LEADER ARTICLE
Living with the Left: It Really is the Economy, Stupid!

For its very survival, the Manmohan Singh government depends on the support from the Left. The Congress, its pre-electoral allies as well as the communists realise that their inability to get along with one another would pave the way for the BJP-led NDA to return to office. Although secularism — more specifically, antipathy towards the RSS and its ideological fraternity — is the one bond that would keep the incumbent centre-left coalition together, the key issue is whether differences on economic policy could destabilise the current regime from within.
The Congress and the Left have had a love-hate relationship with each other for well over half a century.India''s grand old party, which led the country''s struggle for independence, was never monolithic; under its umbrella there always existed (and continues to exist) a substantial section that leant leftwards. The Left too has had within its folds, sections that have from time to time supported the economic policies espoused by Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. In recent years, especially since May 1996, anti-Congressism as a political force has begun to lose steam.
The governments of Morarji Desai and V P Singh — as well as their successor regimes headed by Charan Singh and Chandra Shekhar respectively — were short-lived for many reasons but perhaps none more important than internal ideological contradictions. Who can forget George Fernandes attacking Vajpayee and Advani for their "dual loyalty" during the Janata days of 1977-78? Or the mandal-kamandal conflagration in 1989-90 that led to the collapse of V P Singh''s government. The question is: Can an essentially anti-Right coalition overcome its internal differences on economic policy sufficiently to last five years in office?
There are already signs that the conflicts of opinion within the UPA are not as irreconcilable as made out by much of the pathologically anti-Communist English-language media. The decision to wind up the ministry of disinvestment, the clear consensus on not privatising profit-making PSUs, the willingness to listen to trade union demands against a lowering of interest rates on provident fund deposits — are all pointers in this direction.
Communists called India''s first prime minister a lackey of big business interests even before he unfairly dismissed E M S Namboodiripad''s government in Kerala in 1959. Outside the country, how-ever, he was perceived to be firmly in the Soviet bloc. Nehru believed India should have a mixed economy by adapting the best of capitalism and socialism. Instead, we took the worst of both worlds. While our bureaucrats and politicians prospered, thanks to the licence-control raj which stifled free enterprise, our healthcare and education didn''t get the kind of attention that was the hallmark of socialist regimes.
There was little that was "public" about our public sector, which was largely treated as the personal fiefdom of a few. And, until recently, there was little that was "private" about India''s private sector since it was funded by term loans and working capital from state financial institutions and nationalised banks. In one word, ours was not so much mixed as mixed-up economy.
In the late 1990s, Singh headed the South Commission, which was hardly enamoured of the virtues of free enterprise capitalism. He had earlier held key advisory positions in Indira Gandhi''s government when she was riding high on the garibi hatao slogan. In 1991, following the break-up of the Soviet Union, he had to convince his critics that the IMF prescription was good for India, starved as it then was of hard currency.
After the Congress lost power in 1996, Singh was viciously attacked by his own party colleagues — some of whom are important ministers in his Cabinet — for his "pro-rich" policies. But no one dared question his personal integrity, not even during the Harshad Mehta scam. The good doctor today has no choice but to be comfortable with the Left. He has begun well by reassuring us about the Left''s patriotism.
The centre of India''s polity had started shifting rightwards through the 1990s. The BJP-led NDA gave it a strong rightward thrust — perhaps no Indian government has been so supportive of big business as Vajpayee''s government was. The balance had to be restored. It has been. The policy emphasis on job creation and public investments, especially in agriculture, was inevitable. Even Jaswant Singh realised, a little too late no doubt, that a shift of emphasis was needed. The NDA had to pay the price for harping on growth for the sake of growth, without emphasising equity or employment.
Despite the media''s often spurious differentiation between "populism" and "reforms" — words that mean different things to different people — the government''s ability to walk the tightrope would be tested when finance minister P Chidambaram presents his budget in early July. Hopefully, the UPA would approve his budgetary proposals before they are presented — he surely does not wish to emulate the example set by Yashwant "roll back" Sinha. The next big challenge for the UPA would come before the assembly elections are held in the Left bastions of West Bengal and Kerala where the communists would battle the Congress — but that is nearly two years away.