Opinion View from the LEFT

Although the commonly held view is that the BJP is witnessing an intense fight over leadership issues with individual leaders and their supporters jockeying for positions,Karat says this does not explain the cause of the crisis and only focuses on the symptoms of the problem.

“The BJP had asserted during the elections that it will adhere to the core Hindutva platform. It sought to assure the RSS that it will not dilute the Hindutva ideology. It even dispensed with a common programme for the NDA due to this. It was the rejection of such a platform by the electorate that has precipitated the crisis which has been brewing for some time…At the heart of the conflict now spreading within the BJP is the issue of what should be the character and role of the party.”

The success of the BJP in 1998 and 1999 and its defeat in 2004 underlines the fact that the party can come to power only by broad-basing its agenda and getting on board parties who do not share its sectarian ideology. “But the adherence to Hindutva and the pursuit of communal politics militates against broadening its platform and widening its alliance. Without Hindutva,the BJP has no identity since its economic and foreign policies are no different from that of the Congress.”

“Notwithstanding L K Advani’s efforts to broaden the NDA and strike a posture which would appeal to wider sections of the people as the future prime ministerial candidate of the party,time and again he had to fall back on the explicit communal agenda of the RSS-BJP combine.”

The second successive defeat in the 2009 election has aggravated the situation. The BJP is at the crossroads. It cannot break from the RSS and become an ordinary rightwing party as Jaswant Singh wants it to be. It will find it easier to fall back into the comforting grip of the RSS as Arun Shourie wants it to.

But it will have to pay the price in the long run of remaining an avowedly communal and sectarian party. Given the DNA of the BJP it will inevitably adopt the latter course,he says.

Saving capitalists from capitalism

The lead editorial in the issue talks about the recovery reported by financial giants JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs — both have posted profits in the second quarter of 2009 — nearly two years after the global economic crisis hit the world.

It says the recovery came at the expense of one of the biggest rescue operations by the state under capitalism. “They have benefited from billions of dollars of bailout packages from the ordinary taxpayers funds and cheap government financing to climb over. 19 US big banks received over $ 140 billion and president Obama in his budget proposals for this year is seeking the US Congress’s approval for as much as $750 billion to prop up the financial system.”

“These reported profits,however,do not suggest a turnaround in the recession or tiding over the crisis. Recovering on the basis of the cushion provided by the government,JP Morgan took over two former Wall Street giants — Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual — last year in two government assisted transactions.

“On the other hand,scores of regional and small banks continue to collapse all across the USA. 53 have failed so far this year and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation expects many more to follow,” it says.

On the other hand,it says nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients of the bailout packages paid more than 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $ 1 million apiece for 2008. “The bonus pools of these nine banks that received bailout packages this year was $32.6 billion while their cumulative losses were over $81 billion. They will once again get bailout packages to ‘cover’ these losses. This is the capitalist way of emerging from recession by putting profits before people. While common people continue to get ruined,taxpayers money continues to be doled out in unprecedented amounts to bailout the corporates,” it says.