Election is Over: Where is the Opposition?

Election is Over: Where is the Opposition?

One month long election is over and results are declared. The ruling coalition retrieved the mandate to continue its performance for another term. In India, election is like a festival and everyone in the country are keenly interested in the electoral process and watch it from the beginning. Between the declaration for the election and the declaration of results, lot of things happens. This time also the same thing happened. The United Progressive Alliance lead by Indian National Congress got the mandate to form the government and the Bharatiya Janata Party lead National Democratic Alliance was placed in the opposition. The opposition portion of the Lok Sabha will include the remaining political parties who fought against the ruling Congress lead government.

Main question emerges after the election is about the opposition. Who will be the real opposition in the house? Who will speak for the common man rather than for the business, regional and religious lobbies? How many parties have a national vision? In the present composition of the ruling coalition, these things are very important. One party which has national presence is Indian National Congress and other one is the largest opposition party the Bharatiya Janata Party. Though, the communists don’t have a national presence, they generally show a national perspective in legislative activities. The rest, not as blame, had better affiliation towards the interests of their region or the section, religion, community they belongs to.

It is difficult to find any difference between the ruling coalition and the major opposition coalition. Only visible difference between the major parties INC and BJP are one doesn’t belongs to any religious section and other always tries to propagate the secularism of ‘Hindutwa’. But they don’t have any difference of opinion on issues regarding economic liberalisation, privatisation, foreign policy, and policy towards labour, banking, agriculture, pension fund etc. It was evident that the both governments led by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Dr. Manmohan Singh followed almost similar approach towards above mentioned segments. There is a very powerful corporate lobby that controls or tries to control the public opinion through their various channels provides unlimited support to both coalitions.

In fact, during the one month long election duration, Indian corporate, especially who runs the media houses were busy to push their agenda. Their target was the urban and semi urban educated class who gained exposure through the call centre and back office jobs. The support of this newly emerged ‘apolitical’ group never looked beyond the corporate agenda and the corporate slowly started gaining upper hand in interest articulation and opinion creation processes. Remember, there was a campaign from the media to use the constitutional option of ‘freeze vote’ in the election and the same idea was circulated for more than an year through the e-mails. Interestingly, all these e-mail were started from one or another back office of multinational companies. This shows the negative attitude of some section of our society towards electoral processes.

The corporate can easily gather the support of the expanded middleclass but it is not that easy to change the mind and consciousness of the majority Indians. They might be uneducated or illiterate but they have their own views and opinions and they have the will to show it during the election time. This is the beauty of Indian democracy. For corporate, it is not big issue to reach them but a political parties who have good roots in rural poor should use them properly. Here, the left made a massive mistake and they paid for it.

Here comes the relevance of the left parties and the biggest crime they did to the people this time. Losing election is a normal thing in politics but forgetting their responsibilities towards the people is much more than betrayal. This main opposition of Nehru’s time is cornered in two or three small pockets of the country and in the verge of losing their national party status. They lost in their strong holds and also lost in the places where their coalition partners had a better run. Through the lose they provided a huge vacant space in the parliament to the regional parties and the special interest parties. Though the left parties don’t have any kind of majority in the parliament to make changes in the government policies, their political positions were always counted in a positive way by common people.

In the capital city, the general opinion after the election and counting was a kind of big relief. Many people expressed that this time Congress will do better, just because they don’t have to depend on the support of the left parties. This time, there won’t be much trouble makers like communist party did last time and the government will be able to function in a better way. After election, everything is about the formation of government and allocation of portfolios to ministers. The mass media started their speculation works by picking up their favourite candidates in key positions in the cabinet. Why there is such resentment against the left parties who had a major role in the formation of this UPA coalition and supporting a good number of initiatives of the last government? Why people were happy to see the support of Samajwadi Party, which belongs to a particular section in the most populated state of India, rather than a creative support with criticism from the left?

The answer is with the communist parties only. It was their failure to convince the majority about their position on each and every issue. Their premature leadership had more interested in creating a government with the best opportunists in the country. The miserably failed to read the mind of the common people and also failed to communicate with them in their language about their efforts and success. They forget the role did by their former leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet in the formation of the UPA and his endless effort to form such coalition against the BJP. They failed to read the pulses of their own workers in their mass base places like Bengal and Kerala and turned against the feeling of people in those places.

They should realise their mistakes first but also should realise there is no way for a comeback. For the last 60 years, they failed to expand their mass base and comfortably sat on those few pockets and satisfied with small returns. In the past, the common people supported them because they felt the communist parties’ supports the peasants and labourers and stand with them. After 60 years, they realised that the party is not standing for the cause of the common people but they are for gaining power and gearing for the role of king maker. Yes, it was the role they were expecting through the formation of the third front with ABCD parties.

As per their political position, it was defined as their role to challenge the Congress led political coalition in issues regarding liberalisation and privatisation. The main opposition party BJP won’t do it in full heart because the Congress led UPA minus left is following the same policies which they continued during 1999-2004. The blatant privatisation programmes promoted by the famous trio –the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, former finance minister Chidambaram and the deputy chairman of the e planning commission Dr. Montek Singh Ahaluwalia –was curtailed to a certain level by the interference of the left parties in the last government and it won’t repeat this time. In fact, the present government can gear up its programmes without any obstruction just because of the political blunder of the left. Numerically they melted down from 60 to less than 25 and the parliamentary experience also matters this time. For instance, in Kerala CPM got four seats and two of them are new faces and other one had a single term experience in the parliament.

Parliamentary democracy is based on debates and discussions. So, critical approach during the discussion on policy matters is part of its correction mechanism. The left parties will be the usual frontrunner in criticising the government on ideological and other matters. With this least numerical presence, how they will attract the attention of the parliament this time? Whenever a bill or a submission appears on the matters such as agriculture, education, industrialisation, labour laws, public distribution system, privatisation, public health etc., it is the responsibility of the left to look into it critically with people’s perspective. How many are there this time to do such approach? If we look into the parliamentary debates, the left had made a great contribution in the floor on various subjects. The national leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajeev Gandhi to certain extend listened to the views and criticisms of left in the parliament floor before they make the final decision. In the current situation, who will correct the policies of the government? We can’t expect it from the BJP and its allies or from the regional parties like ABCDs.

Now, the poor people can’t expect that their voice and concerns will be reflected in the policy matters and it is the failure of the communists rather than the victory of Congress or BJP. They miserably failed to listen the problems and miseries of rural poor who lives in the backwardness of the Shining India. When the corporate supported political parties think and formulate the government policies, it is difficult to accept that they will fulfil the concerns of the poor in it. If we go through the recent one and a half decade history of Indian political system, we can understand why people opted for a left supported Congress led government than providing another chance to the ‘Shining India’ campaign of BJP.

During the Narasimha Rao government, Congress had a run with its liberalisation policies and forced the people to think twice to support them in the next election. So, the opted for a third front and once it failed they decided to give a chance to BJP. In 2004, the people realised that none of them are good enough to support and decided to give a chance to BJP led government. After the dissolution over the NDA government, the people looked for a change when the UPA alliance was organised by CPM general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet. The left supported the government form outside till the last year when their alliance broke on the issue regarding Indo-US Nuclear deal.

While breaking an alliance on a single issue like Nuclear deal, actually communist lost their chance or channel to bring their achievements they made during the 4 years with UPA. Post election indicators are showing the resurgence of the corporate India with a 1300 points increase in the stock market on 18th May. The foreign media projected it as the mandate for further economic liberalisation. BBC says that the communist parties, who had blocked reforms in insurance, pension funds and the selling off of state-owned companies, lost more than half their parliamentary seats. The communist parties should sit and look into it in detail. They should do a post-mortem on election results and also on their approach towards the election and find out why they failed or lost more than half of their seats. Is it because of blocking the reforms in insurance, pension funds and selling off the state owned companies or their failure of communicating the fact that it was they who stopped such reforms and helped the economy to stand in this present situation rather than facing economic meltdown.

The left has to look into every matter which led them to this big failure. They should realise, it is their problem that they moved away from the common people. When they started dancing with the tunes of corporate like Tata, Salim Group and SNC Lavlin, they forgot the fact that their root is still with the rural poor and not with the urban elites. Industrialisation is not a negative thing but it should come in any place with keeping the conscience of the people who lives there. Instead of this, the party moved against the will of people and got into trouble. The inexperienced leadership has to learn from the people, they should go to the people and find out what they expect from them rather than asking them to follow what the party leadership directs. They should train their young parliamentarians in proper way to engage in democratic debates and approach policies with people perspective.

The loss of communist parties in the parliament election is a big crime they did to the people of this country. They moved away from their real agenda and left the common people into the hands of corporate, religious, and regional elements. Before people punish them further, they should take corrective measures and gather the popular support back. They have the responsibility to prove that the India belongs not only to the corporate world, international investors and traders but to the common people and they will protect their interests. We hope, with the remaining seats, the left will try their best to perform as a constructive opposition and bring their critical observations on to control the neoliberal reform programmes which the government promotes.