Blind Left Turn

Shafi Rahman

July 10, 2008 INDIA TODAY

The urban legend has it that a certain CPI(M) politburo member lives in the bunkers of AKG Bhavan, the party headquarters in Delhi, with no permission to travel beyond its premises.
This bunker comrade—untainted by the world outside—provides the party its last word on ideological issues.
As the UPA-Left relations went into a downward spiral through the year, and hit rock bottom with a resounding thud this week, it was clear that party General Secretary Prakash Karat had done at least one job well— that of imitating the intellectual aloofness of his imaginary colleague from the bunker and showing none of the pragmatism of his predecessors.
Not only did Karat miscalculate the Congress battle plan, but he also allowed natural ally Samajwadi Party (SP) to drift away and failed in living up to the mandate given to him in two consecutive Party Congresses in 2005 and 2008 to build up the Third Front.
As he anchored his plans in a no-government-without-us belief, Karat, the policy wonk, saw his dream of being taken seriously as a street-smart politician dissolve as quickly as his party's plans to emerge as a national player.
Even as his comrades were perhaps busy mailing miss-you notes to Marxist veteran Harkishan Singh Surjeet, Karat tripped badly on delivering his baby, the Third Alternative.

Karat blocked UPA�s market-led reforms at every pointHis grand statement to the cadre at the party's 19th Congress at Coimbatore in April that "on the nuclear deal also, we were able to rally the SP and the Telugu Desam Party", now sounds hollow with Mulayam Singh Yadav opting for expediency over ideology.
"By raising common issues and initiating joint campaigns and struggles, the way can be paved for building a Third Alternative," he had told the Party Congress in April.
But on the ground, he failed to cosy up to the SP on the nuclear deal. His party's push for the Women's Reservation Bill did nothing to better the relations, with Karat failing to understand SP's concerns in the Hindi heartland and playing to what one MP called "urban feminist slogans".
Even bigger problems lie ahead. Mulayam's call to "strengthen secular forces" by joining Congress's fold leaves the CPI(M) with the unpleasant task of defining which is the bigger enemy— imperialism or communalism.
Early this year, Karat himself had warned against BJP's politics, saying the Party Congress would work out "appropriate tactics" to isolate communal forces and prevent any opportunistic alliances for electoral gains. Now not only is Karat left waiting for the deal to happen, but he also runs the risk of seeing the BJP back in power at the Centre.
With Surjeet bedridden and Jyoti Basu now available only for birthday celebrations, Karat has a free run over the party's affairs.
West Bengal Chief Minister Budhadeb Bhattacharya has been lying low since the Nandigram fiasco while Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan is busy securing his turf in a factional feud.
But it cannot be denied that his primal instinct-that of protecting the "Left-leaning vote bank" in the two states-has kept the party relevant in India long after the world has booted out communism.

Even Karat's staunchest critics can't deny the ferocity with which he had successfully prevented any reforms that pro-market advocates may have wanted to pursue in the 49 months of the UPA's rule.
"It was the firm stand of the party and the Left which prevented a full-fledged entry of FDI in retail trade, the opening up of the private banking sector to 74 per cent FDI and stopped a legislation which would have allowed privatisation of government employees' pension funds. We can claim that we have checked some of the harmful measures and retrograde policies which the Government wanted to pursue in the name of reforms. Further, we have also been able to slow down the pace of implementation of neo-liberal policies," he had said, with fierce pride, in the organisational report in April.
His critics charge him with the lack of political skill to script a working arrangement with the UPA Government, while continuously blocking the UPA's reform initiatives.
Yet, though many moan the iron-clad ideologue, Karat has restored the Left's pet concerns to the mainstream from where they had been banished by the market-driven din and Surjeet's somewhat flexible interpretation of communist dogma.
Within the party though, many insiders feel Karat has failed to steer political debate over controversial issues to help the organisation grow.
His dissent notes to government policies may have been vehemently worded but they did not articulate a coherent ideological perspective.
While leaders like E.M.S. Namboodiripad wrote reams defining the party's ideology in relation to contemporary issues, Karat's legacy may well be the literature he has generated on arcane details like pension reforms.
He has also come under attack from his own colleagues for "outsourcing opinion" to Left intellectuals on vital issues like external loans for Left-led governments.
It hasn't helped that his much-hyped Hindi-heartland plans are yet to take off. Instead of rising, the party membership in Uttar Pradesh fell from 6,346 in 2006 to 6,175 in 2007, while in Punjab it fell from 10,508 in 2006 to 10,140 last year.
With the party now at pains to explain a possible future scenario where the Congress may seek its support to stop the BJP from coming back to power, Karat seems to have lost his golden boy sheen.
And while he is not headed irrevocably for the exit, it may well be that when the Marxists make their habitual appraisal of current events a few years down the line, this will be yet another historic blunder on the Red Brigade's road to redemption.