End of the road?

The UPA and Congress leadership stand isolated. It may save the government for a while but this entire debate, acrimony and all political factors mark the beginning of the end of the UPA-Left accord. Things will never quite be the same again

Raghav Sharma Delhi

The present denouement with the Congress-Left relationship floundering on the rocks and shoals of the emerging strategic relationship between India and the US is a far cry from the heyday of the equation. It is often forgotten that the foundations of the rapprochement of the CPI(M) and Congress, long adversaries, lay in the rise of the BJP to prominence and power. Paradoxically, the allergy of the Hindutva forces to the foreign origins of Sonia Gandhi from around the time she took control of the party in 1998, only refurbished her pluralist credentials for the Left. The bonhomie never extended to an electoral accord and as many as 57 of the 61 Left bloc MPs in the Lok Sabha entered the House by trouncing Congress or its allies.

The cleavage was evident the most in matters of economic policy. As was the case of the United Front governments of 1996-97, the Left played the role of spoiler on a host of issues, such as the divestment of shares in public sector units (PSUs). On occasion, as with the case of Neyveli Lignite, a company with a historic role in industrialising Tamil Nadu, it got strong support from a powerful regional satrap, DMK chief M Karunananidhi. More seriously, it joined forces with Sonia Gandhi to push a reluctant administration to enact and implement the far-reaching National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).

Yet, the issue on which the glue began to come undone was the texture and tenor of Indo-US relationship. Go back a few steps in time: the Left's close equation with the Congress was reinforced for decades by the willingness of the Congress to engage with the Soviet Union — from Nehru's time. It is difficult today to appreciate how important the opening to Asia meant for a USSR that had been ravaged by war and was isolated from the West during the Cold War. No wonder, in November 1967, among the many foreign dignitaries who stood on the ramparts of Moscow's Red Square was one non-communist: Indira Gandhi. Such ties were renewed afresh even in the Gorbachev period. Rajiv Gandhi struck a special rapport with the reforming leader, with things changing once the USSR dissolved from the pages of history and vanished into the past.

The Indo-Soviet equation complimented the close equation of the pro-Moscow CPI which stuck by Indira Gandhi through the Emergency, an act from which it never quite recovered. The CPM, having maintained 'equi-distance' form both Moscow and Beijing, was always much more wary of the Congress, its principal, even deadly adversary, till the Left took over the ruling space in Kolkata in 1977.

What made all out anti-Congressism more difficult for the Left parties was the equivocal stand of the Congress on the East-West divide through the years of the Cold War. There was never any doubt about the Congress's close links with Indian big business. But it is a measure of how broadminded and open the Left camp is that GD Birla's death brought no less than Fidel Castro to the Indian embassy in Havana on a condolence call. India cultivated close ties with Vietnam even as that country's partisans and soldiers fought US troops to a halt in a bruising land war in Asia. Given such a track record, the Left's anti-imperialism was more than matched by the Congress' own suspicion of the former colonial powers and of their post World War II ally, the US.

It was ironical that even as the USSR was in the throes of crisis, an old political force with deep roots in India's past found new coherence and support among a vast section of the public. It is difficult in the early 21st century to capture the kind of reception that the 'Ram Rath Yatra' of LK Advani got, especially in north India, in 1990-92. By the time the Babri Masjid was demolished, the Congress's own reputation for defence of the minorities was in ruins. It also found little succour from the Left given the drastic, indeed historic, re-orientation of the Indian economy away from the license permit quota raj towards the forces of free enterprise. For a time it looked like the Left-Congress equation was gone for good. But by the late 1990s it was evident they would need each other to counter a revamped BJP that now headed a multi-party alliance and ruled India for six years virtually without a break.

Yet, the new relationship was a study in contrast with the past in more ways than one. Congress had lost its pre-eminent position as the pivot of the Indian polity in the winter of 1989. The Left was more assertive after its own experience of being the key ally of the governments of VP Singh, HD Deve Gowda and IK Gujral. It found new hope in the rise of not only China but an assertive Russia, buoyed up by oil revenues and memories of its own historic role as a great Eurasian power.

It is against this backdrop of a changing India and a dynamic global environment that Manmohan Singh's gamble on the Indo-US relationship looks a lot more shaky in domestic political terms. There is little doubt about the close proximity of the two countries. A fifth of India's exports go to the US. The latter is crucial to the sector that has remade the global brand image of India: software.

If India never had it so good in the eyes of the US, the question remains: why is it that the prime minister's enthusiasm does not translate into a groundswell of support across the political class for the Indo-US nuclear agreement and strategic alliance? One simple answer is that all Indians do not think alike about Uncle Sam. The latter arouses deep passions and strong convictions, both for and against. Generally speaking, it is the vocal middle classes who are for the deal and all it entails: of the rest, we know far too little.

With the US's record of land wars in West Asia and Afghanistan, it is difficult to see it as popular among large sections of the Indian intelligentsia and common citizens, including Muslims, most of whose members are poor. There is still suspicion of the US's ties with Pakistan in circles otherwise well disposed towards it. Even the BJP, a strong proponent (and architect) of closer Indo-American ties, is sceptical about the specific architecture of the nuclear accord.

Let alone the country, the Congress is unable to rally round its most crucial ally. Had the prime minister cultivated the BJP and vice versa, they could have bailed out the deal, much as Atal Behari Vajpayee often helped Narasimha Rao with a crucial economic legislation in 1991-92. But the UPA  and the Congress leadership stand isolated. It may save the government for a while but this entire debate, acrimony and all other factors mark the beginning of the end of the UPA-Left accord.

A new era may well be on the anvil though its contours will take some time to emerge. From around 1990, the old polarities of Congress versus the rest gave way to one of those for or against Hindutva. Now, it seems, the tone of Indo-US ties will be a major factor in shaping views not only about where India should stand in the world, but also how and in which manner India ought to evolve.

Here, the waters will soon part. The Congress may resume its journey but bereft of the Left's company. India will still endure but something major has hanged before our eyes. Things will never quite be the same again.