People are Positively Responding to Our Call for an Alternative

A.B. Bardhan, as the octagenarian General Secretary of the Communist Party of India, is the seniormost Left leader in active politics today since the CPM patriarch, Jyoti Basu, is ailing and at 95 cannot undertake any strenuous assignment. In the following freewheeling interview with the Mainstream editor on March 31, 2009, Bardhan presents his view of the pre-election scenario and the Left perspective before the country at this point in time.

How do you view the pre-election scene?

ABB: In the course of one year or so there has been considerable erosion from both the UPA and NDA. Two of their most reliable allies, the PMK and BJD, have broken away from the Congress and BJP and left the UPA and NDA respectively. Their leaving those alliances have definitely weakened both the UPA and NDA.

What is the source of the PMK’s strength? Is it pro-LTTE?

ABB: It has a base in north Tamil Nadu. It is a caste-based party. It is not pro-LTTE; the real pro-LTTE party is the MDMK. But then Jayalalitha too is not pro-LTTE; she is basically anti-LTTE. But all of them—from Jayalalitha’s AIADMK to the PMK—are totally opposed to the way the Sri Lankan Government is treating the Tamils there. It’s a question of defending the human rights of the Sri Lankan Tamils.

What about the DMK?

ABB: The DMK is in a bind. It is facing resentment from the citizens of Tamil Nadu for being part of a government at the Centre which is not only not doing anything in defence of the Sri Lankan Tamils but, on the contrary, is supplying arms to the Sri Lankan Government with which the latter is not just fighting the LTTE but killing the Sri Lankan Tamils.

What is the Left’s stand on this issue?

ABB: We are against supplying arms to the Sri Lankan Government. That is the Left’s complaint. We are very clear that a military solution is no solution. Let me tell you, if suppose Colombo imposes a military solution by liquidating the LTTE, the very next day it will have to face numerous guerilla operations in different parts of the island-state.

This should have been conveyed to the Sri Lankan Government by New Delhi. But our government is least bothered. And the DMK is facing the music.

At one stage we were worried that the DMK might suddenly withdraw its support to and walk out of the UPA Government because its leader, M. Karunanidhi, is known to have behaved unpredictably in the past. If that had happened the party would have been able to somewhat retrieve its position. But that didn’t happen and the DMK is now very much isolated from the people on this issue. Perhaps the DMK had other calculations.

If you come to think of it, only one man had the guts to severe his ties with the NDA after being with the BJP all these years in that alliance. That was Navin Patnaik.

Didn’t he snap his links with the BJP when the seat-sharing talks failed?

ABB: That wasn’t the issue at all. Kandhamal was the last straw on the camel’s back. He (Navin) told us frankly that the crisis was brewing for quite some time. When the BJP along with other Hindutva organisations wanted to organise a bandh on Christmas Day last year to raise the anti-Christian frenzy among the Hindu communalists and those they were able to instigate to a higher pitch with even some BJP Ministers in the State Government deciding to join it, Navin put his foot down. He made it clear: thus far and no further.

But he didn’t snap his links with the BJP at that point.

ABB: That’s because the BJP backtracked after Navin’s warning and called off the proposed bandh.

Navin was actually testing the waters as they say. Then came the municipal elections in which the BJD did exceedingly well on its own not just in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack but even in Kandhamal where the anti-Christian attacks took place. That was the time when he felt he could sever his ties with the BJP.

But there is a feeling that since the Left parties in Orissa are weaker than the BJP, the BJD-BJP division will electorally benefit the Congress.

ABB: That won’t happen. It is true that the BJP was stronger than the Left in Orissa in the past. But with the support of the CPI, CPM and NCP, the BJD will be able to effectively fight and defeat the Congress and the BJP both in the Lok Sabha polls and the State Assembly elections.

Now look at the Congress. The Congress leadership at the Centre has sidelined J.B. Patnaik, the former CM, because he was unpopular with a wide section of the people in the State. But then he has his organisation across Orissa. And the pro-JB wing within the party will cause problems for the Congress in the elections.

What about the JMM?

ABB: The JMM has given the call for a ‘Greater Jharkhand’. That means four districts of Orissa would become part of that ‘Greater Jharkhand’. This is something the Orissa parties can never agree to. So they will fight separately.

What is your overall assessment? How would you forecast the outcome of the Lok Sabha polls?

ABB: As of now, my assessment is that the Congress will get 125 to 130 seats. Today they have 145. The BJP’s tally will be definitely less than that of the Congress.

What about the Third Front?

ABB: At present I think the Congress and the so-called Third Front are running neck and neck.

How different are the policies of the Left’s partners in the Third Front from those of the Congress on, say, economic issues or even the nuclear deal?

ABB: Let me clarify. There is no Third Front as such. At the moment electoral Fronts have come up in certain States—of the TDP and TRS with the Left in Andhra Pradesh, of the BJD and NCP with the Left in Orissa, of the AIADMK, PMK, MDMK with the Left in Tamil Nadu. These constitute an attempt to set up an alternative to the BJP-led Front and the Congress-led Front. The possibility of an alternative government coming to power at the Centre has arisen. Our first job will be to explore this possibility after the elections when parties like the RJD, NCP and LJP will in all likelihood become part of this alternative.

If the Congress-led Front as well as the BJP-led Front don’t exceed 270 seats each, then the process of translating this possibility into reality will gather momentum.

But the Left’s strength in the Lok Sabha is bound to get reduced this time, isn’t it so?

ABB: That’s true. But it will still get above 45 and that could move up to 50 seats. You see, the Left will lose 15/16 seats in West Bengal and Kerala but this loss will be compensated by winning five-to-six seats elsewhere like Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. And in Bihar the CPI, CPI-ML and CPM are expected to get a least one seat each.

I feel Mayawati will get 40 to 45 seats in UP. Then there won’t be much difference between her seat-share end ours.

The Left getting 45-to-50 seats appears to be quite optimistic. From what we are hearing, the Left’s tally will be around 30 and in any case not exceed 35.

ABB: (laughs) That’s not possible. It will be between 45 and 50.

There are reports suggesting that if an alternative government like the United Front of 1996-98 takes shape, the Left would not be averse to joining it this time.

ABB: If what I am saying comes out to be true after the elections, then the question of joining the government could be positively considered to ensure stability and striking power to it in matters of policy…

But the general feeling is that whichever government is formed at the Centre it will be weak and unstable and in that setting fissiparous forces can play havoc.

ABB: We feel an alternative to both the Congress and BJP is a real possibility post-poll, and in that scenario the question of the Left joining the government can be positively considered to ensure stability and striking power to it in matters of policy geared towards an alternative path of development which builds up resources and protects the peasantry.

Protecting the peasantry? That didn’t happen in West Bengal.

ABB: That was a mistake, and it did affect us adversely. And we have said so.

But can an alternative government be formed without support from either the Congress or the BJP after the elections?

ABB: We are fighting the elections on the plank of having a non-Congress non-BJP government at the Centre.

Can you say there won’t be any repetition of 1989 when the V.P. Singh Government was propped up by the Left on one side and the BJP on the other?

ABB: There is no question of repeating 1989. We will have no deal with the BJP whatsoever.

In Gandhinagar Mallika Sarabhai, the well-known danseuse and cultural personality who was a leading figure in the civil society movement against the state-sponsored anti-Muslim violence of Gujarat 2002, is contesting against BJP leader L.K. Advani. Unfortunately the Congress is also putting up a candidate in the seat. What is the Left’s stand in this fight?

ABB: We will fully spport Mallika against Advani.

There was a clearcut issue in the 2004 elections. This time there is no issue that can grip the attention and imagination of the people.

ABB: In 2004 our slogan was: “BJP hatao, desh bachao†. This time our slogan is: “Set up a non-Congress non-BJP government†. It is having a positive effect on the people. Of course, we have to see how far this will convert into votes.

You have been going round the country. What is your experience?

ABB: People are responding to this suggestion of an alternative very positively.

You said the BJP is lagging behind the Congress in terms of poll forecasts. Does that mean the threat from the BJP has receded?

ABB: The BJP threat has not receded; witness Varun Gandhi’s hate-speech. Of course, whether the Election Commission has any right to give its opinion on the BJP putting up Varun as a candidate is, however, a different matter.

But the Election Commission said Varun failed to prove that the video showing his speech was doctored.

ABB: That’s true. He could not prove it was doctored.

However, I still feel the BJP cannot give a strong showing this time whatever it tries to use—Varun’s hate-speech or corruption or terror-attacks.

What are the issues the Left is highlighting?

ABB: Economic issues. We are telling the people that because of the Left’s intervention banks, PF, insurance could not be further privatised, disinvestments of the public sector could not be carried out recklessly. And this, in effect, prevented us from meeting the fate of the Western economies.

But if that was so, it can be argued that the Left should have continue to back the UPA Government and not withdrawn its support to it.

ABB: No, you see, where the government was in need of our support we were able to assert our stand and they could not have their way. But where they could go ahead with executive fiat as in the case of the nuclear deal we could not intervene.

What about the nuclear deal? Aren’t you highlighting it in the poll campaign?

ABB: We are not highlighting it. Instead we are projecting the need to safeguard our independent foreign policy.

If an alternative government is formed at the Centre, would you try to scrap the nuclear deal?

ABB: After all that has happened—the IAEA safeguards, the NSG clearance etc.—it cannot be scrapped. But it has to be implemented in such a way that it does not impinge on our independent foreign policy. Which simply means not taking fuel, equipment from the US (due to political reasons tied to the Hyde Act and the adverse implications on our foreign policy course, not on account of technological considerations) and instead get them from France, Russia.

On the whole then what is your evaluation of the pre-poll situation?

ABB: I think it’s a defining moment for the country.

In what way?

ABB: If the people can break out of this two-party system that will be of far-reaching significance. It had happened only once—in 1996-98, when the United Front was in power at the Centre, but that too was for a brief period of less than two years.