People's Democracy

EDITORIAL

Decisive Shift In Offing

WITHIN hours after Mr L K Advani thundered that the Indian polity can only be bipolar, with the Congress and the BJP being the two poles around whom the other parties will join in alliance, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) broke its eleven years old association with the BJP/NDA and announced its decision to fight the elections to the parliament and the state assembly in Orissa in a seat sharing agreement with the Left parties. How distant the BJP and Mr Advani are from the ground realities in our country can be gauged from this.

As we go to press, leaders and representatives of the Left parties, Telugu Desam, Bahujan Samaj Party, TRS and AIADMK have gathered near Bangalore in Karnataka at the invitation of the Janata Dal (Secular) for a joint rally launching the election campaign in Karnataka. Such coming together of non-Congress secular parties has further eroded the efforts of the BJP to consolidate the NDA allies. All down the east coast, the former BJP allies in the NDA have chosen not to remain with them. Instead, in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu, they have joined the efforts of the Left to create an alternative secular combination.

These developments clearly show that a churning process is taking place in Indian politics. The ground level realities, where the livelihood conditions of the Indian people are being severely attacked by the day, especially with the deepening impact of the global economic recession, are putting pressures on the political leadership of secular parties to look for an alternative policy direction that will be people-oriented and not be solely pre-occupied with corporate profits. Given the track records of both the BJP-led NDA and Congress-led UPA governments, such a decisive shift in the policy direction can only come about when there is a political alternative that can affect such a change.

People, clearly, also see that the few pro-people measures taken by the UPA government like the NREGA, rights of tribals to forest produce, waiver of loans to distressed farmers etc have materialised only due to the consistent pressure mounted by the Left parties when they were supporting the UPA government from the outside. Likewise, people also see that if India has been protected from a complete economic devastation in the wake of the global recession, it is because the Left had prevented the UPA government from going ahead with disastrous financial liberalisation �reforms� like full convertibility of the Indian rupee; privatisation of pension funds; permitting foreign banks to takeover Indian private banks; and increasing the FDI limit in the insurance sector.

Thus, on both counts -- pressurising the government to implement pro-people programmes, on the one hand, and preventing the government from proceeding with reckless liberalisation that would have imposed greater miseries on the people, on the other -- the Left parties had played an important role. It is on the basis of this experience and on the strength of the popular pressures arising from the vast mass of the people yearning to improve their living conditions that many non-Congress secular parties are moving towards a secular alternative.

The RSS, this week, has, in a sense, confirmed the centrality of the hardcore Hindutva agenda by declaring that they would extend support only to those parties that promise the construction of a Ram temple on the disputed site at Ayodhya. This will only further embolden the BJP to use as its election mascot this hardcore communal agenda. Thus, what is in store for the country is the sharpening of communal polarisation and its disastrous and bloody consequences. The required commitment to safeguard the secular-democratic character of the Indian Republic and the security of its religious minorities can only come from an alternate secular political formation. This becomes imperative when we recollect the fact that during these five years of the UPA government at the centre, the Congress lost elections at the state level on at least thirteen occasions facilitating the consolidation and return to power of the BJP in these states.

By bringing to the centre-stage the hardcore Hindutva agenda, the RSS/BJP has set in motion the inherent contradiction of the NDA. If the Vajpayee-led NDA government completed its full term in office, it is because, by their own admission, of having put this agenda on the backburner. Clearly, if this were brought to the centre-stage, many an a NDA partner may have had second thoughts on belonging to this formation. If anything, there are greater compulsions, this time around, for this aspect to be more assertive. However, the RSS/BJP see that only by sharpening communal polarisation can they retain some of its fast eroding mass following. The more they do so, the greater is the alienation of the non-BJP NDA partners. This is the inherent contradiction of the NDA.

Apart from sharing a commonality in policy prescriptions with the Congress on issues of economic policy and subservient attitude towards US imperialism, the BJP�s aggressive communal agenda only weakens and eventually seeks to destroy the secular democratic foundations of modern India. This underlines the urgent need for an alternative political formation that will pursue an alternative policy trajectory in the interests of India�s unity and integrity and the welfare of its people.

In the run-up to 2004 general elections, the BJP/NDA was euphoric with their `Shining India� slogan and boasted of returning to power very comfortably. The BJP�s then president had, in fact, projected that the BJP by itself will win 300 seats and the NDA 400! The eventual post-election reality was there for all to see.

Sections of the Congress and the UPA seem to suffer from such euphoria this time around. They too will have to come to terms with a reality that would be entirely contrary to their euphoria. On both instances, the media, electronic media in particular, have ably assisted in sustaining such euphoria.

The current churning in Indian politics is moving in the direction of creating a people�s alternative in the coming elections which will bring about a decisive shift in the country�s policy direction by moving towards creating a better India for its people and the world. This political direction needs to be consolidated further.