Desperation can throw up left-Congress tie-up
The left parties are facing a dilemma which they have many times in the past, though that doesn't seem to have made their task of decision-making easier: Should they or should they not align with the CongressIJ The present context is to do with the upcoming Assembly election in West Bengal. An influential section within the Communist Party of India (Marxist), both at the central and the State levels, is rooting for a tie-up, while an equally important group is opposed to it. Though both of these are alive to the power of their rival, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress, which has all but wiped them out in West Bengal, they are unable to reach a consensus on the road ahead to meet the challenge. There are many reasons for this. For one, the group opposed to an arrangement with the Congress believes that an alignment (and the compromises which arrive alongside) will come in the way of the left re-building its support base in the State on its own. Second, it will confuse even its supporting voters since the left is fighting the Congress in Kerala another State that is scheduled to vote soon. And the third is that, once the Congress and the left parties had split at the Centre after the latter withdrew its support to the Manmohan Singh Government in the wake of the civil nuclear deal cemented with the US, just before the 2009 lok Sabha election, both parties had ended up demonising the other. Now, for the two to hold hands yet again when nothing substantially has changed vis-Ã -vis the Congress's position on the nuclear pact, is a difficult act to justify. And finally, the coming together will be a de facto admission that neither the left nor the Congress is strong enough to fight the Trinamool Congress on its own. This last perception is damning for both the parties which have ruled the State for years before. And yet, despite these many pitfalls, the Congress and the left may strike a deal more out of desperation than conviction.
A similar problem dogs the Congress too. Pitted against the might of the Trinamool Congress, it has no hopes of making a comeback in West Bengal. It can, of course, adopt the motto: ‘If you cannot beat your opponent, join it.' But few leaders in the Congress will relish the prospect of an alignment with the mercurial Mamata Banerjee after their past experiences; besides, a partnership with a far superior rival can effectively extinguish whatever slim chances the Congress has of putting in place the support base it has ceded to opponents over the last decades, more so since Ms Banerjee has ended up appropriating the Congress’s vote-bank. To that extent, it will feel safer aligning with a weaker left Front, even if it has to convince its voters that the battle with the Front in Kerala is a different issue which must not be linked to the political manoeuvrings in West Bengal. The Congress can also explain away the dichotomy by pointing out to the fact that, while the left backed its UPA Government at the Centre from 2004 to 2008, it had remained opposed to the Congress in Kerala. Incidentally, the left and the Congress may also feel safer in each other's company, given the Bharatiya Janata Party's aggressive attempts to make a mark in the coming State election.