Third Front by February: Prakash Karat

Kochi: CPM general secretary Prakash Karat on Saturday said that the Congress party had failed to tackle the BJP and Narendra Modi. An  alliance  of 14 parties spread across the nation, which include the Left,  would be finalised in early February as a viable alternative,  he said.

He told reporters here  that the Aam Aadmi Party  can be an alternative to the bourgeois parties and not the Left. “They have spelt out their stand only on corruption. They are yet to make their stand clear on neo-liberal policies and communalism,” he said and added that he was doubtful of the AAP making any significant impact in the coming LS elections.

On noted writer Sarah Joseph, a Left sympathiser, deciding to join the AAP, he said one good thing the AAP has done with its success in Delhi is that it has drawn a lot of people from the middle class who were earlier not interested in politics.

The CPM’s assessment is that factionalism of the old type has ended in the state unit of the party though some organisational issues now remain.

Replying to a query on the middle classes in metro cities losing interest in the Left parties, Karat admitted that the Left had not grown in major cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai. Vanishing of industrialised areas, including textile units in major cities where trade unions had once thrived, was one reason for the poor show of the Left in these cities.

The Left has not been able to address the concerns of the new middle class that has emerged in the post-liberalisation scenario and the CPM was reorienting its programmes to address these also.

He opposed the linking of Aadhaar card to services given by the government, including LPG subsidy. He also sought more discussions on the Kasturirangan report while holding back its implementation and said that the issues of farmers were  yet to be addressed in this connection.