What is it that the Left really wants? That the clock be turned back? Increase taxation, renationalise privatised PSUs, bring back the controller of capital issues, resurrect industrial licensing. It is hard to think that at least the major Left leaders would have implemented that agenda even if they were in power. Or would they? These are scary thoughts and they go right to the heart of the big question over the Left’s role at the Centre: what vision of India does it have? It is not as if the Congress or the BJP has an economic vision that is always intellectually coherent. But we know roughly what to expect, given the political exigencies of the time they are in power. But what of the Left? Is that why the CPM never wants to join a government in Delhi? Because then it loses the luxury of affirming economic progressiveness by only having to oppose — no need to propose anything that you may be measured against.

In power politics, the Left does do some proposing. The CPI has given a clarion call for a third front from its conclave. The CPM has proposed this before, and used it whenever convenient to embarrass or insult the Congress. Now, if there is a third front and if it ‘wins’ — those are two ifs as big as the Himalayas — what role would the Left play? Support from the outside again? Front strategists may answer that the issue is moot because a third front prime minister — again, this is assuming that the third front can actually elect a PM from among half a dozen hopefuls — will never propose anything the Left will oppose. In that case, and this is another scary speculation, what will the front’s economic policy be?