 40 MPs in the next Lok Sabha.
With the Left “projected” to win as few as 5 seats from Kerala and 2 from Tripura, Karat has his task cut out. Unless it wins 33 seats from West Bengal, it's curtains for the Left Front. “Good riddance,” is the unanimous verdict.
Representatives of the Left parties invited as punching bags at prime time debates have literally been at the receiving end over the past month. And with programme anchors jumping into the debates as inquisitors, the Left seemingly doesn't stand a chance. No wonder stockbrokers are cheering.
Time now, therefore, to examine the facts. Is the Left Front in Bengal in for a hiding? We know that in 2001, when the Trinamool and Congress forged a Mahajot against the Left, the alliance came a cropper, winning only 88 seats in a 294-member house. The Left Front won 199 seats.
In the 2006 assembly elections, the Trinamool won just 30 seats and the Congress 24. The Left Front won 233 seats. In the 2004 Lok Sabha election, Mamata Banerjee was the sole Trinamool MP from West Bengal. That she hardly participated in parliamentary proceedings is another matter.
But those were the halcyon days of the Left's supremacy, we are told. Let's talk about now. Let's talk about Bengal and the Left post-Nandigram and Singur. These two villages will determine who is the winner in 2009, it is claimed.
If you look at the picture of last year's Panchayat polls, the Left has certainly lost considerable ground. Here's what happened: The Left lost considerable ground. Its vote percentage at the Gram Panchayat level came down from 65.7 per cent in 2003 to 52.3 per cent in 2008. But the point to be noted is that it still won more than 50 per cent of the vote.
In the interregnum, i.e. since June last year till now, the Left has been in firefighting mode.
To begin with, the Left was quick to accept that the results were not what had been expected even though “the level of victory was politically significant and important” (meaning they could have done worse).
But in the final analysis the Left Front came through generally triumphant even in places where the chips were down, and things weighed heavily especially against the CPI(M).
Still, the bottom line is that the CPI(M) especially did rather badly in some districts. The reasons are obvious. First, the Left failed to effectively counter the Trinamool campaign against land acquisition for industry and development. Indeed, it failed miserably to convince even its own supporters with hard data.
This happened because the politically important issue of involving the participation of the aam admi in the running of the Panchayat institutions was neglected, more so because of the disunity within the Left Front which had a “baneful effect” on the poll outcome, as the CPI(M) State Committee's analysis quaintly put it..
However, Karat & Co came to the conclusion that “the adverse results would not constitute a permanent political process, or event. The CPI(M) can and shall forge ahead in an organised way with a mass participation of the entire Bengal Party unit along with, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder to the Party’s sympathisers and supporters.”
Then Mamata delivered a Puja gift. Tata Motors was hounded out of Singur. The industrialise-or-perish debate was revived and now forms the crux of the debate in the present election campaign.
So now we have the CPI(M)'s fabled party machine pitted against a Mahajot backed by the anti-Communist media, creating a level playing field, as it were.
In this high-stakes contest, who will triumph? My own take is that an opportunistic Mahajot has its own internal contradictions. There are reports of Congress workers refusing to campaign for party turncoats who have been given the Trinamool ticket. And of Trinamool rebels contesting against Congress candidates.
Suitably chastened by the debacle in the Panchayat elections last year, the Left parties seem to be more united and working resolutely to recover lost ground.
Ironically, Ratan Tata's decision to drive out of Singur in search of profits elsewhere has given a fillip to the Left's industrialisation campaign against Mamata's save-farmlands rhetoric, enabling the former to aim for a win in at least 30 constituencies.
Game on!
Roger And Out
For the Left the Day of Judgement has arrived. Starting today, April 30, polling starts in West Bengal over three phases. With Nandigram and Singur (and also Lalgarh and Darjeeling) staring them in the face, the comrades will get their just deserts. And rightly so, sing the choirboys of the corporate media.
The refrain over the past month has been that, thankfully, the Left will be unable to “call the shots”, or enjoy “power without responsibility” anymore. This will be the last charge of the Red Brigade. And Prakash Karat, we are told, will be lucky to put even 40 MPs in the next Lok Sabha.
With the Left “projected” to win as few as 5 seats from Kerala and 2 from Tripura, Karat has his task cut out. Unless it wins 33 seats from West Bengal, it's curtains for the Left Front. “Good riddance,” is the unanimous verdict.
Representatives of the Left parties invited as punching bags at prime time debates have literally been at the receiving end over the past month. And with programme anchors jumping into the debates as inquisitors, the Left seemingly doesn't stand a chance. No wonder stockbrokers are cheering.
Time now, therefore, to examine the facts. Is the Left Front in Bengal in for a hiding? We know that in 2001, when the Trinamool and Congress forged a Mahajot against the Left, the alliance came a cropper, winning only 88 seats in a 294-member house. The Left Front won 199 seats.
In the 2006 assembly elections, the Trinamool won just 30 seats and the Congress 24. The Left Front won 233 seats. In the 2004 Lok Sabha election, Mamata Banerjee was the sole Trinamool MP from West Bengal. That she hardly participated in parliamentary proceedings is another matter.
But those were the halcyon days of the Left's supremacy, we are told. Let's talk about now. Let's talk about Bengal and the Left post-Nandigram and Singur. These two villages will determine who is the winner in 2009, it is claimed.
If you look at the picture of last year's Panchayat polls, the Left has certainly lost considerable ground. Here's what happened: The Left lost considerable ground. Its vote percentage at the Gram Panchayat level came down from 65.7 per cent in 2003 to 52.3 per cent in 2008. But the point to be noted is that it still won more than 50 per cent of the vote.
In the interregnum, i.e. since June last year till now, the Left has been in firefighting mode.
To begin with, the Left was quick to accept that the results were not what had been expected even though “the level of victory was politically significant and important” (meaning they could have done worse).
But in the final analysis the Left Front came through generally triumphant even in places where the chips were down, and things weighed heavily especially against the CPI(M).
Still, the bottom line is that the CPI(M) especially did rather badly in some districts. The reasons are obvious. First, the Left failed to effectively counter the Trinamool campaign against land acquisition for industry and development. Indeed, it failed miserably to convince even its own supporters with hard data.
This happened because the politically important issue of involving the participation of the aam admi in the running of the Panchayat institutions was neglected, more so because of the disunity within the Left Front which had a “baneful effect” on the poll outcome, as the CPI(M) State Committee's analysis quaintly put it..
However, Karat & Co came to the conclusion that “the adverse results would not constitute a permanent political process, or event. The CPI(M) can and shall forge ahead in an organised way with a mass participation of the entire Bengal Party unit along with, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder to the Party’s sympathisers and supporters.”
Then Mamata delivered a Puja gift. Tata Motors was hounded out of Singur. The industrialise-or-perish debate was revived and now forms the crux of the debate in the present election campaign.
So now we have the CPI(M)'s fabled party machine pitted against a Mahajot backed by the anti-Communist media, creating a level playing field, as it were.
In this high-stakes contest, who will triumph? My own take is that an opportunistic Mahajot has its own internal contradictions. There are reports of Congress workers refusing to campaign for party turncoats who have been given the Trinamool ticket. And of Trinamool rebels contesting against Congress candidates.
Suitably chastened by the debacle in the Panchayat elections last year, the Left parties seem to be more united and working resolutely to recover lost ground.
Ironically, Ratan Tata's decision to drive out of Singur in search of profits elsewhere has given a fillip to the Left's industrialisation campaign against Mamata's save-farmlands rhetoric, enabling the former to aim for a win in at least 30 constituencies.
Game on!
Roger And Out
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