Tripura: Left Front Defeated by Opportunism And Expectations

As yet incomplete results of Tripura Assembly polls show that the Left Front has lost the battle in this tiny North-Eastern state. An alliance of BJP and a separatist outfit IPFT has swept to power winning/leading in 43 seats while the Left Front stands considerably reduced at just 16 seats. The Assembly has 60 seats but elections were held for 59 of them.

Before looking at the deeper reasons behind the Left Front’s loss, it should be noted that its vote share is about 45% while the BJP-IPFT alliance has gathered about 50% of the votes. In the last Assembly elections, the Left Front had got about 52% votes while the main opposition party Congress (in alliance with another tribal based outfit INPT) had got about 44% votes.

All the anti-Left forces in the state have merged together this time, with the Congress and INPT practically wiped out and going down from 9.7 lakh votes last time to just 51,000 votes this time. What they lost has been gained by the BJP IPFT alliance: last time these two parties had got about 43,000 votes put together fighting the election separately. This time they have gained nearly 10 lakh votes.

So, the deck was stacked against the Left Front in sheer arithmetical terms. But its loss is not merely due to arithmetic alone.

The Left Front has ruled Tripura continuously since 1993, a quarter of century. It has steered the volatile and backward state through the incendiary separatist agitations of various armed tribal outfits, including those whose legacy the present IPFT carries. It was through the political sagacity and stewardship of the Left Front that the tribal separatists were isolated and defeated, creating a genuine possibility of peaceful development in the state.

The Left has also provided a clean, transparent administration, free of scams and, more importantly, free of private profiteering that is the hallmark of all other political parties. It is for this service of the people that the Left Front was continuously voted in, through various levels of elections for the past 25 years.

Yet, a state govt.’s role in meeting the expectations of people – higher living standard, better paying jobs, more amenities in line with other parts of the country, etc. – remains limited. Although the Left Front tried its best to provide for and fulfill as much of these aspirations as possible, two factors remained stumbling blocks that ultimately became insurmountable.

One was the peculiar geographical location of the state, remote from the rest of the country, largely forested, surrounded on three sides by Bangladesh, and without any significant natural resources. All this meant that there was large dependence on agriculture with less likelihood of industrial development. The Left Front’s rule did see a quantum jump in agricultural production but as everybody knows, agriculture is dominated by a system of increasing input costs which severely curtail incomes. The Left Front could only give so much relief for that. Incomes from cultivation remained low, although better than earlier. Aspirations for higher incomes were much beyond these levels.

Alternatives to agriculture were limited as industrialization or development of service sector was not possible in such a resource poor and remote location. So, industrial employment and the vicious cycle of low income agriculture continued to grip Tripura.

This situation could have been perhaps ameliorated if special assistance was available to the state from the Centre, which controls and provides 80% of the state’s income. However, only relief giving schemes like the MGNREGS, were available. No industrial or infrastructural development push could be visualized by successive central govts., although the Left Front fought for these all through.

The result was that there was a growing sense that the Left Front was unable to break out of a low level of economy. Many understood that this was part of their own political struggle for a better socio-economic system. But the discontent could be always hijacked. The BJP’s campaign – though full of opportunistic promises and dirty tactics – appears to have impressed at least a section of the Tripura electorate. This was sufficient to tilt the balance in the election.

The loss of the Left Front in Tripura will not open up any chances of higher employment or better living standards. As the BJP rule in other states, and the Centre, has shown it will only increase the misery by increasing joblessness, opening the doors for private profiteering and cuts in state supported programmes, so essential for remote states like Tripura.

In addition, and perhaps most dangerously, the BJP has compromised the peace process in Tripura by aligning with an openly separatist outfit that has a violent past. It has also been spreading communal and casteist poison in Tripura known for its communal harmony.

So, the coming days are likely to be fraught with danger of a slide back into the past days of chaos and relentless violence. But, for the present, it is a BJP govt. that will wear the thorn of crowns in Agartala.