Look beyond the vote

The second distracting argument is the worry about being seen to be voting with the BJP. This is a contrived worry. The fact that two parties vote against a particular government, for different reasons, does not mean that they are suddenly helping each other. By focusing on these peripheral questions, critics are missing the larger question about the space of the Left in Indian politics.

There is apparently some dissension within the Bengal unit of the party. But most of these worries are beside the point. The CPM is vulnerable in Kerala and Bengal, but not because of its stance on the nuclear deal. It is because the governments in those states are faltering badly for different reasons. The Bengal unit is touted as a model of pragmatism; there is a surface veneer of it in the top leadership. But the CPM’s larger challenge is not that it is dominated by dogmatic Karats at the centre. It is that it cannot emancipate itself from the now corrupt and violent party cadres in Bengal. Those in Bengal worrying about the central leadership are simply trying to find an alibi for the morass they have got West Bengal into.

The CPM has also for a long time hitched its stars to the so-called social justice agenda of Mulayam and Lalu. Only Mayawati, with all her problems, still carries the political mantle of that agenda. It makes sense for the CPM to quit harbouring illusions about OBC-dominated parties as carriers of a social justice agenda. With the weakening of Lohiaite parties, the CPM could, if it played its cards right, occupy some of that Left space. Its biggest mistake was to ideologically equate Dalits and OBCs, politically and in the reservation debate. What it needed to do was to carve out a more distinctive social justice plank with Dalit small farmers and landless labourers at its centre, rather than the false promise of OBC-defined caste-based politics as such. Leaving the UPA gives it that opportunity.

... contd.