Despite Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s upbeat imagery of spring inevitably following winter and CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat’s reassuring words that his party’s central committee does not want the ongoing ‘crisis’ over the Indo-US nuclear deal to “affect the government”, the prospects of bridging the yawning gap between the ruling UPA and the Left parties that support it ‘from outside’ remain remote. For, the bottom line is the Left’s insistence that the government not put into operation the deal they dislike so intensely. Prannoy Roy, the eminent telecaster, compared this to a man holding a gun on someone’s head, and telling the luckless person, “If you move, I will shoot. But the onus is on you.”

To be sure, the central committee meet enables both sides to buy time, if only because neither wants to hasten a mid-term election that must follow the withdrawal of support to the UPA by 59 Left members of the Lok Sabha. But it is difficult to see how this dismal denouement can be avoided unless one side surrenders to the other, at least partially, thus losing both credibility and prestige. To use another imagery rather popular in recent days, the question seems to be not whether the loveless Congress-Left marriage would break down but when. Having said this, one must not forget that Indian politics, like bad Bollywood films, can take utterly unexpected and bizarre twists and turns.

However, this does not affect my basic point that the convulsions wracking the UPA because of the underlying incompatibility of the Congress and the communists are entirely in line with the pathetic plight of the preceding cascade of coalitions in this country. Let stark facts speak for themselves.

... contd.