It's been a while since the CPM and the rest of the Left parties began their 'we'll pull the plug on the UPA government if they go ahead with the nuclear deal' talk. And with the UPA agreeing to put on hold the operationalisation of the deal, the Left is now on their high horse.
There are whispers of new alliances, with the CPM making overtures to old pals Mulayam Singh Yadav and Chandrababu Naidu. The term 'third front' is again being polished and brought back from the graveyard.
We are seeing a UPA government in paralysis, a Congress pushed to the wall, unsure whether to rally behind the Prime Minister. And Manmohan Singh continues to reflect the perils of being a politician by accident.
Nuclear deal or not, life will go on. Isn't it high time the Congress either unequivocally stood by the deal or jettisoned it to keep the government alive? As for the Left, they seem all the more keen to increase the decibel levels of their bark.
But what about the bite? The Congress may have blinked this time but is the Left ready for the prospect of polls? Electoral arithmetic clearly advises that biting would have uprooted a few teeth for the Left.
Starting with Kerala, the LDF government has been on an alienating spree. Any election would mean a rout, with the opposition Congress gleefully gaining.
In West Bengal, the Left Front will hold fort, but faces erosion in their mass base. The scars of Nandigram are still fresh and the recent ration riots are also an ominous signal.
Any election and the Left faces the prospect of being a less influential pressure group. The best option - cosy up to Mulayam and Naidu and drop hints of a third front.
As for the nuclear deal, there was a lot of hollering but was there ever a debate? Did we hear much more than neo-colonialist and imperialist US and George W Bush? All the statements sounded more like election speeches at Delhi's leftist bastion Jawaharlal Nehru University. The anti-US tirade resembled the enthusiasm with which the JNU Students Union removed a Nestle outlet inside the campus a few years back (being a multinational conspiracy invading JNU)
Not surprising, since Comrades Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury are both former JNUSU Presidents, and that's probably the last time they ever faced an election. It's shocking that theoreticians who have never faced an election in their life (I mean panchayat, state assembly, Lok Sabha etc) are deciding whether an elected government should survive. It also takes theoreticians to talk endlessly over an issue which does not affect a vast majority of the Indian people.
Other than Prakash Karat, who has never even been a Rajya Sabha MP, there is only one prominent politician who's always shunned elections, preferring to lead by remote control. None other than Shiv Sena's Bal Thackeray.
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