What is to be done?

A conforming Left is a matter of anxiety. A Left that is less than downright obstructive to the conventional wisdom of government committed to economic reforms would affect the methods by which the desires, expectations, aspirations of the vast majority of voters are determined. This is not to advocate that the Left adopt positions that invite criticism about its irresponsibility, nor is this to suggest that the Left declaim its positions in a manner that upsets the current direction in which the economic applecart is going. The Left, however, does have a responsibility to its promise not to compromise its independence, despite the various interests and pressures that bear down on it.

Apart from its responsibilities towards its large, loyal and core constituency of the disempowered poor, the Left is the only political formation that can raise the sort of questions without which protecting the existing entitlements and benefits of the poor and weaker sections would be severely strained. It is also perhaps the only political formation that can actively work from within the political establishment for a general expansion of entitlements and an incremental improvement of the quality of such benefits.

There are signs enough to suggest that the Left is getting enmeshed in the complex web of its own hegemonist ambitions, not least of which is its angst over electoral and economic prospects in West Bengal. Maintaining a coalition in which the partners are embroiled in all sorts of difficulties that are legacies of past deeds and misdeeds appears to be extracting a price, especially as the UPA enters the mid-term phase of its term in office.

It couldn’t have been sheer coincidence that the Left parties’ ‘note’ on resource mobilisation submitted to the UPA-Left Coordination Committee on January 12 is extraordinarily similar to the list of recommendations that emerged from the finance minister’s meeting with ‘eminent economists and economic experts from various professional, educational and research institutions’. The Left’s resource mobilisation note begins on a reassuringly forceful pitch — that taxing the rich is how economies typically collect money to spend on national priorities. The note points out that in the past 15 years, the Centre has abdicated responsibility by handing out ‘largesse’ to the affluent sections through tax-cuts. Thus, the Left has recommended that the tax-to-GDP ratio, which in India is among the lowest in the developing world, be changed.

The note, however, peters out, as it recommends collection of income tax arrears and mopping up cash reserves held by central PSUs. It then goes on to reiterate its demand for restoration of capital gains tax, but in very modest ways, strengthening of the securities transaction tax, a ‘nominal’ tax on forex outflows, rationalisation of corporate tax exemptions, review of export incentives, a broadening of the service tax base, introduction of inheritance and reintroduction of wealth tax. This is almost exactly the wish-list of eminent economists, who do not en bloc belong to the Left.

The Left’s note on how the government should spend the resources it collects has not as yet been released. However, its space for manoeuvring has been squeezed by its rather conventional recommendations on fund mobilisation. Clearly, it’s veering perilously close to the path of least resistance, where merely protection of existing programmes becomes an act of political heroism, alas, at the expense of new requirements.

Two recent Left interventions are illustrative of the sort of gullies into which it is allowing itself to be led: cut-back on food subsidies and the interest rate cut on Employees Provident Fund. The timing of the food subsidy cut revealed prejudices typical to quintessentially conservative, almost fundamentalist, managers committed to a mindset that equates entitlements with hand-outs. However strongly the PM may feel that it is time to think about how best the government can “help the needy, and not just the influential” — which became the justification for cut-back on food subsidy — it is a fact that despite dazzling growth rates of the Indian economy and foreign investor confidence, not only has the intensity of the misery of the poor increased, but there are also pockets of endemic poverty, where malnutrition leads to debilitating weakness and death.

The Left led the outcry against the subsidy cut- back, thereby justifying its claims of playing a vigilante role. While the UPA was prepared to sacrifice its self-proclaimed priorities about sharing and caring for the poor, the Left’s intervention prevented injustice being done against the poor. EPF is equally an issue of entitlement. The employed are entitled to some social security. It is shameful that economic security remains precarious for the employed even as India prepares to become an economic superpower.

It is not merely to serve political ends that intervention is necessary. Setting priorities and making difficult choices is why the politics of government is so challenging. Budgets are not a sort of dry exercise in keeping costs down, but are for serving the public interest. In a country like India, there are diversities in the ‘publics’ whose interest the government serves. The Left, thus, has a responsibility to represent those interests and that end of the diversity whose perceived weaknesses as tax- payers reduces their capacity to negotiate. The less it is able to do so, the more it loses its raison d’etre as an alternative approach to problem-solving.