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Journalism of Courage
In a newspaper interview, CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat underlines the Left’s “respect” for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He calls him a man of “strong convictions”, appreciates his “unquestioned integrity”. So does this mean there will be no mid-term polls after all, that the Left will not pull the plug on the UPA? But that is not the question. Karat’s comments on Manmohan Singh merely reiterate one of the more fascinating ironies of the present political situation: between two men of high intelligence and principle is a grand political impasse that neither seems able to break despite their sterling qualities, or because of them. The nearly three-month long nuclear stand-off, pitting Karat against Singh, drives home a truth: personal probity and purity of conviction are not all, or even enough, in democratic politics. Funnily enough, they can even become a hindrance to political give and take.
What is needed in a polity as complex and untidy as India’s is the ability to negotiate between rigid articulations of positions, to draw them closer without making it look like an outright victory for one and all-out defeat for the other. Because left to themselves, doctrinaire stands, even when they are right, can lead into a political make-or-break. In fact, the absence of this essentially political skill has been felt all through the tenure of the UPA in the last three and a half years. The point is not just that the Left and Congress shared nothing more binding than their mutual antipathy to the BJP at the starting block. It is also that there has been very little political chemistry between the two after that. As a result, every stand-off has seemed like it can only be broken by the winner taking all, leaving nothing at all for the loser.
Of course, the disagreement over the nuclear deal is not just another stand-off. But particularly for that reason, what the UPA-Left sorely needed and spectacularly missed was a skilful negotiator with irrefutable stature like, say Harkishan Singh Surjeet or Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Would any of the two men have accepted the onerous job? Sadly, given their ailing health, this will remain a tantalising what-if of history. Meanwhile, the UPA-Left’s unique tug of war between two good men continues to wreak its toll.
