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Directionless CPI-M inching into dustbin

For six months the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party made headlines for all the wrong reasons. The ruling party took a battering thanks to setbacks over Bihar, Enforcement Director Bezbaruah's transfer, unseemly squabbles with its allies... Meanwhile, the shadow-boxing between Congress president Sonia Gandhi and senior leader Sharad Pawar distracts the largest party in the Opposition.

But politicians don't see things as normal people do. To them there is something worse than adverse comment -- not making the news at all. That is the fate of the Left Front right now.

Whatever happened to a group that seemed all set to dominate Indian politics a short while ago? In May 1996, West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu came close to becoming India's prime minister. That proposal was turned down by the Communist Party of India-Marxist central committee, but it didn't mark the end of the Left's influence.

CPI-M general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet was hailed as the modern 'Chanakya', kingmaker and power behind the throne. It was he, for instance, who blocked Tamil Maanila Congress chief G K Moopanar's bid for the Race Course Road after the fall of H D Deve Gowda.

His influence increased when the CPI-M became the largest constituent of the United Front after former Bihar chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav split the Janata Dal. The CPI-M did not have anyone in the Union Cabinet but Surjeet interfered liberally in every government decision.

Yet the CPI-M's claims were fraudulent. How many realised that the Left Front won fewer seats in 1966 than in the Lok Sabha poll of 1991? However it wasn't the fashion to ask uncomfortable questions in those days.

But a reckoning couldn't be delayed forever. The house of cards called the United Front collapsed with a single asthmatic puff from then Congress president Sitaram Kesri. The 1998 polls confirmed the trend noticed in 1996 as the Left Front lost even more seats. But Surjeet had tasted the fruits of power and wouldn't go on a diet.

'Power tends to corrupt,' runs Lord Acton's famous dictum. It may be said of Surjeet that illegitimate power corrupts absolutely. His first reaction was to forget all he had said about the Congress's irresponsibility and offer a coalition even if it meant Sonia Gandhi would be the prime minister.

That provoked outrage within the CPI-M itself just as various groups were struggling to find an issue to serve as a rallying-point. The call for allying with the Congress came as manna from heaven to the anti-Surjeet wing.

Such factional conflicts are a graver problem for the CPI-M than loss of influence in Delhi. In Kerala, the Achuthanandan faction wants disciplinary action against Angelos, the young leader from Alleppey who is backed by the party's trade union wing Centre for Indian Trade Unions. In West Bengal, Subhas Chakravarthy couldn't win a party poll despite being in the Jyoti Basu cabinet.

''We face groupism in Kerala and Bengal,'' one Left Front leader told me, 'But there is no problem in Punjab -- where Surjeet is supreme. The difficulty is we have no supporters there!' That quip sums up the CPI-M's problems.

First, the Left has failed to extend its influence beyond Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura. That leads to the second problem -- too many leaders fighting over a pie that isn't growing. And the third problem is that there is nobody to discipline the party and attract voters. Let us examine those three problems in greater detail.

The Communist Party of India had a base in Bihar, but the polarisation between the BJP-Samata Party alliance and Laloo Prasad Yadav squeezed out the Communists. Andhra Pradesh was another sphere of influence; Telugu Desam Party chief Nara Chandrababu Naidu now speaks of the Left as a burden. And in Surjeet's native Punjab, the CPI-M can't boast a single assembly seat, leave alone win Lok Sabha berths.

And who can lead the CPI-M into the next century? Jyoti Basu is over eighty. As for younger leaders like Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechuri, their experience of elections is limited to Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. (Even that Leftist bastion elects BJP candidates today!)

Surjeet's prescription to ensure the CPI-M's relevance is cuddling up to the Congress. But Sonia Gandhi is unenthusiastic about accepting Surjeet as her Chanakya. The more farsighted in the Congress and the CPI-M agree that doing so would simply create a vaccum for the BJP to fill.

The likes of Surjeet, Karat and Yechuri have no roots. The likes of Jyoti Basu have, at eighty or more, no future. Between them they ensure that the Left has no direction.

The CPI-M loved the media spotlight in the days of the United Front regime. But it is finding that it is a short step from the headlines to the waste-paper basket.

T V R Shenoy