Will it be taken amiss if a few quiet suggestions are proffered towards the direction of the Left, that is, the organized Left? As the country is relentlessly pushed to the furthest frontiers of unabashed capitalism, income inequalities will go on widening grotesquely alongside growing immiserization of some sections at the margin of society. There is need for a coherent and determined Left stripped for action to fight this trend. The Left is of late, however, behaving as if it has lost its coordinates, and tending to give inordinate importance to relatively less relevant issues. Much of this is tantamount to betrayal of the middle and working classes. It should be time for the Left to do some earnest stock-taking.

The current preoccupation — almost obsession — of the Left is with the rally organized earlier this month by the Union railway minister at Lalgarh in the Maoist-infested terrains of West Bengal. The following points are being stressed: (i) the railway minister promised the rally would be non-political, but it turned out to be a full-scale political assemblage with speakers spewing venom against the Left and particularly against the Communist Party of India (Marxist); (ii) in organizing the rally, the lady had the active collaboration of an organization widely known to be a mass front for the Maoists: some of its members are, according to the Central Bureau of Investigation, directly involved in the conspiracy leading to the Gyaneshwari Express disaster. The prime minister must explain how a member of the Union cabinet could keep such nefarious company; (iii) the railway minister expressed at the rally her strong disapproval of the manner in which the Maoist leader, Azad, was killed in a supposed encounter with the Central Reserve Police Force, an encounter which had received the imprimatur of approval from the ministry of home affairs. Her statement was a gross infringement of the principle of collective responsibility in a cabinet-type of government; the prime minister must once again inform the nation what he proposes to do about it.

Let the charges be put under the scanner. The railway minister’s advance statement that she was organizing a non-political rally in the Maoist belt was itself a non sequitur. She is a political animal and whatever she does is ipso facto bound to have a political import. The Left will only be proving its own naiveté if it goes to town complaining loudly about the rally being unabashedly political. It was bound to be so.

The second and third charges both concern the concept of collective responsibility of the government. It appears somewhat incongruous for the Left to worry about what does or does not constitute the immaculateness of the British parliamentary system. Of course, the railway minister could not care less about collective responsibility. Architects of the United Progressive Alliance are fully aware of this fact. They can, however, do nothing about it. Staying in power is more important than observance of the rituals of grammar. The party put together by the formidable lady is numerically the second largest constituent of the UPA, which cannot do without its support. The UPA has therefore to bear with her tantrums. The prime minister no doubt is embarrassed by the lady’s excesses, but he has to lump it. This is not the only discomfiture visiting him and the Congress in recent weeks. They have been embarrassed by revelations of how the Union Carbide chief was, a quarter of a century ago, helped by the then Congress regimes at the Centre to escape from the country. They have been discomfited by the unravelling of a slew of instances of corruption that have marked the arrangements for the forthcoming Commonwealth Games. Embarrassment, though, is not a fatal disease: it does not lead to loss of office, at least not in the immediate period — and the next Lok Sabha polls are almost four years away.

Debating points may be scored by cornering the prime minister over the antics of his colleague. That will nonetheless not change the face of objective reality. Without question, from the point of view of the railway minister, the rally at Lalgarh was a huge success. The state administration had clamped an order under Section 144 of the Indian Penal Code, prohibiting public meetings in the Lalgarh area. The railway minister contemptuously flouted that order; the state government could do nothing. Of vastly greater significance, she can now elicit the sympathy of the adivasi masses by harping on a single theme: they, the adivasis, are for long victims of poverty and deprivation, they had tried to organize protests against this state of affairs, the Maoists took advantage of the situation, there was tension in their neighbourhood, all that the Left has done is to despatch to the area the forces of law and order who have persecuted innocent peace-loving villagers and forest-dwellers. On the other hand, here she is, coming to them almost as a princess of peace, carrying the message of succour, calm and tranquillity. Nor does she demand — quite unlike the CPI(M) — that they first surrender their arms before they come for discussions; she merely asks them to enter a commitment not to indulge in violence and murders.

Why draw blinkers over the eyes, the rally has fetched the lady a major bonus. She might have been, directly or indirectly, offered a helping hand by the Maoists to organize the rally, but she will protest that the organization described as a Maoist outfit has not been declared illegal, so what was wrong if its supporters came to her rally, even Left sympathizers were welcome. In any event, her agenda is far different from that of the Maoists. All she wants is an opportunity to penetrate into the districts in West Bengal densely populated by adivasis and over which the Left had till the other day held sway. The CPI(M) has retreated from most of the area. She badly wants to fill the vacuum and the rally has provided her the opportunity to do so, further enhancing the prospect of her thumping victory in next year’s assembly elections. Once installed in power in the state, she will duly take care of the Maoist nuisance. That is her agenda, she must have primly informed the prime minister and the chairperson of the UPA. All the outward indicators suggest they are only too happy to go along with this grand design.

Why shy away from facing other facts too? Even as the Left Front government allowed the panchayats to degenerate into a seedbed of corruption and, at the same time, their feudalistic style of functioning grievously affected the CPI(M)’s communion with the people, the plight of the adivasis actually worsened in the Lalgarh area. At least a large number amongst them felt that they were getting a raw deal from the system. They were easy prey to the Maoists, who embarked on a programme of indiscriminate killing of CPI(M) cadres and sympathizers to ensure that all competition was eliminated.

It was a difficult situation. But what prevented the Left from trying to retrieve lost ground by mobilizing thousands of dedicated cadres, full of integrity and laden with empathy for the tribal cause, to cross over to Lalgarh from the other parts of the state? Their only weaponry could have been humility. They could have beseeched forgiveness for the past blunders of the Front and appealed to the adivasis to give the organized Left, who had been in the past with them through thick and thin, a second chance. The Maoists, who operate only in small groups, would surely have been somewhat nonplussed by such an approach, and forced to review their tactics.

The Left, given its organizational strength in the state, had the opportunity to swamp the Lalgarh area by mammoth peace brigades calling for justice, harmony and understanding. Instead, its government cried uncle and begged the Centre to send, post-haste, more and more paramilitary personnel. Pursuit of this hackneyed bureaucratic policy of pacification-first-reconciliation-later only ensured the further alienation of the adivasi masses.

Look at the absurdity of the goings-on. The administration is more or less dysfunctional, the security forces have taken over as surrogate, organizing football matches and magic shows for the supposed edification of the village folk. But the police and paramilitary personnel are usually identified with torture and extortion, elements never to be trusted. Those who have despatched them run the danger of further increasing their distance from the people. The sworn enemies of the Left would take full advantage of the situation.

It is never too late. The Left can still — as it has done on the issue of forced land acquisition for industrialization under private auspices — reappraise its Lalgarh policy. It needs to do that to avert a total alienation from the tribal masses and not muff the opportunity of saving them from the clutches of species posing as their emancipators.