[Quote The Left doesn't acknowledge that its election rout is part of a much greater crisis: of ideological clarity, of political strategy, and of social and economic policy. The Left is unable to relate to parts of its core-constituency because it doesn't come through as an intransigent opponent of capitalism with all its inequalities and brutalities.
The Left focuses excessively on parliamentary politics, not the gut-level issues of the dispossessed. This will only aggravate its crisis. .... The Left needs to regain ideological clarity, political vision and an alternative radical perspective. Simultaneously, it must focus on mass mobilisation of the poor to defend and extend their rights. If the Left fails to do this, it will face marginalisation, isolation and irrelevance. That isn't a fate to be wished for. The Left is an important and healthy influence on Indian democracy. It must rejuvenate itself. Unquote Actually, it has to reinvent itself. A pretty tall order. More so, given the morphological changes in its support base in tune with the "developments" that have taken place in post-Independence India.] http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=187088 *The Indian left in strategy crisis*Thursday, July 09, 2009 Praful Bidwai India's Left parties, which command credibility and respect far in excess of their membership, have been forced to debate the causes of their recent electoral setback, which saw their Lok Sabha tally to drop by 61 percent to a historic low of 24 (of a total of 542 seats). Unlike the other big election loser, the Bharatiya Janata Party, in which personalised mudslinging substituted for "debate," the Left has tried to address programme- and policy-related issues, including its poor management of relations with the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance. This is welcome. But it doesn't go far enough. Going by the first post-election meeting of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) central committee, the four Left parties--including the CPI, Revolutionary Socialist Party and Forward Bloc--are reluctant to go the whole length in clinically dissecting their weaknesses. Unless they do so, they may not recover from the electoral rout. The Left parties are at a fork in history: Either they re-establish an organic relationship with the working people, or become irrelevant and perish, like other communist parties. The Left is debating four questions. First, to what extent can its rout be attributed to its splitting with the UPA over the India-United States nuclear deal? Second, was the Left right to take "equidistance" from the Congress and the BJP, and project the motley non-Congress, non-BJP Third Front? Third, to what extent were "tactical mistakes" in the two biggest CPM bases--allying with the Islamic-Right People's Democratic Party in Kerala, and coercive land acquisition and mishandling of the Rizwanur Rehman suicide in West Bengal--responsible for the Left's dismal performance? And, most vitally, did structural factors related to the Left's ideology, strategy and policies contribute substantially to its defeat? The CPM central committee fudged the answers to three of the four questions. In effect, it endorsed general secretary Prakash Karat's line that it didn't err on any major ideological, policy or strategy issue. Its mistakes were minor and don't warrant a radical shift of stance. The central committee emphasised state-specific factors for the CPM's poor showing in West Bengal and Kerala, rejecting the state leaders' criticism that the central leadership's policies and actions destabilised their political standing there. Many state CPM leaders, and CPI general secretary A B Bardhan, questioned the wisdom of trying to topple the UPA on the nuclear deal after the government deplorably reneged on its promise not to push it through without agreement in the UPA-Left joint committee. But the CC said the move was "consistent with the Left's stand" of opposing a strategic alliance with the US. The issue isn't consistency, but the wisdom of withdrawing support on a foreign policy-security issue which isn't centrally important or comprehensible to most people. As this column has repeatedly argued, the deal is bad because it legitimises nuclear weapons. It's part of an unbalanced and growing India-US strategic alliance. And it promotes environmentally-unfriendly, costly energy. The Left criticised the deal primarily because it would take India into the US strategic camp. But, like the BJP, it also argued that it would restrict India's nuclear weapons programme. (In reality, the deal will allow India to stockpile an additional 40 bombs annually.) The US isn't popular in India. But people don't bring down governments on foreign-policy issues. The Left should have realised this. Its attempts to mobilise opinion against the Iraq war and the 2007 India-US military exercises didn't evoke a strong response. Yet, the CC's "firm opinion" was that "withdrawal of support to the UPA … was correct … and necessary. There was no other option …" The CPM also wrongly thought its former ally, Mulayam Singh Yadav, wouldn't switch sides to support the UPA. On the "tactical mistakes" question, the CPM concedes it was unprincipled, opportunistic and stupid to make a deal with the PDP in Kerala, which nearly wrecked the Left Democratic Front. But the CC doesn't criticise the deal's rationale, which falsely called the PDP "secular." The CC is silent on the root causes of the Singur and Nandigram disasters, and on CPM cadres' violence against innocent people. It attributes its West Bengal debacle to "local factors," and "political, governmental and organisational reasons" related to the Left Front's "shortcomings" and "certain wrong trends and practices" in the party. These were rooted in the government's "failure to properly implement various measures directly concerning the lives of the people." However, these "failures" and "mistakes" weren't aberrations. They flowed from the Front's larger ideological and policy framework, which was responsible for the "shortcomings" and "wrong" trends. This framework is neo-liberal and pro-Big Business and derives from a mechanistic, warped understanding of "stages of historical development," which demands industrialisation at-any-cost and the only way forward for society. The CPM followed reckless pro-private capital and predatory land acquisition policies in the states. Its Left allies by and large tailed it, especially when the crunch comes, as with industrialisation. The Left Front's industrialisation strategy is based on offering private investors undeserved subsidies and crony-capitalist deals. The Front offered Tata Motors incentives running into half the project cost! And it's still wooing the Selim group, which is a front for Indonesia's super-corrupt Suharto family. This strategy dispossesses the poor and undermines the agenda of radical social transformation, as opposed to passive management of predatory capitalism. The CPM shows fundamental strategic confusion on this. The sole issue on which the CPM's CC concedes its error is its creation of the Third Front--a ragtag combination of regional and caste-based parties tainted by association with the BJP and anti-people policies. The notion of "equidistance" from the Congress and the BJP took the focus away from the latter's rightwing threat to democracy. But the CC is silent on this and still defends the "third alternative" idea. It contends the Third Front contributed to the BJP's defeat, but concedes "it should not have extended the call … [for the Front] … to form an alternative government." Third Front sponsorship resulted in alienating secular votes from the Left and the Congress. It also put off many West Bengal Muslim voters already alienated by the Sachar Committee's disclosures. Worse, the Left's zealous advocacy of the Front's opportunistic leaders lowered its moral stature--its greatest asset. The Left doesn't acknowledge that its election rout is part of a much greater crisis: of ideological clarity, of political strategy, and of social and economic policy. The Left is unable to relate to parts of its core-constituency because it doesn't come through as an intransigent opponent of capitalism with all its inequalities and brutalities. The Left focuses excessively on parliamentary politics, not the gut-level issues of the dispossessed. This will only aggravate its crisis. The CPM hasn't shown a way out of it. One can only hope the CPI's national council meeting in early July does better. The Left needs to regain ideological clarity, political vision and an alternative radical perspective. Simultaneously, it must focus on mass mobilisation of the poor to defend and extend their rights. If the Left fails to do this, it will face marginalisation, isolation and irrelevance. That isn't a fate to be wished for. The Left is an important and healthy influence on Indian democracy. It must rejuvenate itself. The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and human-rights activist based in Delhi. Email: prafulbidwai1@ yahoo.co.in --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. 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