Clueless in Kerala

A timely reminder has now come from Kerala, which the party’s national leadership would do well to recognise for what it is. Kerala Chief Minister E.K. Nayanar cannot claim high credibility for his pronouncements, but his latest observations on the state of affairs in the Congress-led United Democratic Front are not without a factual basis.

The state Congress cannot seriously challenge the CM’s statements on the deepening fissures within the UDF — not after the Kozhikode rally of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML). The League may not have said in so many words, as he has, that the Congress-led Front’s mainenemy should be the BJP and its allies, not the Marxist-led LDF. The message to this effect from the League, however, was not unduly muted.

Especially eloquent was the well-publicised participation in the rally of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, identified with an all-out anti-BJP line.

It is not as if the Left-led camp was free from contradictions. The leader of the LDF, the CPI(M) itself, has just emerged, and not entirely unscathed, from an open conflict between its trade union wing and political leadership in the state, not excluding Nayanar himself.

But there is an important difference, which makes it a more difficult problem of choice for the party supposedly trying to chart a path to power from Pachmarhi. The Marxists’ inner-party struggle had nothing to do with the "main enemy" question or any major aspect of the political strategy. It is not a problem without precedent for the Congress.

A recurring issue for it has been a sharp incompatibility between its national and state-levelpriorities. Particularly notable has been the mismatch in the states that have remained Left strongholds. Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, in alliance with the BJP at the Centre and (despite periodic demurs) in West Bengal, exemplifies the extent to which inner-Congress differences on the issue can be carried. Such a denouement may not appear imminent in the southern state but a similar development with wide implications cannot be ruled out either.

The other side of the coin is a similar question of options before the Left, especially the CPI(M), in the same states. Jyoti Basu may have the support of a Sonia-friendly party centre, particularly Harkishen Singh Surjeet, in pleading for a Congress alternative at the Centre, but can’t count on backing of the same warmth from his comrades in the state, conditioned by decades of anti-Delhi agitprop. Nayanar too cannot easily persuade partymen to extend their national vision to Kerala politics. The Left has, however, perfected its own techniques of huntingwith the hounds and running with the hare. The task is likely to prove tougher for the Congress.