More than a gambit?

What is to be made then of the Left Front’s decision to contest 100 seats in the forthcoming assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh as the CPM,CPI,RSP and Forward Bloc combine? A curiosity? Or a serious effort at envisioning a political future after the fall of its 34-year-old government in West Bengal? The Left’s current struggle to reinvent itself harks back to an older,more fundamental problem. After globalisation and the paradigm shift in India’s political economy,preceded by the global collapse of communism,the Left had to rethink its place. One group got the idea — that of former Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee,whose industrialisation and liberalisation drive may have been top-down but was torpedoed by an unreformed party,exposing how the Indian Left had failed to transform itself into a social democratic grouping.

Instead,after the 2009 Lok Sabha reversals,the CPM talked about “rectification” and a return to agitationism. Then came the 2011 vanquishing,and the Politburo,minus Bhattacharjee,is still making up its mind.

The late Jyoti Basu had called 1996 a historic blunder. Prakash Karat,CPM general secretary,has admitted the price paid for ignoring caste. But Karat and his rivals still don’t agree on the 2008 withdrawal of support,signalling a deeper disengagement from realpolitik,and the reasons why Bengal was lost. To be taken seriously,the Left has to look at another lacuna — how it has never been comfortable with the idea of assuming responsibility for anything outside its old triad of states. Irrespective of what’s happening to the support bases of others,the Left will need more than merely contesting the elections.