Commentary/Mani Shankar Aiyar

What the country needs is not a common minimum programme but an uncommon maximum programme

The second option is of letting in a Congress prime minister. Given the party composition of the present Lok Sabha, the option is not practical politics without the CPI-M either becoming part of a Congress-led coalition or, at the very least, supporting such a minority government from without.

I can appreciate our comrades gagging at the prospect. But the Congress is not a hilsa bone caught in the throat, and running the country in the 50th year of its Independence is not a dinner party. If there is a tithe of national responsibility in the CPI-M, there is no alternative to their facing up to this prospect, however much they might gag on it.

For even if the CPI-M does gag and we head for the third option -- elections -- it would take a foolish prophet indeed to foresee an outcome in which any one party comes out with a majority on its own. Elections over, we would be back to the national duty of preventing a Hindutva takeover.

Short of the Congress winning an outright majority, the only way of forestalling a BJP government is for the non-BJP parties to get their act together. We have done it one way since May 1996 -- and Jyoti Basu has correctly characterised that way as a blunder. Is there another way of doing it -- either within the lifetime of the current Lok Sabha or, post-elections, when the next Lok Sabha is convened?

Yes, there is -- provided the Left reassesses its relationship to the Congress in the new political dispensation that is taking us into the 21st century, the Era of Coalitions. Fact One is that the Communist-Congress relationship is asymmetrical -- the Congress is unacceptable to the Left, but the Left is not unacceptable to the Congress. The burden of adjustment, therefore, falls on the Left.

This country is not a conglomerate of regions; it is Union in which the Union precedes the states -- and the states are a creation of the Union. Regional parties are fine for the region; only national parties can keep the nation together and give it a national perspective and a national vision. Without the nation as something more -- much more -- than the lowest common denominator of the states, meaningful governance is not possible.

What the country needs is not a common minimum programme but an uncommon maximum programme. Such a programme can only be given by a party or parties who view the country from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and not from Gudiyattam to Colachel.

As of now, there are only three national parties -- the Congress, which still has a presence every where, even if it be a diminishing presence, the BJP, which has a presence in many places, even if that falls well short of everywhere; and the Communists, who are, in terms of political reality, a regional party of the east and far south-west but who, in terms of ideology and outlook, can fairly claim to be national party.

It is only one of these parties, on its own, or a combination of two or more of them that can give this nation a national government.

There was a time not so long ago when the Communists helped Indira Gandhi stop the country from falling into the clutches of bunch of feudals backed by a bunch of capitalists. That is the kind of language which it is no longer fashionable to use -- but it is the truth. Following the Congress split of 1969, the Communists helped Indira expose the Grand Alliance both before and after the crucial elections of 1971. Without being part of government, the Communists thus contributed to setting the tone for both our polity and our economy in the seventies and eighties.

The re-establishment of a Congress-Communist axis is feared in certain circles precisely because a return to the seventies and eighties is what is feared.

It is a baseless fear. For there can be no return -- for anyone -- to what is past. We can only go forward. And what the Communists have to ask themselves is whether they want to be part of India 2000 or not. With the Congress, they can be. Without the Congress, they will remain a voice-off.