The Indian Left could seek to emulate the new shoots in the developed world

Have a conversation with anyone from the Indian Left and the mood inevitably turns morose. A decade ago, when the Indian political Left was in its strongest parliamentary moment, its supporters and adherents fervently spoke of and debated over how to influence policy on welfare, redistribution and accountability, as advances to be made in the progressive project since Independence. Today, they are back to defending core values that were long settled in India’s constitutional debates: secularism, civil liberties, and individual rights.

The framework of public debates over economic issues has been reduced to right-wing populist talking points, some of which have been implemented as policy — the dubious demonetisation exercise, for instance. That the Left’s political strength has weakened significantly — much due to its own failures — has also dented the political response to the effects of a policy as badly designed and implemented as demonetisation.

But the Indian leftist and the progressive are not alone. In Latin America, the pink tide has waned significantly as seen in Venezuela and Brazil. This sepulchral moment for leftist political forces in countries practising electoral democracy may well pass, but there is a sure crisis. The social democratic project stands for constitutionalism and privileging civic over ethnically determined issues. It allows for an equal hearing or at least heeding the voices of representatives of labour as much as captains of industry and commerce. It values equality, reason, science, globalism and empathy over status quo, tradition, narrow nationalism and short-termism. Parties that stand either for a radical or a plain version of social democracy are clearly on the decline; so are articulations of these values.

But the emergence and popularity of some shoots that adhere to the strands of social democracy and progressivism should give the Left some hope and something to learn from. Self-declared socialist and former Democratic party challenger Bernie Sanders is still quite prominent in the U.S., and is working towards expanding his progressive support base, comprising largely of the youth, to a movement that could upend the elite-run Democratic party. Presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon (in photo) has reinvigorated the Left platform by again tapping into the youth to drive a project that seeks reform of the European Union and a re-imagined welfare state in France. Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn seeks to return his beleaguered party back to its true labour roots.

The political Left in India should see in these projects many common factors — a belief in the inevitability of civic democracy, reliance on newer and popular means of communication, an absence of partisanship and a coming together of strands of the Left under the rubric of ideas rather than party one-upmanship. The Indian Left still derives its organisational inspiration from the doomed socialist project of the 20th century, and continues to base its programmes on resistance and negativism rather than projecting positive goals that appeal to the youth. These have pushed prospective adherents to identitarian outfits. The Left could well seek to emulate the new shoots in the developed world even as they embark on their own long march back to relevance.