Had Karat been interested in give and take, as every member of the ruling alliance has been since 1989, the UPA could have done a number of things without the CPM having to change its rhetoric. It could have sold small stakes in PSUs without privatising any of them. It could have worked on passing a banking bill that calls for upping the quantum of minority private shareholding in public sector banks and still kept the banks in the government fold. It could have increased FDI limits in some sectors. It could have passed the pension bill at the Centre, taking advantage of the fact that many states were already undertaking pension reform. It could have easily parsed nuclear-deal politics to make the deal look less “American”.

Karat’s CPM didn’t want to trade, though, and the astonishing thing is that the Congress chose to be blind to it for so long. It suits the prime minister’s spin doctors now to put out stories that the PM always knew the Left wasn’t a good partner and the thought of looking elsewhere had always been in his mind. The fact is that the Congress’s pusillanimity allowed the Left to suspend politics as usual.

But never mind. Late in its term but finally the Congress is back in the political marketplace.

Mulayam Singh Yadav has been a socialist, a caste leader, an eager pursuer of corporate friendships, an occasional agrarian reformer (sugarcane in western UP), a spoiler when the Congress wanted to topple the BJP, a helper when the BJP wanted to make sure its presidential candidate defeated the Left’s, a friend of the Left and now a friend of the Congress. He knows the bazaar. With him or the likes of him on its side, the Congress or the BJP can rule by having room for policy manoeuvres.

... contd.