The Left Front on its way out?

It doesn't require much wisdom to read the writing on the wall. The recent Panchayat elections results in Kerala are indicative of the winds of change. The communists appear to have been shaken by the peoples' verdict though they are finding alibis for the debacle. All the same, the assembly elections, which are only a few months away, will drive home peoples' complete disenchantment with their ways.

The CPM leaders accuse the United Democratic Front of having joined hands with communal forces. At the same time they admit that the party's defeat could be partly due to the alienation of the minorities.

What has troubled the communist leaders is the alienation of people at the grassroot level.

The party was so confident of victory that one of its ministers is reported to have blurted out that if everyone who had benefited from their rule would vote for the party, they would romp home to a historic victory.

Now the results turned out to be an anti-climax to all their boasting! Not long ago, Prakash Karat, CPM leader, went about threatening to throw out the UPA from the seat of power. The latest threat is against the proposed visit of the US president to India.

It is an accepted fact that welfare schemes started by the communist government for the poor had reached a large number. As a party that has its roots among the have-nots, it even was able to win widespread sympathy from the well- to-do who were sympathetic to the cause of the poor as a whole. Litterateurs, academics, intellectuals, artistes, journalists of Kerala had , generally speaking , a leftist bend not necessarily because they agreed with the Marxian understanding of reality but because of the awareness of the long history of oppression and exploitation of the poor in their land.

If that was how the communist movement gained momentum, the ground realities are changing fast. More people have come above the poverty line not because of good governance but because of remittances by Keralites abroad. Lack of employment opportunities has always compelled people to move out of the state. The communists have done precious little to remedy the situationâ€"they have only scared away prospective employers and investors. Their counterparts in West Bengal had lately realized their mistake while comrades in Kerala are not repentant about their support militant trade unionism.

A debate that had arisen during electioneering is about the interference of religious leaders in the politics of the day. Christian leaders were angered by the leftist' attempts to interfere with education; he subtle attempt was to thrust the godless philosophy into text books.

Power had corrupted the ways of the comrades whose changed lifestyles did not reflect their compassion for the poor. Their long stay in power had also given them an air of arrogance especially at the village levels where the cadres used their muscles to have their way.

The student wing of the party too displayed a defiance of rules and indulged in violence at the slightest provocation. This tendency is also borne out of a confidence that they can get away with anything.

It must be said to the CPM's credit that they championed secularism, thereby coming to the defense of the minorities whenever they faced trouble. But then when the party seemed to be losing their support, there was a tendency to play the communal card by accusing the Muslim and Christian leaders of indulging in communal politics.

It is time that the leadership of the LDF devise new ways of uplifting the poor; their way of emptying the coffers for doling out subsidies to the poor is not the best means of economic growth. They are responsible for misleading the working class into believing that they have a right to wages without working and that through militancy they can make the employers pay. The leaders as well as the cadres must know that there is no alternative to hard work. Ganging up against the rich and the well-to-do is not the best way to usher in prosperity. Distributive justice is important, but when there is so little to distribute what do we do?

Flushed with the taste of victory, the Congress must also be vigilant and not forget the lessons it had learnt in its days of oblivion. Very often it has played vote bank politics, unwilling to stand up for justice and truth.

All political parties must feel themselves responsible for what they have made of a high literacy state like Kerala where suicides and divorces are reaching record levels. What they make of a state grown fond of making it rich through lottery or getting high by gulping alcohol?