A searing piece on the vapidity of the Left’s intellectualism in Swarajya recently highlighted a very important aspect of the current political environment.The author Jaideep Prabhu stresses on the absence of an intellectual vanguard for the Left in advancing its ideology and in doing so also exposes the hollowness of the current state of opposition to the Narendra Modi-led BJP.For years, the country was deprived of a strong right-wing alternative as pseudo-Left, illiberal, socialist governments rode roughshod over the country’s economic needs, causing anarchy and near-bankruptcy. Now with the emergence of a strong right-wing government at the centre in 2014, it appears that the Left-inspired opposition is in terminal decline. Election results, obviously, are an important example of how much ground has been ceded by the opposition to the BJP.But that’s not the whole story. The hate-filled attacks on Modi and his policies, the daily hit-jobs that are flashed across television channels, social media sites and news and opinion pages all point to another important reason for the decline of the opposition. The inability of the Left-inspired intellectual system to give a coherent, intellectual foundation to its criticism of the government and the arbitrary, chaotic nature of their attacks has been a big contributor to the overall opposition failure.Modi and his party may win or lose in 2019. They may also suffer reverses in the state polls. We don’t know as yet how things will play out. But the glib assumption among the intellectual class that Modi’s victories are due to weak nature of the opposition deserves some nuanced elaboration and context.He is winning because he has been successful in creating a narrative about his administration’s ability in dealing with the country’s problems. He has been successful in propagating his administration’s progress in solving these problems and creating a perception that his team is working on issues and responding to concerns.Now, we can all have legitimate grievances about NDA-II and question whether they have indeed been successful in repairing the damage to the economy.The jury, I would say, is still out though there have been a number of positive measures and progress is happening on many fronts. There are negatives as well, no doubt. But the problem with the Left-liberal intellectual system is its reliance on wholesale condemnation rather than criticism grounded on facts, data and logic. For instance, it is appropriate to criticise the government for its late response to the problem of PSU bank capitalisation. But it is completely idiotic to blame them for the bad loan mess.There are a number of other examples as well. For instance, the Left-liberal establishment fervently believes that the BJP government at the centre and states is bent upon installing some kind of a Taliban-like Hindu theocracy. They believe that the BJP and the entire right-wing ecosystem are nothing but a Gesta polike religious police who will rule our lives.How they manage to get this impression is not clear but it has a led to a tragi-comic situation where every minor crime, petty quarrel, a small-time communal flare-up is being blown out of proportion only to prove this particular point. We even have headlines identifying the victim or perpetrator of a particular crime as belonging to this or that caste. A lot of this is also being done selectively. So BJP ruled states are often in the spotlight for violent crime, farmer suicides or cow vigilantism but Congress or opposition-ruled states can get away with murder.Cow vigilantism should be condemned and criticised but how much attention are we paying to incidents of illegal cow-smuggling and cattle trade.Why do Left-liberal intellectuals who love to speak about Hindutva-inspired cow politics not talk about the damage inflicted by illegal cattle smuggling on farmers? Prabhu puts it well when he says that the contemporary Left has come completely unhinged.“In their lurch towards incoherent extremism, they have lost sight of their mission and are bleeding political relevance”. Truer words about the Left’s intellectual suicide were not spoken before. Shrill rhetoric, extremist language and a mission-driven by hate not logic is leaving Modi unscathed and dooming the opposition in India.