Opinion In free fall
Bengal bypoll result shows a Left that is far from regaining lost ground
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Kanthi Dakshin, an assembly constituency in South Bengal, has never been a stronghold of the Left Front (LF) — it has lost every election from this seat since 1987. However, the results of the recent bypolls here have special significance for the Left. The LF candidate, a CPI leader, finished third behind the BJP nominee, while the winner, the Trinamool Congress candidate, bagged over 56 per cent of the votes polled. Last year, the same CPI nominee had finished as the runner-up to the Trinamool candidate, with 34 per cent votes while the BJP finished with just over 8 per cent. This time, the BJP polled nearly 30 per cent votes, pushing the LF share down to 10 per cent. While it indicates the fast rise of the BJP as a major player in Bengal politics, it also reveals that the saffron outfit seems to be growing at the expense of the Left. The decline of the Left that set in following the 2011 Bengal assembly election and the 2014 general election only seems to have gathered pace in recent months.
The Left’s crisis is not limited to Bengal. If it is battling long years of incumbency in Tripura, headed for polls next year, the record of the CPM-led government in Kerala has also been uninspiring. Appointments by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and highhandedness of the state police have triggered bickering within the Left Front. The CPI, the second largest constituent of the LF, has been unsparing in criticising the government’s failures. Kerala’s complex social matrix calls for deft and delicate political leadership, while Vijayan refuses to shed the style and image of a party apparatchik. This could cost the Left in the long run as the state heads for a triangular contest: The BJP bagged nearly 15 per cent votes and a seat in the last assembly election and has been building a third front by roping in communal groups that have failed to find space in the Congress and CPM-led fronts. The political scenario in Tripura too is fast changing with the BJP focused on riding the tailwinds of its recent success in other states of the Northeast.
Ironically, the Left is on unsteady ground even in its strongholds at a time when the opposition to the BJP, at least on the university campus, increasingly speaks in an idiom once associated with it. Lacking in energy and ideas, the Left seems set to let go of yet another opportunity to reinvent itself as a relevant political player.
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