A Left Prime Minister?

A Communist politician might become India’s Prime Minister sooner than later. But it won’t be Prakash Karat, who, at 58 in 2005, became one of the youngest General Secretaries of a Communist Party anywhere in the world in recent times (Mikhail Gorbachev was 54 when he was appointed to the post. PC Joshi became General Secretary of the CPI at 28. But that was in 1935).

However, two things will stop Karat from becoming the most important man in India: he puts ideology before practical politics; and he doesn’t understand economic issues too well, by his own admission. But Karat will be the man who will decide who India’s first Communist Prime Minister will be. If he sticks to his instinct and purity of conviction, that chance might be around the corner.

Sometimes, unabashed political speculation and scenario building cuts closer to the bone than you think. Look at the following scenario: Over the next few weeks or months, the Left parties withdraw support to the UPA government. After limping along as a minority government, the Congress calls for elections. It loses seats in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Delhi. It gains from Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Kerala. It has 145 MPs today. Its numbers dip to touch 100 or 120.

Meanwhile the Left does its own planning. It is already in touch with the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP). The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) is hoping it will never face a situation where it has to choose between the Congress and the Left [the 35-strong Congress is shoring up (95+18) members of the DMK-PMK coalition government in Tamil Nadu. In an assembly of 235 MLAs, the 15 MLAs of the Left parties support the DMK — which is why it can tell the PMK where to get off. If any one of the allies rocks the boat and the delicate balance is disturbed, the DMK government will have to decide which ally it wants to dump — losing the Congress support could mean losing the Tamil Nadu government; losing Left support means less leverage at the centre and some erosion of the Muslim vote].

Today the SP, TDP, DMK and the Left parties add up to 123 MPs in the Lok Sabha. As the TDP is only going to increase its tally, and the others are unlikely to lose too many seats, the chances are this number will change only marginally. The Congress, on the other hand, will drop seats. The short point of a long argument is that if elections are held in the next four months, it will be a close call whether the Congress or the Third Front stakes claim to form the government. And if the Third Front is indeed in a position to get the numbers and the Congress has no option but to support it, guess who will become Prime Minister?

A Communist, possibly, but not Prakash Karat. One reason is his relative reluctance to address economic issues. In the past, he has always delegated decision-making on this to other party colleagues, whether it is the pension or the EPF or FDI caps. Of course, his broad position is that PSUs should be supported and that social sector spending shouldn’t be curbed. But when it comes to the nitty-gritty of say, the patents issue, it is not economics that is Karat’s forte. It is politics.

How does Karat look at political power ? His view is that the BJP is the biggest Left enemy. But you can throw the BJP out after five years, while once the US sets root in India, it won’t be possible to turf it out for 50 years. In the last six months, Karat has been telling partymen that the US is gaining more and more control of India, whether it is in the garb of joint military exercises (the massive demonstration against joint air exercises at Kalaikunda in West Bengal was called off by the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government after the Prime Minister called him) or its economic stranglehold.

Of course, Karat’s political instinct has failed him and the party miserably in Kerala. He is on excellent terms with both V S Achuthanandan and Pinarayi Vijayan. The problem is they hate each other’s guts. There is now so much money floating around in Kerala politics that it is hard to differentiate between ideology and opportunism. And the party cannot do without either leader.

Karat is also — though it may not immediately be visible to the naked eye — staunchly anti-Congress. Unlike Jyoti Basu and Harkishan Singh Surjeet who, till ten years ago, were quite keen to experiment a stint in government even if it was supported by the Congress, Karat has always favoured a strong Third Front that the Left is able to control. But he will be the first to say that regrettably, this formation is not strong enough yet to form a government.

The operative word is ‘yet’. There is a clutch of ‘ifs’ before a Third Front government can stake claim to power. One, they need to have the numbers. Two, the Left has to be clear about what it wants to do with the numbers. Three, the Congress has to want to support them in realising their ambition.

Karat’s advantage is his clarity of thought. You always know where you stand with him. He has said that Nandigram shouldn’t have happened — that it was a blot on the CPI(M) image. He has been warning the government for months on the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement. His friends say someone should have listened to him. Maybe then things would have been different.