On Tripura Election Debacle and Incumbent Strategy
The majority in CPI(M) always upheld the view that there is not much difference between the politics and policies put forward by Congress and BJP as far as the common man is concerned. Both are rightwing formations. Both share a crony capitalist, anti-proletarian culture. Except that RSS wield considerable influence over BJP, to which even Congress is not alien, all their strategies and rhetorics were a copycat. For the people, there were now two right-wing parties to chose. So the shift in loyalty from Congress to BJP is not at all a cultural or political paradigm change.
INC which was centre left at a time, slowly moved from that spot to centre right during the reign of Rajiv Gandhi itself and PV Narasimharao made it moderate to far right. Manmohan Singh tried to reassert this trend through his neo-liberal economic policies on nitro boosters. The economic disparity between an urban elite and a rural agrarian worker was consistently widening. Multi-crore scams and financial frauds took a front seat.
Letting economics aside and coming to politics of violence, the Congress was always violent, wherever they could wield power. But this violence more or less stemmed from the individual pockets lacking any organised ratification except for a few incidents such as anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, following the assassination of ‘Indira Priyadarshini’. Though many Congress leaders were tyrants themselves and were the centre of the eye in much caste-based violence in states such as Bihar, the Congress as a party never internalised it. It was because they had a loose organisational setup where all sorts of leaders were welcome. The only difference BJP made was that it placed itself as a better steering agent in an inherently violent society, ratifying and even micromanaging violence through multitudes of Sangh organisations that sprouted in various places during various time periods and in various names. For the right wing, an organised mafioso is always better than some misplaced hooligans!
This explains the priority that BJP gets over Congress in the rightwing cultural and political sphere. This explains why social media ran #CongRSS hashtag campaign that exposed the double standards of INC. Now that, the right wing got a perfectly fitting party to lead them, Congress is beating the dust. It is not the party to be blamed, but the mass. The mass shifted their loyalty not from its political or economic position, but just towards a more ruthless perpetrator sharing the same mindscape.
Then why the cry? CongRSS was rightwing. Now an extreme rightwing party came. So the right-wingers shifted loyalty. This is as simple as that. It is the right-wing upsurge in India and the trend is not indigenous to this peninsula. It is the right-wing upsurge in most nations of the world.
Now, what the left has to learn from this? There are no shortcuts to continued peoples support, however nice we are and whichever measures we take. Educate the electorate. Politicise the mass. Champion their causes not only in praxis but also in propaganda. Accept it bluntly: India is anti-left. Kerala, Tripura, Bengal included. CPIM happened to topple this because the right wing votes were split. Now that those voters joined hands to place BJP in the winning seat, what CPIM should do is to uphold their current voter base intact and try to find inroads into hitherto unexplored mindscapes. Right wingers should be enticed and lured into the left stream of thought; But not the rightwing parties.
An easy answer put forward by many to this is to join hands with Congress. It is like bringing back the old rightwing party in lieu the new rightwing party. They haven’t changed a bit on their economic policies. They haven’t changed a bit on their stand towards communalism. They haven’t started recognising the peoples’ plight, the rural distress. I would like to reiterate that, it will be suicidal for the left to join the bandwagon of Congress. Left should re-invent itself. It should stick to its politics. You cannot salvage the sinking ship using your buoy. But you could save lives with it. Admit that we have only buoys.
An open alliance with INC will further reduce the probable Loksabha seats for the CPIM. You cannot expect much seats from Bengal. Tripura has only three LS seats and with this trend, it is likely to lose it too. If you enter into UPA, Kerala will be gone. UDF will sweep LS. Then what are you going to do with such a presence? Instead what if we keep the ground? Do not forget that even with this small presence, BJP always considered Left to be a force to reckon.
For any alliance to happen, the first step to be taken is by the larger party. If Congress officially seeks CPIM’s help, the party will have a standpoint to raise its minimal demands. There is a chance at least to bring about a common minimum program, which it is sure that the Congress wouldn’t pursue long, as in the days of UPA1. But at least, there would be a check on the unprecedented rolling of the neo-liberal road-roller. On the contrary, if CPIM decides to support Congress from outside, the party and its politics will eventually die out. There should be a wall to paint.
If at all, we shall be able to split the rightwing votes and topple BJP for sure, we shall push congress forward in those terrains; but not in all places. There are pockets where we are making a footprint nowadays through continued agitations and struggles by many of our mass organisations. Blindly supporting congress will erode the goodwill that we created there. Those were the seeds sown for a better tomorrow. We shall reap it. We should do it.
Educate. Politicise. Agitate. Lead the charge. Don’t be a passive member of the tirade. Improve our ground. Work with a revolutionary strife. Red Salutes! We have nothing to lose except the shackles.
