Column

Imagine you went out to a party dressed in your finest suit and half-way realised that your trousers had begun to rip where you couldn’t see. Would you continue to keep up a brave face or get out with your torn pants before the damage got worse? That is more or less the condition of the CPM, which is strutting around, trying to tie-up national coalitions and crowing about selecting the next prime minister while its own house is gradually showing serious signs of disrepair, perhaps imminent collapse.

In the very week that the party’s chief commissar, Prakash Karat played mid-wife to the much vaunted Third Front, a moth-eaten, rag-tag bunch of frustrated regional politicians all wanting to become prime minister, trouble was brewing for the CPM in both West Bengal and Kerala. In Bengal, where the CPM and allies have ruled for three decades, the first real challenge to their hegemony has appeared in the shape of the new tie-up of Mamata Banerjee and the Congress. No less than a senior CPM leader Subhash Chakravorty has predicted that the Left bloc’s days may be numbered.

In Kerala, the CPM’s ally the CPI has hit out at the latter’s arrogance and “bullying tactics” and declared it would go it alone in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections by contesting all 18 seats in the state. The CPI is aware that this break up could cost it all the three seats it holds, but doesn’t mind. “We will go down but take the CPM down with us” is what CPI leaders say.

Neither of these two developments in themselves spell the end of the CPM, but left unattended, could prove problematic.Dismissing the CPM’s chances in either state may be premature.

But other factors need to be kept in mind. In West Bengal, the CPM has alienated the rural population as well as the urban intelligentsia. Its mishandling of both the Nandigram and the Singur agitations has pleased neither— the former thinks the CPM is selling out to the capitalists, the latter is displeased with its use of violence to quell rural dissent. The professional middle-classes and the business lobby, which had seen a glimmer of hope in the pragmatism of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya are disappointed too. In the space of less than two years, the CPM managed to displease almost everyone.

In Kerala, infighting within the ranks has debilitated the CPM. The state is suffering more than most because of the global meltdown, with hundreds of Keralites moving back, jobless, from the Gulf.

Investment in the state is virtually non-existent. The CPM government has to face most of this anger.

Why should the travails of this party matter to anyone? They wouldn’t, except for the fact that the CPM — or some of its leaders — have taken up for itself the role of creating an alternative coalition at the Centre that will keep out both the Congress and the BJP. Prakash Karat has assumed the position of the chief architect and driver of the so-called Third Front, gathering all kinds of elements under one platform by holding out the hope of power at the centre. Each one of them, from HD Deve Gowda to Chandrababu Naidu to Mayawati has their sights firmly on the prime minister’s chair.
The last one has not yet formally joined the front and is holding out for some sort of commitment that she will be made prime minister when (there is no if in her minds). Leave it to Comrade Karat — he will come up with some way out of this imbroglio too.
Karat is a driven man. Communists usually are and the CPM has not survived all these years, while other left parties around the world have collapsed, without that extra dose of energy and enthusiasm. But Karat’s objective is not merely the
advancement of the CPM and the anti-imperialist cause.

He is motivated by an intense desire to show up the Congress and specifically Manmohan Singh. For him, Singh and his party are the betrayers who sold India to the United States by signing the Indo-US nuclear deal. For a brief while it had looked that the deal would be scuppered thanks to the campaign carried out by Karat and Co but in the end the UPA pulled through. It was not only a major diplomatic coup but also a political victory. Somewhere along the way, Singh even threw down the gauntlet to the CPM through his famous interview when he dared them to walk out. They did and the government survived. That was the final straw that broke the camel’s back.

Unmindful of the fact that his own party is not that highly charged on the issue and has more important things to worry about, such as not losing seats in West Bengal and Kerala, and they need Karat’s full attention on that. But his mind is on theThird Front, which, as it stands, is a futile idea — many of its own constituents (Deve Gowda, et al) may jump ship after the elections if they get a chance to be part of a UPA or NDA coalition. Mayawati is an unstable character and Jayalalitha may not even join. Yet Karat plods on; it’s the kind of obsession that cannot but be admired, even if the party suffers for it.