Bigger crisis & many questions for CPM after Tripura rout
, ET Bureau|
Mar 05, 2018, 08.15 AM IST
NEW DELHI: The collapse of Left rule in Tripura after 25 years has landed CPM and the Left politics in multiple crises.
Besides the Left losing its first direct fight against BJP, Tripura polls also marked the first time the Marxists facing a truly determined opposition in the state. That is because Congress has been a halfhearted challenger due to practical compulsion of Congress-CPM tactical tango against BJP in national politics all these years since demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992.
The tactical help Left provided to the minority Narasimha Rao regime post-Masjid demolition, the Congress-Left axis behind the 1996-98 UF rule, Congress-Left collaboration during the 1998-2004 Vajpayee regime, and the Congress-Left joint venture in UPA-1 — all had made Congress high command obliged not to put a serious fight against the Marxists in Bengal and Tripura all these years, making party units in the two states dispirited and disoriented houses.
It explains why traditionally anti-CPM Congress supporters en block shifted to BJP in Tripura the moment the saffron party positioned as a serious anti-Left challenger.
The same thing happened in West Bengal, too, when Mamata Banerjee, frustrated over AICC’s ‘soft attitude’ to the Left Front, formed Trinamool Congress to take on the Marxists. It took Prakash Karat’s “toppling game against UPA-1” for AICC to finally allow Bengal Congress to side with Trinamool to deliver a deathblow to Left rule in Bengal.
The speed with which CPM has been conceding ‘the opposition space’ to BJP in Bengal — something Congress never yielded during 34-year Left rule — further questions the Marxists’ fighting capacity when pitted directly against BJP.
BJP engulfing CPM fort in Tripura also brings to the fore the Left party’s internal clash — Prakash Karat-Kerala CPM’s ‘touch-Congress-not’ stand versus Sitaram Yechury-Bengal party’s ‘anti-BJP tactical tango with Congress’ line — even as the Left gets steadily dwarfed in national politics. BJP-hit Tripura CPM leaders may now need a Congress ‘understanding’ just as West Bengal comrades sought the same under Trinamool rule.
Equally, the speedy desertion of the youth and middle class constituencies raises questions on CPM’s archaic party programme vis-avis aspirational Indians. Tripura victory will prompt BJP to go ballistic in the remaining Left pitch — Kerala — besides positioning itself as the real challenger to Trinamool in Bengal.
Vijayan’s Questionable Strategy
Since the assumption of Pinarayi Vijayan regime in Kerala, state CPM has been adopting a questionable twin-strategy scripted to woo Muslim voters away from Congress. It consciously projects BJP-RSS as a (larger-than-life) real challenger, engages its cadre in bloody clashes with the plot of projecting state CPM as the real fighter of ‘the Modi/Amit Shah-propelled BJP-RSS expansion in the state’.
The flip side of this tact is that BJP is getting bigger traction in the state and ‘nationally’. The state CPM’s cynically scripted aggression seems only providing fodder to BJP to grow in the southern tip.
Besides the Left losing its first direct fight against BJP, Tripura polls also marked the first time the Marxists facing a truly determined opposition in the state. That is because Congress has been a halfhearted challenger due to practical compulsion of Congress-CPM tactical tango against BJP in national politics all these years since demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992.
The tactical help Left provided to the minority Narasimha Rao regime post-Masjid demolition, the Congress-Left axis behind the 1996-98 UF rule, Congress-Left collaboration during the 1998-2004 Vajpayee regime, and the Congress-Left joint venture in UPA-1 — all had made Congress high command obliged not to put a serious fight against the Marxists in Bengal and Tripura all these years, making party units in the two states dispirited and disoriented houses.
It explains why traditionally anti-CPM Congress supporters en block shifted to BJP in Tripura the moment the saffron party positioned as a serious anti-Left challenger.
The same thing happened in West Bengal, too, when Mamata Banerjee, frustrated over AICC’s ‘soft attitude’ to the Left Front, formed Trinamool Congress to take on the Marxists. It took Prakash Karat’s “toppling game against UPA-1” for AICC to finally allow Bengal Congress to side with Trinamool to deliver a deathblow to Left rule in Bengal.
The speed with which CPM has been conceding ‘the opposition space’ to BJP in Bengal — something Congress never yielded during 34-year Left rule — further questions the Marxists’ fighting capacity when pitted directly against BJP.
BJP engulfing CPM fort in Tripura also brings to the fore the Left party’s internal clash — Prakash Karat-Kerala CPM’s ‘touch-Congress-not’ stand versus Sitaram Yechury-Bengal party’s ‘anti-BJP tactical tango with Congress’ line — even as the Left gets steadily dwarfed in national politics. BJP-hit Tripura CPM leaders may now need a Congress ‘understanding’ just as West Bengal comrades sought the same under Trinamool rule.
Equally, the speedy desertion of the youth and middle class constituencies raises questions on CPM’s archaic party programme vis-avis aspirational Indians. Tripura victory will prompt BJP to go ballistic in the remaining Left pitch — Kerala — besides positioning itself as the real challenger to Trinamool in Bengal.
Vijayan’s Questionable Strategy
Since the assumption of Pinarayi Vijayan regime in Kerala, state CPM has been adopting a questionable twin-strategy scripted to woo Muslim voters away from Congress. It consciously projects BJP-RSS as a (larger-than-life) real challenger, engages its cadre in bloody clashes with the plot of projecting state CPM as the real fighter of ‘the Modi/Amit Shah-propelled BJP-RSS expansion in the state’.
The flip side of this tact is that BJP is getting bigger traction in the state and ‘nationally’. The state CPM’s cynically scripted aggression seems only providing fodder to BJP to grow in the southern tip.
