There could be many in the CPI(M) hoping to make more sense of the party’s 19th congress that concluded on Thursday in Coimbatore.

To start with, its push for a third alternative: the idea firmed at the meet was only of an enduring anti-BJP formation with no united front arrangement or alliance with the Congress. The CPI(M) leadership’s definition raised questions and guesses, ranging from a Left bonding with a rump of the remaining UNPA—minus Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK—to a reincarnation of the vintage National Front-Left Front game plan.

But the party did not entirely rule out an encore to the UPA-Left show either—preferring to “cross the bridge when we come to it”, as Sitaram Yechury put it in Coimbatore. The CPI(M) party organisation report that slammed the UPA for taking the Left for granted—to the extent of forcing the Left to even stop briefing the press after the UPA-Left coordination meets because the UPA had been given to “holding discussions and then announcing that the Left has agreed to go ahead with their policies”—didn’t say much about how things would play out.

Policies and governance are other grey zones. The party’s national tactical line may really not make much sense to its leaderships in Bengal and Kerala. If Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was categoric in Coimbatore that the party only wanted the MNCs kept out and would have Indian biggies in retail with some regulatory hoops in place, this was what his politburo colleague and party secretary in Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, had announced barely six weeks ago: “The Left is of the firm view that no retail major—national or international—should be allowed entry into Kerala. The Left Democratic Front has decided that local self-governments should not sanction them anymore.”

... contd.