What’s left of the Left?

Even as the exit polls were being broadcast, with predictions that the Left Front would be decimated (the predictions placed the Left as securing 7-13 votes), party boss Sitaram Yechury put up a brave face. “We won’t do that badly”, he commented baldly. In the event, his stand was partially vindicated- they won more than seven seats, ten to be precise. Together, the vote share of these constituent parties amounted to 3.2%. While that was more than the 2% secured by the debutante Aam Admi Party, it was less than the 5.33% it had secured in 2004. In its traditional strongholds, Kerala and West Bengal, the Left constituents did manage to secure about 30% of the vote. In Tripura, they did considerably better. They managed to win both the seats as well as to corner 64% of the vote. But Tripura sends only one MP to the 545-member Lok Sabha.

The present predicament of the Left becomes starker against the fact that it posed as the principal opposition to the Congress during the first three decades of Independence. They had a nationwide presence. In 1957, they formed the world’s first democratically elected government in Kerala. Their presence and influence in the industrial hubs of Mumbai and Kanpur are the stuff of legends. In Bihar, they led some of the most effective movements against the privileged castes. In West Bengal, they controlled the State Government for 34 years. Throughout the 1990s, despite the perils faced by global communism, Leftist leaders in India played the role of king-makers. As late as 2004, they lent support to the incoming UPA government andinfluenced the passage of momentous social protection legislation such as the NREGA.

West Bengal exemplifies the decline of the Left. During the 2004 national elections, led by the Communist Part of India (Marxist), they garnered nearly half the vote. By 2009, however, this had dipped to 43%. And in these elections, they barely managed to secure 30% of the vote. Against the 15 seats they won in 2009, this time they won two. In 2011, they were electorally slaughtered by the resurgent Trinamul Congress. Even so, they managed to secure 62 seats in the 294-member legislative assembly. Reports on the 2014 elections suggest that this time round, they recorded a lead in a mere 27 assembly segments. If assembly elections were held today, and the same trends hold, they might gain only 27 seats! The question being asked in Bengal is whether the Left would even finish as the opposition party in 2016, when legislative elections are due.