It is a landmark week for Indian politics. After years of muddle, the Congress has at last broken with the Left. It has been a very one-sided affair. The Left has had all the advantages, supporting the UPA when safe and reneging when risky. Since last August, the UPA Government has been paralysed by the Left blackmail on the nuclear deal. A talented team of economists — the PM, FM and Montek — have been stymied.

The Left is stuck in the 1970’s or even earlier. The glory days of planning and socialist economics ended when the USSR collapsed without a shot being fired. It lost on the battleground of economic efficiency. Its satellites in Eastern Europe angrily rejected the old economy and made spectacular gains in the new market order. China gave up on Soviet Style planning when Deng Xiao Ping saw the writing on the wall and took to the Capitalist road. Jyoti Basu began on that path cautiously and Buddhadeb accelerated. Yet at the Delhi end, dark mutterings by the JNU brigade kept the UPA strapped to bad policies or rather from adopting good policies.

Now whatever happens on July 22, the Left will not have the clout it has had in the last four years. It will lose its temporary bounce and go back to around 40 seats where it has been since the 1950’s. At the same time, Jan Sangh started with 40 and became as BJP the only opposition party that can form an alternative government. Perhaps the Left should reflect on this, may be while on vacation in North Korea which practices the policies they love.

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