Left to its own devices, the Indian Left would simply end up the way Marx and Engels predicted a State will end up as: withered away.
If the CPI(M) still exists — outside West Bengal, where, of course, it’s working overtime to turn as Left as Tony Blair’s Labour Party one day — it’s only as a counter-argument to the Right, especially to the latter’s communal manifestations. The image of being the ‘people’s party’ is, however, not enough in the arena of electoral politics. One criterion of being even a moderate political force is to have a proactive — rather than reactive — manifesto. If the CPI(M)’s just released manifesto is anything to go by, the party knows what it is fighting against; although it isn’t quite clear what it stands for.
The CPI(M) has promised to promote secular values, strengthen federalism, oppose the NDA government’s ‘pro-imperialist’ foreign policy. Just in case it may have missed out something, the manifesto doesn’t spare the Congress either, criticising that its economic policies were not too different from that of the NDA. It promises a comprehensive set of economic policies to replace the existing ones. Thankfully, with the CPI(M) not regularly in touch with the real world, this seems unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. The party manifesto is less vague on workers’ rights, stating that it would strive for a legislation to annul the Supreme Court judgment prohibiting strikes — one of the few activities undertaken by the Left which still makes it politically visible.
The CPI(M) did once have a role to play, perhaps even an important one in which grassroots level work left its mark. Unfortunately, the CPI(M)’s unwillingness to adapt to new realities and seek out allies who aren’t clones have pushed them into the fringes of Indian politics. Although the CPI(M) does provide the social geologist a wonderful opportunity to study ideological and political ossification at a close hand.
{{/usCountry}}The CPI(M) did once have a role to play, perhaps even an important one in which grassroots level work left its mark. Unfortunately, the CPI(M)’s unwillingness to adapt to new realities and seek out allies who aren’t clones have pushed them into the fringes of Indian politics. Although the CPI(M) does provide the social geologist a wonderful opportunity to study ideological and political ossification at a close hand.
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