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ShareArrogance is like salt -- a touch enhances taste, too much destroys the dish. Both the Left and Right parties have overdosed on arrogance, which helped the voters cook their goose rather deliciously.
Sure, the Congress-led UPA alliance had enough reason to draw votes -- people want stability, reforms, development, progress. And the UPA had delivered results. But its spectacular victory was perhaps also because people were quite disgusted with the insufferable arrogance of the others. Pride had once caused the fall of the Congress. Now humbled, it was acceptable.
The BJP's blinding arrogance prevented them from consolidating their position even after the 2004 rout. Only now, after this humiliating defeat, have they started some introspection.
Maybe hardline Hindutva was not the right way to go, they mumble, maybe projecting Narendra Modi was a mistake, maybe Varun Gandhi's rabble-rousing alienated Muslims, maybe asking for Afzal Guru's head was a ridiculous poll plank, maybe harping on roti-kapda-makaan would have been better -- the saffron set is seriously analysing where they went wrong. Which may lead to a mature, less Hindutva-driven, more centrist BJP in the future.
Not so with the Left. It is still busy justifying its mistakes, and the half-hearted admission that the Third Front was rejected by the people was qualified by underlining the need for such a front.
The Left had started off on a wonderful wicket. It was a partner of the UPA at the Centre, rooting for people-centric change, pushing its pro-poor agenda that helped bring about schemes like the NREGA. In West Bengal, it had been ruling uninterrupted for three decades and the state seemed set to bounce back with industrialisation. With their own government in Delhi, there was no question of the "Centre's step-motherly treatment" -- the Left's eternal excuse for all failings in Bengal.
And then the Left fell sick. It contracted the worst bout of conceititis. This made them allswollen-headed.
In the CPM, the astute but gentle gaze of Harkishen Singh Surjeet was replaced by the blank and brazen sneer of Prakash Karat. They went blindly at their own government, first heckling it endlessly then attempting to pull the rug.
And all for the Indo-US nuclear deal, a cause that almost nobody understood. All that their confused vote bank could see was the crouching comrades tugging at the rug, trying to topple their own government, shoving aside accountability with no thought to the future.
To top this flamboyant display of irresponsibility, they lavishly bad-mouthed Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who had dared to put his loyalty to the Constitution above his loyalty to the party, and expelled him from the CPM.
Meanwhile, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, also struck by conceititis and drunk on his industrialisation agenda, unleashed terrible violence on his own people in Nandigram. Anyone objecting was attacked -- even Governor Gopal Gandhi was not spared.
In Delhi, the sneer campaigners were busy attacking the UPA with the ferocity of a scorned lover. And the visually-impaired swollen-heads decided they would form a 'secular' Third Front to oppose the two biggies: the Congress and the BJP.
For this they cuddled up to 'secular' people like Mayawati (the caste queen who had campaigned for Narendra Modi), Jayalalithaa (a former BJP ally who advocates the cause of the Ram Mandir) and Naveen Patnaik (the moment he snapped ties with the BJP). Amazed by the Left's unscrupulous slapping together of a dodgy alliance and calling it secular, and disgusted by the stench of conceititis, voters hastened away to safer territory.
Defeat has curative powers. Hopefully, it will cure the Left of conceititis, shrink its swollen head and repair its vision. But for that, the Left needs to introspect -- and it can't do that when its ego gets in the way of truth.
