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Business News/ Opinion / India’s missing opposition parties
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India’s missing opposition parties

The Congress and the Left have not realized the role they need to play

Illustration: Jayachandran/MintPremium
Illustration: Jayachandran/Mint

It is a plain fact that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has a brute majority in the Lok Sabha. While its strength is questionable in the Rajya Sabha, the overall effect is the absence of a credible opposition in Parliament. The two poles of a systematic opposition—the Congress and the Left parties—have eroded to a perilously low level. The Congress today opposes just for the sake of opposition and the Left is plainly incoherent. This does not help parliamentary democracy.

A long tenure in government always creates a gap between the ruling party and the governed: the longer the stay in power, the greater the gap. In the case of the Congress, its 10 years in government were especially corrosive for it. The party felt that it had got hold of a political elixir: crafting policies to win elections and not letting citizens decide on the basis of its record of governance and growth. It was mistaken.

If the Congress has been dented by staying in government for too long, the Left’s sources of disarray are its rigid and doctrinaire beliefs. The Communist Party of India Marxist (CPM), the main component of the Left, is a good example. The party’s highest decision making body, the Central Committee is involved in a bruising, but pointless debate. The matter at hand being if the party’s outlook, the so-called political-tactical line adopted 36 years ago at its congress in Jalandhar, is still valid. This is astonishing to say the least: in a political system as fiercely competitive as that of India, here is a party that continues to cling to a formulation crafted more than a quarter century ago.

The Congress continues to believe that it has the right to oppose the government on the basis of a different, populist and allegedly pro-poor, policy platform. This was rejected by the electorate decisively. The result is obvious. The party’s attacks on the NDA government are in the nature of nit-picking while what it should be doing is to scrutinize the functioning of government closely. It is not doing that.

The Left’s problem is even more severe. For one, its numerical strength in Parliament is pitiable and its voice proportionately more diffuse. But that is just one bit of its trouble. The Left otherwise has a respectable hearing in other walks of life—academia, mass media and labour unions. But its excessive belief in ideas such as historical inevitability (which prompts it to unrealistic ideas such as following a tactical line discussed 36 years ago) hurts it badly.

The overall effect is that India is being deprived of a sound opposition, something essential for democracy. For now, this may not matter much as the ruling coalition does not command a majority in the Upper House of Parliament. This will, however, change over time. It is then that a strong and informed opposition will be necessary.

It is time the opposition learns to take baby steps. The first step for any party/parties that has/have received a historic drubbing is to understand the reasons for defeat. Then comes the task of regaining political space. Don’t oppose the government for its policies—after all that was the reason why the NDA was voted in with a thumping majority; oppose it for shortcomings in performance. Don’t oppose for the sake of opposition; oppose on principle.

The Left’s task is onerous for it has to do what the Congress is incapable of: combining cadre-based activism with intellectual rejuvenation. It has to examine the reasons why a changing India is rejecting any variant of Leftist and populist politics—the Congress variant, the alternative offered by regional parties and, of course, the Marxist staple it has put forward for so long. In arriving at the underpinnings of an alternative, it should remember that there may be space for a social democratic alternative in India but none for a command-and-control Marxism.

Is the Congress capable of giving principled opposition to the NDA? Tell us at views@livemint.com

Follow Mint Opinion on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Mint_Opinion

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Published: 28 Oct 2014, 05:37 PM IST
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