The Trust Vote that the Indian United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government won 275—256 on July 22, 2008, has brought out several skeletons in the political cupboard. It has now emerged that how the Left alliance of Communist Party of India (Marxist — CPM), Communist Party of India (CPI), The Forward Bloc (FB), Rashtriya Socialist Party (RSP) and the host of smaller parties could have averted the show-down.
In the entire drama, the Left has been very badly exposed. Like any other party, the CPM, the largest of the Left conglomerate can stoop low to remain in power. The Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thakeray in an editorial in party mouth piece Saamana said the Left was so desperate that it even projected Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati as replacement to Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister of the country.
They had talked of surrendering the sovereignty of the country to the United States by signing the nuclear deal. And Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury are very good at brain washing people. This they did successfully when they were president of the JNU Students Union headed by the Students Federation of India (SFI), the students’ wing of the CPM. No wonder the SFI had a long run at the JNU. Being an JNU alumni I clearly remember how their propaganda machinery used to work overtime to condemn some of the better decisions of the Government and garner support of the immature freshers.
This is what they did while educating the BSP and other supporters about the nuclear deal. Ironically, none questioned the ties of CPM with China. Said Thackeray: “The Left parties would not mind India becoming slaves of China but would not tolerate India becoming friendly with America. But what they have done in Nandigram needs to be condemned more than what Bush had done in Iraq”
Noted journalist Khushwant Singh has put it very bluntly in his column “With Malice Towards All” in The Hindustan Times:
“I have done my very best to understand the Communists’ objections to government’s proposed nuclear deal with the United States. I have failed to do so. They say it will compromise our sovereignty and will make us subservient to America in our foreign policy. That makes even less sense to me. America has never tried to dictate our relations with other nations and has often regretted our growing friendship with countries hostile to it.
We have ignored those protests and made our own decisions. If any country has questioned our sovereignty over our territories, it is Communist China. It never accepted the sanctity of our northern borders with it: it waged a war against us, inflicted a humiliation on us, and to this day lays claims to territories that are ours. Our Communist comrades had never a word to say against the Chinese. Ask them why.
Do we need nuclear power? The answer is yes, we do desperately, and the sooner the better. We cannot afford to pay the exorbitant prices of oil, petrol or gas which we have to import to run our cars, buses, trains and aircraft. We cannot produce enough hydel or fossil-produced energy to cope with our ever-increasing demand for more power to run our factories and keep up the pace of development.
Comrade Prakash Karat is of the opinion that the government must first go to the people before signing the nuclear deal. I am not sure what he means by people: does he mean people who know what nuclear energy is and why it is needed, or just everybody who has a vote? If it is the former, then those who know about it have already spoken in its favour. They include the scientist — ex-President Abdul Kalam (Bharat Ratna), most nuclear scientists, many leading industrialists and Brajesh Misra, the most trusted political adviser of ex-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the BJP.
However, if he means the common man who understands nothing about it, he clearly means an earlier election, which he says he does not want. Whatever it be, he is in for a nasty surprise. Whenever the next general elections take place, it will be a significant diminution of votes for the Communists and gains for his sworn enemy, the Hindu-Sikh communal parties. And hopefully comrade Prakash Karat will fade into the background of the Indian political scene.”
So, the Left has lost all the credibility it had when they allied with the Congress to form the Government. By projecting the deal as anti-Muslims, the left has played the communal card. And their connection with arch enemies BJP in this matter is incomprehensible. It is very unlikely in the next Lok Sabha elections the Left shall be able to garner as many seats it won in the last elections.
Regarding the Bharatiya Janata Party, the less said the better. The party was looking at short term gains forgetting that the real battle lie ahead— the next general elections. How the party leaders are going to convince the voters about party’s stand on the nuclear deal. They were neither here nor there. They were not opposed to the deal but not in favour either. Now, they are left with just one agenda — price-rise which the Manmohan Singh government will try its level best to contain before they go to the people for a second term.
The BSP needs to learn more about the international politics before it tries t form a government at the Centre and certainly Mayawati is no Megawati. — References: HT and agencies
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