T N Ninan: SWOT for the Left

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

If you were a communist leader in India today, how would you work out a SWOT analysis? That is difficult to answer for all non-communists, who have an entirely different frame of reference for judging issues, but it is worth a try. The Strengths would include primarily the 11 per cent representation in the Lok Sabha, which props up a minority government at the national level. That same representation in Parliament would have provided little leverage if the ruling coalition enjoyed a parliamentary majority, so it is an accidental position in which the communists find themselves (as they did in 1969, when Indira Gandhi split the Congress and survived with communist support till elections in 1971). A less accidental strength would be control of two important state governments, reflecting the strong vote base in these states. A third strength would be the commitment of party cadres, and a fourth would be the support base among the industrial workforce, as reflected in the membership of the Centre for Indian Trade Unions across the country. The final strength would be the reputation that communist leaders have for personal financial integrity.

Among Weaknesses, the list must lead off with the point that the communists have not been able to expand beyond the two or three states where they established a firm hold decades ago. There was a time when a strike call by the Left could paralyse public services in many cities and states, but general strikes are increasingly in disfavour and even frowned on by the courts. The even more serious weakness is that the dominant ideology of the age is hostile to communist thought, and no one in the mainstream democratic parties has much sympathy for the communist point of view. This is the key difference between now and 1969-71, when large parts of the middle class were willing to buy Leftist pronouncements. India today is on a capitalist path, and is likely to stay on that road.

As for Threats, the principal one is that the leverage that the Left has in the current Lok Sabha will not be there in the next one if the UPA loses power in 2009. A second threat is the challenge from the Maoists""though this is not as serious as many people make it out to be. Only 4 per cent of the 12,000 police stations in the country are affected by Naxal incidents""which is considerably less alarming than the usually quoted figure of 160 districts out of 600.

A third threat would be the prospect of long-term decline if the communist ideology continues to be on the retreat globally, and if India's market-oriented reform programme continues to chalk up successes.

The interesting questions come when you look at Opportunities. The main one is the chance to box well above your real weight in national affairs, to push national policy in a certain direction during the life of this government. This is a repeat of 1969-71, and was used very effectively in committing the UPA to a common minimum programme which includes much of what is important to the communists. The distress in the countryside, because of stagnant agriculture, might also provide the opportunity to move into one or two more states and establish a firmer base, but despite longstanding pockets of influence in many states, the prospect of capturing one more state (other than little Tripura) or a significantly larger number of parliamentary seats, lies in the realm of wishful thinking. If at the end of the SWOT analysis, a communist leader were to ask himself what would get the Left that expanded base, it would become clear very quickly that the Left can become truly pan-Indian only by espousing a social democratic platform, and by developing leaders among the depressed classes. In other words, if the Left should position itself as an alternative to caste-based regional parties, to a royalist Congress and to a communal BJP, and with a more mainstream view of economics, it might find itself making more progress. And that is the real opportunity that the communists have been missing these past many years.