A letter to the Left
Lal Salaam Comrades!
Your tenure in government seems to have ended. How different things were four years ago! Four years ago you were faced with a unique opportunity. The "communal" BJP-led NDA had suffered a surprising electoral defeat. The "secular" UPA was to take over the reins of government. In a hung house, you with your 60 MPs formed the crucial outside support to the government. At that time you smiled broadly with your hands held aloft with other leaders of the UPA. You delivered sharp soundbites on the Common Minimum Programme, on the basis of which you gave your support. With your best ever electoral performance, it seemed as if the Communists had finally arrived on India's national stage.
Today, four years later, where are you? The Congress government is getting ready to survive its remaining few months in power without you. Prakash Karat's dream of the "non Congress" "non BJP" Third Front lies in tatters. Mulayam Singh Yadav with whom you once shared an anti-Bush platform has ditched you and made common cause with your dreaded Indo-US nuclear deal. The CPI has long ceased being a national party and the CPM is preparing to go back to writing stirring editorials in People's Democracy. In a few months, AK Gopalan Bhavan will wear a deserted look. Even the TV cameras will switch off. Alas, comrades. You are men and women of such unimpeachable personal honesty, such depth of scholarship among so many of your leaders and sympathizers. You have stood sentinel against religious hatred and never hesitated to scream out against social evils. Yet in the end, you have scripted your own tragic drama of irrelevance.
Why did this happen? Your first mistake was that you refused to join the government or take on ministerships. You preferred to be the eternal college campus rebel, always oppositional, always agitational, but never responsible, or adult enough to recognize that in this country, managing change is about negotiating a myriad interest groups. You could have taken over portfolios like the HRD ministry or Women and Child Development where your progressive commitments and social sector expertise would have been put to excellent service of the people. But you refused to hunker down and work with processes of governance, instead you preferred to criticise from the sidelines. Perhaps you are just in love with your own youthful avatar, refusing to grow up because you cannot accept that you are no longer fiery and young. Perhaps your rage against the world is simply fury against the inexorable truth of advancing years.
Your second mistake was that you failed to realize that you are aged in a country of the young; you have failed to come to terms with the new India. Economic globalization, despite your consistent opposition, is raging through the country like a wildfire. Like it or not, India's young are rushing towards new opportunities with open arms. Today a constable from Himachal can become a wrestler on the world stage. A police officer's orderly can become an Indian idol. The son of a Congress worker can build a telecom empire. The son of sweepress can set up his own fast food business. A conquering cricket team can be made up of boys whose fathers are railway mechanics and tyre repairmen. Icons of the poor like Mayawati are not dressed in rags and jholas, instead they are proudly clad in diamonds and silk, embodying the tidal wave of aspiration that every reporter sees in the dirt tracks of UP and Bihar. There are lots of things wrong with this New India. It does not have the social conscience you like, it is creating vast inequalities between rich and poor, it is pauperizing traditional trades and providing little hope for those scratching out worms from riverbeds to survive.
But this New India is also shaping itself into an avalanche of upward mobility. You are trying to tame the avalanche. You have stalled pension reform, stalled banking reforms and for long stalled the privatization of airports.You did not realise that keeping airports as a state monopoly was only preserving it as a sector for the rich. That all over the world air travel is dirt cheap precisely because it is privatized. When leaders like AB Bardhan say, "Baadh mein jaye Sensex" (to hell with the Sensex)he pours scorn on millions of middle class Indians who invest and trade.
But what must lead you to BJP-style atma chintan is the crisis confronting you in your bastions. In Kerala you are factionalised in a way that makes even the Congress look good. You are split wide open down the middle. In Bengal you badly misread what happened in Nandigram leading to shocking gram panchayat defeats in both Nandigram and Singur as well as recently, very important defeats for you in civic body elections. Last year, your protests against joint Indian and American naval exercises got little response from the public. This year your so-called campaign against petrol price hike was largely ignored by the people.
Your opposition to the nuclear deal once again shows your distance from India. Sure, it's a commercial transaction, but why is anything to do with commerce necessarily evil? Even at the height of the Cold War 2 million Indians lived in the US. The links between India and America are so massive, that as a leading economist put it, the Indo-US nuclear deal is an offshoot of a long process of civic exchange with America, not the basis of it. You hate America, but do Indians feel the same? There are important reasons to criticise a country that bombs and invades other countries at will, but there is also the need to recognize that anti-Americanism is hardly hardwired into the Indian DNA.
No to nuclear deal, no to reforms, no to change, no to newness, no to price rise, no to America, negativism seems a reflex action. Your contempt for change, your constant lamentation, your moral righteousness are incongruous in a country shouting "Chak de India." Eleven years ago you committed the 'historic blunder' of not letting Jyoti Basu become prime minister because you were unwilling to share power. Today you have committed suicide because you did not know how to use power.
URBANEYE
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Dear Sagarika,
I had gone through your post only by chance. I think the error of Left forces lies elsewhere and the same is not tactical error but a strategic one. The quest of Indian left, for a national bourgoeis, and conjuring up of one when it is not found, has led the left to a tailist politics. They looked for a progressive national bourgeois first in Nehru, then in Indira, then in V.P.Singh, then in Sonia Gandhi, then in Mayawati and Jayalalita and so on. This unending search for national progressive bourgoeis, particularly in peripheral country like India, has pushed these Stalinist parties directly to the backyard of bourgeois politics. It is they who have willingly thrown themselves in the steel embrace of capitalist rulers. For everything, whether it is the issue of struggle with fascism or Imperialism, they look towards this national bourgoeis, which in their wisdom is the participant in their national democratic revolution.
This pernicious dependence upon the bourgoeis, has virtually destroyed all independence and initiative of the left forces and they are no match for the bourgeois tacticians who are using these leftists to hold back the workers and peasants from taking to revolt against the old society, already in decay.
You would note that with the decline of Stalinism around the world in the start of 1990's these Stalinist parties had lost their residue steam. Now they are no more than apologists for this or that bourgoeis party or leadership. They have nothing to do with the working class or its great historic emancipatory mission through a social revolution. In fact, they have stoppoed even dreaming of something of the sort. Stalinists and their Chinese co-travellers, the Maoists are in the process of stepping down the stage of history, vacating it for real leadership of working class, with perspective of 'permanent revolution'.
...Reply
hi sagarika
I am a regular viewer of you.. your way of talks and presents.. BUT NOW I FEEL THAT IS ONLY INFRONT OF CAMERA. Your vision and fore vision is not MATCH IT. Any way you salutes LEFTIST BY SAYINF LAL SALAM... You know THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG TO COMMUNISTS IN INDIA. Happening as prime minister Mr Manmohan is not a politician and he was a finance genious and HIGH PROFILED FINANCE OFFICER... So Infront of him any problem will find a solution by financially! PAY AND TAKE... HIS CARRIER WAS FROM WORLD BANK TO... FIN MINISTER OF INDIA , FINANCIAL ADVISER AND... ..He claimed and proved.. democracy can be purchase and selling... India witnessed and 99% of public.. But as a journalist you shuted your eyes.. when you shut eyes... you feel darkness not others... !! Dont feel that Others also in darkness..
Even next time if any politics want Manmohan to be a PM I feel he will not accept it. He is not bother what is a political morality... because he is not a politician,,, Congress was carrying him on shoulder... !! Otherwise he would have resgined for Bush not for India.... becuase their relation was from Bush father.. since many decades,.. before he joins conngress!!!
LOSS IS TO CONGRESS AND BJP.. CONGRESS PROVED THAT BJP MPs easy purchase materials.. How prime minister and central govt stand against corruption? Themseleves they done!! Who knows REST OF BJPs MPs can also be purchased later?
Many changes happend in Indian Political when Industrialist AMBANI BECAME PART OF samajwadi party.... MONEY MAY MAKE EVERY THING...
ONE DAY... MY FAVOURITE ICONS Sagarika... Desai... Burkha... Roy.. Let us hope all these icons just stand away from there ... money location...
I SALUTE YOU... NOT A RED SALUTE..
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Its both a good-day and a bad day for the day of Indian politics..,its good the corruption that was happening behind the screens came to light in front of the people and the sad thing is that without proper investigation the confidence vote took place because the PM was afraid of losing the trust vote after the "gentlemen" behind the MP poaching were exposed.So i say it was an act of cowardice to still go on with the trust vote after all the allegations made.. ...Reply
In a few months, AK Gopalan Bhavan will wear a deserted look.â"when was it jam-packed ? Even the TV cameras will switch off.---today the TV cameras have turned into MONEY Camera. Alas, comrades. You are men and women of such unimpeachable personal honesty, such depth of scholarship among so many of your leaders and sympathizers.â" even their bete noir recognise this. You have stood sentinel against religious hatred and never hesitated to scream out against social evils. Yet in the end, you have scripted your own tragic drama of irrelevance.---by exercising their right to dissentâ"an essence for a democracy in not towing the line blindlyâ"remember, even the text of the draft which subsequently went ON LINE was not shown to them .
Why did this happen? Your first mistake was that you refused to join the government or take on ministerships.â"unlike others they have never eyed on posts. You preferred to be the eternal college campus rebelâ"If you mean the anti-social elements-do the survey and you will find that most of such elements belong to groups of which you seem to be not critical such, always oppositional, always agitational, but never responsible, or adult enough to recognize that in this country, managing change is about negotiating a myriad interest groups. â"Managing even by sacrificing your principle is the corrupt practice.You could have taken over portfolios like the HRD ministry or Women and Child Development where your progressive commitments and social sector expertise would have been put to excellent service of the people.â"You want to see them like others who do any thing for a berth. ...Reply
BJP/NDA should abstain from voting. This is the best strategy for them in the context of the Mayawati factor. And a fitting reply to the likes of Karat and party who have always treated them as communal pariahs. BJP/NDA will earn the goodwill of many who are tired of the leftists if they use this opportunity.. ...Reply
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