The Left may have witnessed mixed fortunes in the March-April Assembly elections but for CPI national council secretary and Rajya Sabha member Binoy Viswam, the biggest lesson of the May 2 results is that “the BJP can be defeated”.

“The people are no longer ready to succumb to the ill-motivated designs of the BJP,” Viswam told The Telegraph.

The Left Democratic Front made history in Kerala by becoming the first formation to retain power in 44 years, while in Bengal the Left Front scored a duck for the first time ever.

“The most vital difference is that in Kerala, the fight was led by the Left, and it could tell people that it was the most dependable alternative to the Right-wing forces,” Viswam said.

He said that while the LDF had stood with the people in Kerala during crises such as the 2018 and 2019 floods and the current epidemic, the Left’s “connect” with the people had got “disrupted” in Bengal.

“In Bengal the Left has a glorious tradition of pro-people policies. At some point, because of several factors, their connect with the people got disrupted,” Viswam said.

But he was optimistic about the future: “The Left has the ideological preparedness to look deep into its shortcomings. Rectification measures should be adopted accordingly.”

Viswam was reluctant to make an “open comment” about whether the Left had erred in Bengal by deciding to fight Trinamul in alliance with the Congress and Abbasuddin Siddiqui’s ISF.

In Nandigram, where Mamata Banerjee has been declared defeated by less than 2,000 votes in a contested result, Meenakshi Mukherjee of the CPM polled over 6,000 votes.

“Both the CPI and the CPM believe in Left unity. It’s the pivot around which the Left and democratic alternative is to be built up.... So, I don’t want to make an open comment on the CPM leadership and their political priorities,” Viswam said.

“It was a joint strategy adopted by the Left Front as a whole, which was put to the test in the 2021 election. Now, the Left Front and its constituent parties are duty bound to analyse the results and draw lessons, which will be done independently and collectively.”

But the crucial question for Viswam is identifying the main enemy.

“While undertaking this task, a crucial question emerges: who is the main enemy? At such a crucial point when we stand at a political crossroads, (the Left has to decide) whether it is tactically and strategically correct to identify two main enemies. The experience of the world communist movement too may help find the answer,” he said.

Viswam believes that the word “blunder” that many are using to describe the Bengal Left’s stand in this election — which left it out of the largest mass mobilisation against communalism in recent memory in Bengal — is too “harsh”.

“(Expressions like) ‘blunder’ or ‘historical blunder’ may be too harsh to describe the process of such a political dialogue. Nobody, no political party, would willingly commit blunders. Such mistakes happen out of mistaken calculations. Once the mistake is understood, any responsible political party would take its own rectification measures,” he said.

“The support base of the Left expects the Left parties to be bold enough in this process. The Left parties have the ideological vision and organisational strength to fulfil the task. For the toiling masses of the country, the Left is the only hope. Keeping this factor in mind, communist parties should go forward with historical optimism.”

Kerala experience

In Kerala, the Left gained from its management of the Nipah virus outbreak, the repeated floods and Covid, Viswam said.

“In all these crises the people could see the Left as a source of hope. While many were allowed to starve in the rest of the country, nobody went hungry in Kerala where everyone, including migrant labourers, was assured food and shelter as basic rights,” he said.

“Social welfare pensions and food kits reached the doorstep of every household. Along with the emphasis on social justice and protection, the development aspects of the state were properly taken care of. The people could see from their experience that the Left was different and that its socio-economic agenda was people-oriented and not profit-oriented.”

Viswam added: “The LDF government in Kerala was able to answer the basic question posed by the LPG (liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation) era — people or profit. The Left has no doubt that the people are the indisputable priority.”

Viswam was not ready to compare the Left’s styles of functioning in Bengal and Kerala.

“I’m not equipped to make any comments on the style of functioning of the Left Front in Bengal. The very concept of a united front envisages the presence of varying approaches and ideas. A united front should provide the space for those ideas to be communicated between each other,” he said.

“The strength of the LDF in Kerala is that the space for such communication and debates is assured. These discussions are meant to strengthen the front, not to weaken it.”