[lbo-talk] India's Hindu Party Reflects on Election Drubbing

[Michael McIntyre]

What's interesting to me is the drubbing the Communists took in West Bengal
at the hands of the Trinamool Congress, a party that doesn't exist outside
of West Bengal and whose whole raison d'etre has been hatred of the CPI(M)
and the Left Front government it has led in West Bengal since 1977.  I'm not
sure when state elections are coming up for West Bengal, but this doesn't
bode well for the left there.  While the Left may have been putting some
brakes on Singh et al. at the national level, I blieve the Left Front
governmeng has been setting up "Special Economic Zones" for foreign capital
for some time. In 2007,. at Nandigram, the state violently expelled
residents of an SEZ who were blocking construction of a chemical factory.
It's not clear to me how much of the Left's losses in West Bengal have to do
with anti-incumbency and how much they have to do with the exhaustion of the
Left in W. Bengal as any kind of real alternative to Congress policies.
Since West Bengal is the only state, other than Kerala, where the communists
have a chance of winning, this is a big defeat.  The Left Front lost badly
in Kerala as well, but there's a long history there of the Left Front and
the (Congress-led) United Front alternating in power.

MM

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 1:06 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


>
> On May 18, 2009, at 1:47 PM, ravi wrote:
>
>  There are some parallels with the GOP's status in the USA. Sujeet, any
>> thoughts on what this represents for India's left given that the massive
>> Congress win removes their dependence on the Communists?
>>
>
> I'm really curious to hear more about the Indian election results. I'm
> seeing analyses that suggest that Congress became social dem enough to win
> broad working class support. And the BJP got crushed, right? Why?
>
> Doug
>
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