It has been coming for a long time; and now it has happened. Finally Indian politics has divested itself of whatever little ideological baggage it had carried so far.
The election-induced convulsions among the "secularists" and "socialists" in the Janata Dal; the division in the Left; and the crisis of identity facing the BJP which - minus its hostility towards the minority - is beginning to look like any other centrist party, confirm the marginalisation of ideologies and its replacement by self-serving electoral tactics.
The millennium's (hopefully) last general elections are set to enter the history book as the most ideologically innocent exercise the country has witnessed in living memory.
Of the eve of the elections it is like being Alice in Wonderland, all conventional notions of 'who's-who-and- who-stands-for-what' having been stood on the head.
Ram Vilas Paswan and Sharad Yadav whose natural reflexes until the other day consisted of swearing by secularism and attacking the BJP are now eagerly waiting to be admitted into the BJP-led Front. And why? Because that is the only way to beat the challenge from Laloo Prasad' Yadav in Bihar, never mind if in the process the only political force capable of taking on the BJP in the state is weakened.
Survival of the self is the name of the game; the rest is simply a means to get there.
The merger of a section of the Janata Dal, the Samata Party and the Lok Shakti - touted as the coming together of old socialist comrades - has all the trappings of a marriage of convenience.
The Janata Dal and the Samata need each other in Bihar and the Lok Shakti needs the Janata Dal in Karnataka and collectively the three need to hang together to improve their bargaining power vis-à-vis the BJP in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
The merger has nothing to do with strengthening of socialist forces and everything to do with protecting individual interests in the coming elections and later in the run "p to the Government formation. Similarly, the confusion in the Left has little to do with ideology.
Just when it seemed that the Left had finally come to acknowledge the threat from the divisive Right and was serious about resisting it even if it meant working with the Congress(I), the RSP and the Forward Bloc, put a spoke in the wheel. This insistence on keeping an 'equal distance' from both the Congress(1) and the BJP, though projected as 'principled' politics, is purely a tactical line.
The Congress(I) being their principal political adversary in West Bengal - the only State where the RSP and Forward Bloc really matter - they do not want to be seen partying with it in New Delhi. In choosing between a larger ideological issue - namely the fight against the majoritarian Right - and the local survival kit they have unhesitatingly plumped for the latter. ...
The very concept of 'equi-distance' - first invented by the two Communist parties -never made sense and was really a product of the Left's blind anti-Congressism which, if anything, contributed to the rise of the BJP. It makes even less sense now that the Congress(I) has lost its fangs and the shadow of the BJP looms large.
The plague-on-both-your-houses line is a cynical response to a situation which demands that issues are clearly demarcated, the political 'enemy' is identified and isolated with the help of all those who may be gunning for the same 'enemy'
For the first time, the Left is approaching elections as a sharply divided house with even the two Communist parties pulling in different directions in several states despite their common perception that the BJP should be their main target. Which again shows that considerations other than ideology are at work.
li is the same story with the other major players – the BJP, the Congress(I), the Samajwadi Party and even the fledgling Nationalist Congress Party.
The emphasis this time is so much on working out the winning combination that the traditional political divide lies in tatters ... Who knows even the Congress (I) and the BJP may end up on the same couch!
