The Left must consider new tactics for alliance-building and popular mobilisation

Seven years after they lost power in West Bengal, in 2011, where they had ruled for 34 years, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its allies have suffered another setback, this time in Tripura after an uninterrupted 25-year reign. The blow here, administered by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in alliance with the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), has been more shocking than what had happened in West Bengal. After all, the defeat of the Left Front (LF) in the Assembly elections in West Bengal was the final act in a series of losses in other elections in the State — local-level polls in 2008 and 2010, and the Lok Sabha election in 2009.

Slide in bastions

The slide of the Left in Bengal also came after years of struggle by the Trinamool Congress, with the agitation against the land acquisition policy of the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government, finally turning the tide, The agitations and political positioning of the Trinamool — to the left of the LF — had eroded the latter’s support base, with the middle peasantry and land-less agricultural workers shifting to the Trinamool. The result: the LF has yet to recover from the losses of 2011. As things stand, its support base has eroded further and West Bengal is looking more and more an arena of direct political contestation between the Trinamool and the BJP.

Tripura’s story is very different. The LF had not just won the 2013 Assembly elections emphatically; it had followed that triumph with strong victories in the 2014 Lok Sabha election and in the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council elections in 2015. In these polls, the attack on the LF was from the right wing, and unabashedly so. But the LF in Tripura cannot be accused of the follies committed in West Bengal. In fact, the emphasis on social development and peace between the tribal and non-tribal communities in a largely agrarian and forestry-dependent economy is what had helped it to consistently grow its support base in Tripura.

A cursory look at party-wise vote shares in the 2018 elections tells a partial story. The long-entrenched opposition in Tripura led by the Congress had quickly shifted lock, stock, and barrel to the BJP, even as the tribal forces saw in the BJP a renewed opportunity to take on the Left.

This, however, does not explain the 7.42 percentage point shift from the Left Front towards the newly minted BJP-IPFT combine. The emphasis on winning over the Congress support base on the one hand and the tactical alliance with the ethnic tribal outfits which had an insurgent past on the other certainly allowed the BJP to lead the challenge against the incumbent.

Tapping discontent

But there was also a certain amount of discontent after years of LF rule, which fuelled the combined and renewed opposition against the Left. A CSDS-Lokniti survey, for example, showed unemployment and price rise as key issues. Other surveys also projected unemployment, especially among tribals, as a major issue in the State whose economy is characterised by a lack of adequate diversification. Cashing in on these, the BJP built a dedicated campaign using multimedia tools and the Internet besides patronising tribal outfits who saw in it a sturdier ally against the Left. The Left, still dependent on traditional means of campaigning, was not prepared enough for this new onslaught. Having a popular Chief Minister with a reputation for leading a no-frills lifestyle and probity was not good enough.

So even a committed leftist government that focussed on redistribution had its entrenched discontents who cannot simply be bracketed as “class adversaries”. This should lead the Left to rethink whether its agenda of a State-centric model has takers, especially among the youth. That even tribal youth, many of whom voted with their feet for the Left in the past, looked to the right, suggests two things.

First, the LF might have worked hard to bring peace to Tripura, but the BJP, being in power at the Centre, conveyed to many voters a greater hope of realising their aspirations, possibly through higher Central transfers of funds to the State. Second, the LF did manage to transcend the tribal-non-tribal identity divide in Tripura, helped historically by the efforts of legendary leaders such as Dasharath Deb who headed the Ganamukti Parishad that eventually merged with the CPI(M). But recently, the demand for greater recognition of the tribal demographic had more takers, which the LF could not address adequately.

Course correction

With the loss of Tripura, the Left is now in power in just one State (Kerala), much weaker in West Bengal and bereft of any prospects of growth in other States barring some shoots in Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh. This state of affairs for the political Left is a far cry from where it was a decade ago. When in power in three States, it was also a powerful parliamentary bloc that engaged the ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in crucial debates on economic, welfare and foreign policy. Its legislative efforts enabled the fulfilment of path-breaking, civil-society-driven reforms such as the Right to Information Act and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

For the Left, the only way out of this rut is to go back to the drawing board and mobilise people on issues related to the economy, where, besides sluggish job creation, the effects of demonetisation, especially on the informal sector, are still playing out. The largest component of the political Left, the CPI(M), realises the need for independent mobilisation and rediscovering its agitationist potential to get itself out of the morass but there are certain existential questions about the nature of capitalism today and the relevance of statism that require introspection.

Also in the immediate-term, the Left faces physical threats and violence in Tripura, similar to what its supporters underwent in West Bengal. It cannot afford to adopt a purist, isolationist stance in this milieu in Tripura and elsewhere. Besides independent mobilisation, in its quest to get back to relevance, the Left has to think of adopting malleable alliance-building tactics considering the strength of the adversary it now faces — Hindutva.

srinivasan.vr@thehindu.co.in