Note:On February 22, 2013, there was a seminar on "Sansadiya Rajniti ewam Vaampanth" in Patna where leaders from most communist parties were present. A senior leader said that as of now there are some 112-113 communist parties in India although the prominent ones are about half a dozen. Although the element of rigor was missing from the deliberations, the genuine pro-people motivations of the speakers were in stark contrast to what is witnessed among the leaders of non-left parties. It was underlined that the seminar was focused on the left path and not on left parties.
Although there was a demand from a section of the participants that the post mortem of what went wrong in West Bengal during the regime of the left parties, there seemed to be a studied silence about it. The episodes of the United Front Government in West Bengal during 1967 and the emergence of naxal movement was recalled.
It was argued that all the left parties including CPI (Maoist) both in India and Nepal have been participating in parliamentary elections directly or indirectly. The latter participates in India through their proxies or through tactical support to pre-existing ruling parties.
In Nepal, Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) emerged as the largest party in the election with 220 out of 575 elected seats in the Constituent Assembly elections in 2008. It was followed by the Nepali Congress with 110 seats and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) with 103 seats. But in the Constituent Assembly elections held in Nepal on 19 November 2013 Nepali Congress emerged as the largest party, followed by Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) and Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). Out of the 240 seats under the direct voting system already announced, the Nepali Congress has bagged 105 seats followed by CPN-UML, which got 91 seats. UCPN-Maoist got third position with 26 seats and the remaining 18 seats went to Madhesi and other parties. Proportionate voting will elect 335 members and the remaining 26 will be nominated by the government. The counting of votes will lead to the formation of a 601-member
Constituent Assembly, including 240 elected through direct voting. Under proportionate representation system, the entire country is considered as one election constituency and seats are allocated in proportion to the vote secured by respective political party. A party needs a total of 301 seats to get an absolute majority. The Rastriya Prajatantrra Party, a pro-monarchist group, got 6,24,281 votes in the proportionate system to emerge as the fourth largest party. It could not win a single seat under the direct voting.
The leaders at the seminar felt that there was a need to learn from the unification of Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist).
The seminar deliberated on the ways of the capitalist class in manufacturing the consent of the oppressed and the way imperial/colonial bureaucracy remains anti-people. It noted that corporate media boycotted the trade unions' successful program of December 12. It was announced that on December 26, there will another round of deliberations on "Sansadiya Rajniti ewam Vaampanthi Dal" will dwell the possibility of creating a front of left parties ahead of 2014 elections. There seemed to be an unanimity that left parties need to use their legacy of struggle for justice for the poor and the marginalized to re-invent themselves. AAP's experiment is also a lesson for the left parties. All the issues which left ignored were used by AAP to mobilize public opinion. But AAP has to also learn from the legacy of the political struggle an failures of the left parties. It remains to be seen as to AAP shapes itself in Bihar amidst a deeply political context. If AAP can succeed in Bihar or join hands with progressive forces in Bihar, it will turn the Modi vs Rahul/Nanan Nilekani into a Modi & Congress vs progressive forces in the 2014 elections.
Gopal Krishna
In this interview with The Hindu, AAP leader Yogendra Yadav says
that in his dream script, his party will be the natural political hope
for the transformative energies he sees in public life
Well-known psephologist, social scientist and former university
lecturer in political science, Yogendra Yadav, 50, surprised everyone
when he joined the Aam Aadmi Party. In an exclusive interview with The
Hindu, he spoke about AAP’s plans for Lok Sabha elections and the likely
emerging political scenario. Excerpts:
You have been assigned the task of drawing a road map for the Aam Aadmi Party for the Lok Sabha elections. What is the plan?
It is early to say. We have received an amazing, tremendous response. In
Tamil Nadu, which is as far as you can travel from north-Indian
politics, our people have had to open a special helpline to simply take
the calls from people offering to become volunteers or members. In
Karnataka they have registered 30,000 members. In Gujarat, in a couple
of places, there were queues outside our office to become members.
Do you plan to put up candidates for all Lok Sabha seats?
The fact is that going by traditional political arithmetic, we were not
much of a force even in Delhi. We could not compete with the political
establishment. At some stage in the Delhi campaign, it ceased to be the
campaign of the AAP. It became the campaign of the aam aadmi of Delhi.
So it is not the party organisation that won; we became an instrument
for people realising their own aspirations. That logic applies to Lok
Sabha as well. If you go by a strict calculus of organisational
strength, recognisable faces and established leadership, even post-Delhi
we are nowhere. But if there is that energy that you saw in 1977
waiting for a vehicle, then we can become that vehicle.
What was the mood in the party on government-formation in Delhi?
Speaking for myself, there are moments when what you decide is less
important than how you decide. What matters is that for the first time a
major political party is saying that for a vital decision we need to
turn to people. The idea that once you have won an election then the
people’s voice resides in your pocket, and that you can move it any
which way you like, is what stifles people in representative democracy.
If you read the first line of our constitution, it says the reason why
our party came into existence is to restore power to people.
The Lokpal Bill has been passed by Parliament with a deafening
silence from political parties on the role of Arvind Kejriwal and others
in the anti-corruption movement. Does it look like a concerted effort
to stymie the AAP after its debut in Delhi polls?
Of course, for political parties who think that by passing the Lokpal
Bill they have regained the legitimacy that they lost two years ago, all
I can say is that they would discover it [that they were mistaken] on
the polling day. Timing is everything in politics. If the ruling
establishment had given in to the Jan Lokpal movement during the Ramlila
Ground agitation, it would have had a different effect. Giving in now,
after the AAP victory in Delhi… people are not fools [not to understand
that].
What do you make of Anna Hazare lauding Congress and BJP leaders?
Anna’s parting of ways with the AAP happened one year and two months
ago, then why is this being released by media in some 24 instalments?
From our part there was no attempt to use his name. I think there were
other forces that were keen that Anna should become a factor — that his
name should be dragged and he must be made to say a few things about
Delhi [election]. That happened. To my mind the big picture doesn’t
change. Yes, he parted ways with us. It led to severe disappointment and
cost us some support there and then.
Does the AAP’s arrival signal space for alternative politics?
The last two decades have witnessed the expansion of the third space in
Indian politics in the sense that new energies, new social groups, and
new issues have entered politics which are beyond the Congress Parivar
and the Sangh Parivar. The United Progressive Alliance and the National
Democratic Alliance failed to capture that, so that third space has
expanded in politics. At the same time, this third space has no
political hope. The Third Front has shrunk and fragmented. The Aam Aadmi
Party stepped into this political vacuum where the third space has
expanded but the third force has shrunk and fragmented. In the last
three decades the most creative energy in our public life has not come
from within politics proper but from outside politics — from people’s
movements on issues such as displacement, Dalits, farmers, women, right
to food, right to information and above all, jal, jungle, zameen (water,
forests, land). The difficulty is that this energy did not have a
political expression, hope, and a political vehicle. In my dream script,
the AAP is the natural political hope for these energies.
This most transformative energy of the last 30 years does not have a
front-door entry in the political establishment. It has the backdoor
entry, hence the irony of the last 10 years of the UPA regime is that
the National Advisory Council says things that politicians should say
and the ministers are saying things that bureaucrats should say. This
tremendous transformative energy needs a political vehicle of its own.
That energy must not end in Sonia Gandhi’s durbar. It deserves much
better. It must reshape the nature of political power of this country.
Do you think in the forthcoming general election, there is a
possibility of a Third Front with the involvement of the Left parties?
I don’t see much of that happening. I think the days of the Third Front
experiment of the kind that we witnessed in 1996 are over. First,
because there is no single axis around which the Third Front can be
formed. Secondly, these parties which looked like an alternative in the
1990s look like the political establishment right now. They are as much
an establishment as the Congress and the BJP are. They cannot be the
carrier of the transformative energy that we think about.
Do you believe that in the recent Assembly elections, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi had any impact?
He may have played a marginal role. In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP was to
win anyway. In Rajasthan, the Congress was going to lose anyway. Mr.
Modi may have contributed marginally to the technical victory of the BJP
in Chhattisgarh. I am not sure if he was much of a factor in Delhi.
What is clear is that the BJP did not put his reputation at stake.
Will he be a factor in the Lok Sabha elections?
Look, he is a factor. Sometimes, the secular establishment closes its
eyes to the strongest challenge it has. I think the one force that
should be credited with his rise is not Mr. Modi himself but the UPA.
How do you look at Rahul Gandhi in this context?
More than once he has said the right kind of thing but very often
mistimed it completely. And as yet, he hasn’t shown either the capacity
or the skills to be able to take on Mr. Modi. I personally feel that if
the election becomes Modi versus Rahul Gandhi it will be a tragedy for
the country.
Is there a possibility of the 2014 general election becoming a Mr. Modi versus Mr. Kejriwal?
It is too early to say that.
What brought you to the AAP?
Only one slice of my life (as psephologist) has been visible for quite
some time. From the early 1980’s I have been part of Samata Sangathan
and the Samajwadi Jan Parishad. I have been associated with the National
Alliance of People’s Movements including campaigns for RTI and with the
two failed attempts in 2004 and 2009 of creating alternative political
fora which involved Justice Rajinder Sachchar, Kuldip Nayyer, Medha
Patkar, Anna Hazare. In a sense, what I am doing today is what I wanted
to do all along. I quit my job 20 years ago from the university because I
wanted to go to my village [in Rewari district].
Do you intend to contest elections?
In principle, yes, I would like to, as an AAP candidate. I cannot advise
everyone to do it and then not take the risk myself. The only question
is which [place] and when and whether for the Lok Sabha or for Vidhan
Sabha. That is not decided yet.
When the anti-corruption movement split why did you choose Arvind Kejriwal over Anna Hazare?
I have said from Day One that the logical culmination of a movement is
politics. In fact, the anti-politics strain of the [Anna-Kejriwal
anti-corruption] movement worried me enormously. I wrote [somewhere]
that anti-politics is anti-democracy and that was wrong. The day they
announced it [formation of a party], I thought I had no legitimate
reason to stay out.
Gargi Parsai
No comments:
Post a Comment