Despite the Congress-CPI(M) arrangement for the Assembly election in West Bengal and partnership of sorts in Parliament, the bonhomie will be difficult to sustain as the year progresses. Spring is not summer
In Indian politics, every over-reaction has an equal and opposite over-reaction. There is little doubt that Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union, was treated unfairly by the Delhi Police when it charged him with sedition. Whatever the disagreements with his speech on the JNU campus in early February, the sedition charge was undeserved.
After being taken into custody, Kumar became the focus of a strong political protest. Subsequently he was released on bail and interviewed in the media, as well as met by senior politicians. As a member of the All India Students Federation — the youth wing of the Communist Party of India — his ideological leanings are no secret. His words and statements, including his recourse to old-fashioned north Indian political idioms and rhetoric, have been impressive in a sense, but also typical.
While all of this is true, is the media now over-reading the Kanhaiya phenomenonIJ There is talk of him emerging as a challenger to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Others have suggested that by arresting him, the BJP has “revived the left”. There are reports of him campaigning for the communist parties in upcoming State elections. In West Bengal, where the left and the Congress are in some sort of an alliance, Kumar could well end up speaking at public meetings where he will share a platform with Congress candidates. Of course that final bit is purely speculative as of now.
How valid are such calculationsIJ Are we just getting carried awayIJ It is a fair point that the JNU episode has very limited bandwidth. It is unlikely either the ugly, anti-India slogans heard on the campus, or the charges of sedition and perceptions of the fairness of these charges, will influence voters in Assembly elections in Kerala, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, or Assam and Puducherry for that matter. It is much more probable that issues of local governance and social coalitions will drive voter preferences.
Second, giving the organised left — essentially the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the CPI — the oxygen of publicity, or television time and column inches in the Delhi media, is very different from the left’s revival as a political force. In truth, the left has been crippled since the election of 2009, when former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Congress-led Government won a second term because of, among other factors, the widespread urban sentiment that the communist parties had not allowed UPA(I), during 2004-2009), to govern freely and had behaved harshly with a decent Prime Minister. The second defeat, in 2014, and the loss of West Bengal earlier, in 2011, only solidified
a trend.
Has this trend — this terminal decline, really — been reversed by the recent JNU episodeIJ No doubt, the left has an enviable presence in intellectual and media circles in Delhi. Sitaram Yechury, the CPI(M)’s general secretary, has been very active of late. He famously persuaded Rahul Gandhi, vice president of the Congress, to travel to JNU and address a crowd of students there, against the instincts of Congress functionaries who felt Gandhi was thrusting himself into an evolving situation and embracing an audience and a political position that was not natural to the Congress. More recently, Yechury has given television interviews on a supposed mass upsurge against the Modi Government and predicted it could fall before 2019.
All this may sound exciting but does it reflect the position on the groundIJ In Delhi, political parties are only as strong as the MPs and the regional electoral constituencies they bring to national politics. In this narrow and pragmatic assessment, the left is very much an also-ran. All of the Kanhaiya Kumar interviews and all of the Sitaram Yechury theorising cannot take away from that hard fact.
Consider the upcoming elections. These are those once-in-five-years State polls where the left is relevant — since Kerala and West Bengal vote at the same time. These two States, along with Tripura, are only ones where the left matters. In West Bengal, despite the Congress agreeing to play junior partner to the CPI(M)-led left Front, the Trinamool Congress is expected to win a big victory. The Congress, which won 42 seats (of 294) in 2011 in alliance with TMC, will be hard-pressed to meet half that number. As for the left, its existential crisis in West Bengal continues.
More than electoral defeats, which are part of any politician’s or party’s life, it is the fact that the left (and the Congress) are unable to throw up a face, an idea or a social coalition to challenge West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the TMC that should be a concern. This suggests a long-term problem, one not limited to the election of 2016. The arrival of Kumar from JNU for a few public meetings, and the resultant publicity in the local media, cannot take away from that hard reality.
While partners in West Bengal, the left and the Congress are taking on each other in Kerala. In a traditionally bipolar State, the CPI(M)-led alliance is looking to unseat the Congress-led alliance. Given Kerala politics usually swings from one side to the other, another exchange this time would have been normal. The BJP’s rise may prove disruptive. The party is in the running for a significant vote share, which may not translate to more than one or two seats though. Yet which alliance’s votes in the BJP cutting intoIJ
The CPI(M) has more to fear here, as it shares some voter segments with the BJP, intersecting the intricate network of Hindu and aligned caste and community organisations. In contrast, there appears to be a consolidation of religious minority groups behind the Congress. If the Congress manages to come back to power in Kerala in such circumstances, despite indifferent governance over the past five years, it will leave the CPI(M) on the ropes in not just Kerala but Delhi as well.
On the other hand, there is also the feeling that a new, third force is an unpredictable factor in a State polity and could take votes from both established political formations. As such, the ability of the BJP to hurt even the Congress is not being entirely ruled out by Congress politicians themselves.
Either way, it is fairly obvious that the Congress-CPI(M) bonhomie of recent days will be difficult to sustain as the year progresses. Spring is not summer.
The author is senior fellow, Observer Research Foundation. He can be reached at malikashok@gmail.com