By Jayati Ghosh
It is beyond doubt the general elections of 2009 have delivered a severe blow to the Left parties. Of course, it was always likely that the Left would come down from its historically high tally of 61 seats in the previous Lok Sabha elections, especially as these came overwhelmingly from only two states. But the extent of the decline in Left seats, to less than half the previous figure, nevertheless comes as a shock.
What is particularly disturbing is the performance in the two previous Left strongholds of West Bengal and Kerala. What explains this sharp deterioration?
This is a crucial question, since if the Left is to recover and grow again, as well as spread its message to other parts of the country, it is important to draw the right lessons from this defeat and to change strategy accordingly.
The lessons are likely to be different in the two states. Most people would agree that the Kerala state government is reasonably popular, and chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan certainly continues to command very high approval ratings. But the margins of victory and defeat have always been relatively small and the state has a history of consecutively shifting both Lok Sabha and Assembly victories across the two major fronts.
So even a small shift in vote percentage can cause very large shifts in the seats won or lost, and this is likely to have been the case in this election.
Having said that, it is also likely that the widespread perceptions of factionalism within the main party in the Left Front, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), made people uneasy and harmed the front electorally.
The rather rigid attitude towards alliances with some smaller parties in Kerala before this particular election also did not help.
In West Bengal the picture is more disturbing. There is clear evidence of vote shifts against the ruling Left Front, and this message from the electorate cannot be ignored but must be addressed. The Left Front has ruled the state for more than three decades, providing not only stability but also many extremely positive measures for the improvement of conditions of life of ordinary people: not just the crucial land reforms that were the most extensive of any state government in the last 30 years, but the pioneering moves towards decentralisation and providing more powers to locally elected bodies.