[Reader-list] Election Forecast

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear All,

The debate on the elections on this list is lively and interesting,  
and an instance (in the main) of people genuinely (from all positions  
on the political spectrum) being reflective rather than scoring  
polemical points. I hope the list attains a new maturity from this  
experience.

I think one of the points that we could think a little more about is  
the utter rout that the so called 'Left Front' and their allies have  
faced, especially in their home bastions of West Bengal and Kerala. I  
personally see this as a very positive development, as it marks a  
significant development in people trusting their own experience of  
the negativity of the so called 'Left Front's' (mis) rule, rather  
than being swept away by their sentimental attatchments to the  
mainstream left's symbolic repertoire, or a distant memory of a time  
when the parties of the left expressed popular sentiments and issues.

The bloated, arrogant, cynical, power hungry and unprincipled nature  
of the current generation of 'Left' leaders has been explicitly  
recognized, and their ability to 'engineer' election results has  
clearly failed them in the face of a determined electorate.

This is the best thing that could have happened to all those who  
retain a commitment in our society to a global future without  
classes, without the depredations of the state, without the rape of  
nature, without wars and standing armies and with dignity for all  
working people regardless of race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation  
and religious or non religious affiliation. This moment can mark for  
us, from where we stand, the possibility of the renewal of a forward  
looking, peaceful and richly democratic content of the global  
socialist-communist vision, inflected with a new ecological  
understanding.

I think we have reasons to rejoice that the moribund apparatus of the  
CPI(M) and its exhausted allies will no longer have to bear the  
burden of our hopes for the renewal of a left vision in India. I also  
doubt that the secterian milieu of Maoism in India can give rise to  
the expansiveness that this vision will need. In my personal view,  
the renewal of the left in India (and in South Asia as a whole) will  
need to be imagined anew, and afresh, and free from all past  
encumbrances. I look forward to discussion on this list  of what the  
contents of such a vision could be.

best

Shuddha

>

Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net