Downturn in electoral fortunes of the left: Will ideology continue to flicker?

The electoral rise and ebb of the Left in India has been an interesting topic of discussion especially in recent times. When Communists chose the parliamentary path in 1952, after abandoning the Calcutta thesis of 1948, consequent to discussions held with Stalin in Moscow, they could become the largest opposition group in Parliament. In 1954, in Madras State and Travancore -Cochin, they came within striking distance of power. But history was created in Kerala with the undivided Communist party forming government in 1957. In 1967, as two different parties they came to power in Kerala and West Bengal. In the 1970s, the larger of the two parties, CPM was not in power in any State, till it won West Bengal and Tripura, while CPI was in power in Kerala as part of the Congress coalition.

The West Bengal stint was continuous for 34 years and in Kerala since the 1980s, the CPM-led Left Democratic Front has been in and out of power. In Tripura, the Left Front was in power 1978-2018 (except for 1988-1993). The long stint in West Bengal was marked by important strides like decentralization experiment, Operation Barga (programme for registration of share croppers) and improvement in agricultural production in the 1980s. Attempts were made to reap possibilities of economic liberalization by Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee through programmes to attract private capital. The issues of land acquisition and way of handling of farmers’ protests resulted in a huge loss of face for the Left Front government. This coupled with other anti-incumbency factors resulted in the rout of the Left Front in 2011.

What is more intriguing is the consistent erosion of support base since then. The cadre-based party, which had withstood state repression during the 1972-77, seems to be decimated at present. This has reduced the parliamentary presence of the CPM and dented the left space in a probable non-Congress and non-BJP political front. Kerala has been a place where the base has remained more or less intact, despite oscillations in and out of power. Now, losing Tripura to BJP and not the Congress as before can put more stress on the Left’s role as an opposition party.  

While CPM was concentrated in three States and could have a parliamentary strength of 30-40, CPI had a thin yet more geographical spread. Post-Mandal political polarization not only dissipated the Congress in Hindi heartland, but also the hitherto regionally strong cadre base of the CPI in Bihar. In Uttar Pradesh, it found some important leaders joining predominantly caste-based regional parties. The Left parties have on many occasions self-critically discussed about parliamentary cretinism afflicting the cadre. But now the parliamentary presence itself is getting shrunk. When capitalism takes newer forms, responses need to be more appealing. Old contributions, however, valuable, may not continue to yield dividends.

One needs to acknowledge that there is Left presence in extra-parliamentary struggles in Rajasthan, Odisha, Andhra, Telangana and Tamil Nadu, though these are not getting enough media space. But staying in social and media limelight too is important as it plays a significant role in opinion-building. This is especially when there is a deluge of anti-Left propaganda, even while claiming that the Left has become irrelevant. Fighting the irrelevant is redundant. The very fact that the fight is fierce disproves the irrelevance hypothesis. Even with a shrunken strength, the Left is considered as an ideological opponent by the national ruling party.

Organisationally and politically, a more open dialogue-based approach will help. In a political democracy, strategy adopted by Lenin to fight the Tsar and Kerensky cannot be replicated. Mass-based tactics, accepting dissent, but at the same time, projecting the difference should be the aim. In an anti-establishment struggle, there is a lot to learn from the Gandhian way of protests and tactics. Com EMS had realised this in the People’s Plan experiment, which came after the failure of bureaucratic centralist models of the East Europe. But there is lot more distance to be travelled, especially when the noncommunist socialist movement has disintegrated to atomistic levels in Indian polity, leaving the non-Congress space exclusively to the BJP in a large number of States. The Indian Left has to re-envision a social, political and economic role in our country. That is their relevance. This should be realised and experimented.

(The author is a commentator on federal polity)