Lame duck, Left wing

The problem, actually, isn’t with the Left. Or, to be more precise, a clutch of Left ideologues. Their pearls of wisdom that World Bank is The Great Satan and a couple of McKinsey consultants can subvert the entire Indian state is vintage Left drivel. A mirror reflection of vintage Right drivel. Both predictable and stale. You can toss it out of the window just like Comrade Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has done. The problem is when this drivel is taken seriously—or, at least, seen to be taken seriously—by the Congress which is running this country.

Rather than grumble in private and duck in public, the Congress needs to look long and hard at the credibility of the coalition it leads. The UPA’s success or failure will be pinned on the Congress. Is it alive to the political implication of a government that just drifts along? That takes one step forward and then is hobbled by a Left that swaggers because it has no stakes in it, other than 60-odd MPs and a bunch of academics, out in the cold, waiting to warm the chairs of committees? It is nobody’s argument that the NDA’s economic policies should be carried on without any change. In fact, as this newspaper has consistently argued, Mandate 2004 was against social and economic exclusion—more and more people want to share the fruits of reforms, of faster economic growth. By no reckoning, does this mean Fortress India. Even the CMP advocates FDI in specialty areas—so what’s wrong with international consultants helping you with ideas on specialty subjects, like governance? As Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia so effectively argued, the Government needs to tap into the enormous expertise that exists outside it. Otherwise, just leave it to babus to monitor other babus. Whatever the Left’s motives, the Congress promised an intelligent, structural delinking of politics and government, a division between Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. Yet, when Singh and Ahluwalia—they constitute the upright, competent face of this government—are attacked viciously, the Congress buries its head in the sand. This cannot do, this is not what India voted for.

Even H D Deve Gowda showed spine when Sitaram Kesri pushed him too far. The Congress must make a choice: use the Left—it certainly has some creative ideas—but tell it to get off its back. Or seek a new mandate with the Communists as poll partners and the CMP as an election manifesto. Or call their bluff. The Left cannot be allowed to do to the economy what the VHP tried to do to the society. India wants the Good Doctor to deliver, not to become a lame duck crippled by its left wing.