There was just, pure arithmetic, and cold, pragmatic logic of the result of 2004. The CMP was no pre-nuptial agreement. It was merely six pages of crudely and hastily worded fluff and no side, least of all the Congress, had any real faith in it.

The Congress never had any faith in the CMP and the Left never had any faith in the Congress. The breaking point, which has today come because of the nuclear deal, could have come on a whole list of other issues. It is just that the Congress chose to swallow its pride.

There was never any love affair, no courtship, no marriage, and therefore there will be no divorce. Soon enough, the two hostiles will be back to their familiar roles, and their mutual blood feuds in Kerala and West Bengal. Whatever happens now, the die for an earlier election is cast and it is for the Congress to choose the timing. To that extent, the more apt metaphor is that of a cricket match interrupted by rain. It is time, therefore, for Duckworth-Lewis and for the calculators to be out.

And howsoever the two sides may deny it, the calculators are indeed out. And howsoever you punch at them, it is evident that the topplers have got their timing hopelessly wrong. You have to remember when hostilities on the foreign policy issue began, and why. It was built up in the background of Manmohan Singh’s increasingly warm engagement with George Bush and the rapidly increasing global Muslim dislike for his policies in the Middle-East. Mulayam Singh Yadav, who by now knew he was going to be in trouble in the state elections, tried to exploit it to shore up his Muslim support. Blinded by their pathological anti-Americanism, the Left walked into that trap of communalising the foreign policy and because on the other side is America, never got out of it. Meanwhile, it did not work for Mulayam either. The more exclusivist, sectarian he made his appeal, the more voters he threw in Mayawati’s lap. So the Third Front fantasy that the Left was building inevitably got reduced to a motley gang-up of losers.

... contd.