Left may be wrong, but not irresponsible, certainly better than DMK | N.R.Mohanty

Published on 19-10-2007 In National

Viewed 1516 times

Left may be wrong, but not irresponsible, certainly better than DMK

In his weekly column last Sunday, Vir Sanghvi, a former Editor of Hindustan Times, defended the Prime Minister in the following words: "The recent media caricature of Manmohan Singh as a poorly-advised, single-issue Prime Minister is not accurate. When it comes to the crunch, the PM has shown that he can look at the big picture, pull back and demonstrate the flexibility that you need to lead a coalition."

A day later, on Monday, Gautam Adhikari, a former Editor of The Times of India, berated Prakash Karat: and the Left: "Consider for a moment what (Prakash) Karat has achieved. To start with, he managed to keep the Left suspended happily in a political yamalaya by being a part of neither the UPA government nor the parliamentary opposition. From his perch, he smartly calculated, he could have his cake and eat it too. Exercising power without responsibility was what the Left established, with remarkable success, as its style of doing its best for India. It first used a piece of paper called the 'common minimum programme' as a sacred text to virtually halt all attempts at implementing progressive economic reforms. And now it has stopped the government from pursuing an independent foreign policy."

I think, while Mr. Sanghvi erred in being more charitable to the Prime Minister than he deserves, Mr. Adhikari has a problem in reverse; he is rather uncharitable to the Left leader.

Mr. Sanghvi finds fault with the media for doing a caricature of Manmohan Singh as a single-issue Prime Minister. But he should blame the PM for earning this epithet for himself. After all, the sparring game between the Left and the government he heads had been going on for more than three years, but it never reached a flashpoint. That was due to mutual accommodation. The government was keen to fast track various economic reforms, the Left leaders used to express its reservations but on many occasions, they were persuaded by the lavish attention bestowed upon them by Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, not to speak of the lesser mortals in the government. On occasions, when they were not persuaded, they made feeble protests and threatened to carry the matter to the people's court and forgot all about it.

The Indo-US nuclear deal was going through the motions in a similar fashion until the Prime Minister suddenly wanted to up the ante. After all, his 'Do-or-Die' remark on the nuclear deal in the interview to the Telegraph was not delivered because of any immediate provocation. In fact, Manmohan Singh had specifically asked for an interview with the English daily from the communist heartland, West Bengal, to throw the gauntlet at the Left – either you accept the deal or I go to the people for a fresh mandate.

Perhaps the Prime Minister had thought that the Left leaders, who had got so used to be in the centre of action for over three years, would baulk at the thought of getting back to the margins of the political theatre. He had hoped that they would accept the deal as a fait accompli, as they had done about the SEZs and the FDI in several sectors, while making the usual noises. Opinion polls suggesting that a fresh election would boost the prospects of the Congress and spell the doom for the Left were part of a design to coerce the Left to sign on the dotted line.

But the Left decided to call the Prime Minister's bluff. Prakash Karat, the leader of the Left, was categorical in his response: We will withdraw support if you went ahead with the deal. This led to an eyeball-to-an-eyeball confrontation. The question was whether one party would blink first to prevent the disaster or one would follow the other into the quagmire. In either case, the first strike had to be with the government.

There were two options before Manmohan Singh – either he carried out his threat to go ahead with the nuclear deal and risk his government or abandon the project and save his government. The Prime Minister ate his words and blinked first.

But what would have happened had the PM gone ahead with the negotiations with the IAEA? Would the Left have carried out its threat to dislodge the government or would it have accepted the inevitable and vowed to fight the battle another day, and gone on to enjoy the political centre-stage for another 18 months?

Some would say that the Left would have lost its credibility if it had reneged on its threat. Why should it be so? After all, the Prime Minister reneged on his threat and has not lost his credibility, with a commentator of the stature of Vir Sanghvi coming to his defence. To repeat his words:" When it comes to the crunch, the PM has shown that he
can look at the big picture, pull back and demonstrate the flexibility that you need to lead a coalition."

There would have been no dearth of commentators on the side of the Left to make Sanghvi-like endorsements for Prakash Karat if he would have accepted the deal to save the government: that he did so keeping the big picture in mind – the immediate threat of communalism far outweighed the distant threat of American imperialism. After all, if China could keep the imperialists at bay while sucking up to them, why couldn't India?

This brings me to the comment of the other celebrity journalist, Gautam Adhikari. He makes the standard charge against the Left that it exercises power without responsibility, that it can have its cake and eat it too. By this logic, the Left would have discharged its responsibility better if it had been part of the government.

But then does Mr. Adhikari find the DMK, for example, a more responsible party than the Left just because it is part of the government? Look at its supremo, Karunanidhi, going publicly against the decisions of the government of which it is a part, if the said decisions went against the vested interests of the party in the state. Here is a party, which is enjoying the perks and privileges of being part of the government and at the same time the autonomy to go against the government.

The Left, to its credit, prefers to keep its autonomy to speak its mind while forsaking the privileges of being part of a government. What the Left is doing is an act of sacrifice, rather than an act of irresponsibility. It is an irresponsible behaviour in a democracy to support a government mindlessly. Since most of the regional parties that are part of a coalition government do not have a mind of their own as far as many national issues are concerned, they are the meek followers of the dictates from the national party that leads the coalition. But the Left has a mind of its own and you cannot hold it against them, even if you disagree with them, that they are using it to make the policy critique.

To repeat Mr. Adhikari's words: It (the Left) …used a piece of paper called the 'common minimum programme' as a sacred text to virtually halt all attempts at implementing progressive economic reforms. I am afraid, the common minimum programme is not just a piece of paper-- it is the bedrock of governance for the UPA government, which had been agreed upon when the coalition came to power. Most of the parties would be tempted to deviate from the letter and spirit of such a programme for considerations of partisan and vested interests. If the Left is using it to remind the government of its commitments, then it is acting with great responsibility, not careless abandon.

1 Comments

Blog

Print