RIP Manmohanomics: Rahul-led Congress shifts decisively Left

By MK Venu “There should be no doubt about Congress party’s left-of-the-centre positioning.This should be very clear,” said Jairam Ramesh who is Rural Development Minister and a member of the Congress party’s manifesto committee. While discussing the Congress manifesto with me, Jairam made it amply clear that “in a country like ours a single minded and obsessive pursuit of growth is not possible as there are multiple stakeholders involved”. Jairam also said something which would be music to the ears of the Left. “The Congress believes that capitalist development and welfarism must run parallelly,” he told this writer. [caption id=“attachment_1462001” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Union Minister and Congress leader Jairam Ramesh. PTI[/caption] Jairam’s statement read in conjunction with senior Congressman A.K.Antony’s recent proposition that the Congress must work with the Left and other secular parties tells you about a decisively new orientation Rahul Gandhi is seeking to impart to the grand old party which currently is facing one of its worst crises. Politically, the Congress is wooing the Left and other secular/socialist formations whose support to the BJP is more or less ruled out. As if on cue, after Antony’s overture to the Left, the CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat made some positive noises suggesting the Left was willing to cooperate with the Congress on the condition that a new formation is supported, and not necessarily led, by the Congress. Clearly, something is cooking here! A decade ago the Congress party’s right-leaning economic thinkers, led by Manmohan Singh, actually believed that growth and welfare spending best occurred in the following sequence– first wealth creation and then redistribution. Now, the Congress position, as reflected in the manifesto, is that growth and welfare must happen simultaneously. Big business clearly asserts that welfarism must come only after wealth creation because premature welfare spending tends to retard growth. Most rightwing economists agree that a legislated universal healthcare for 70 crore Indians could jeopardise growth. It will be interesting to know the BJP’s position on this. There are other strong indicators of a reorientation of the Congress position. If one carefully reads the foreign policy section of the manifesto, there is more than a hint of a return to the old Nehruvian foreign policy of leveraging the accumulated legacy of NAM and strengthening South-South cooperation. Significantly, as an overture to the Left, no mention is made of India’s strategic partnership with the United States based on the civil nuclear cooperation. All this points to a possible post poll realignment of forces where the Congress, Left and other regional parties could seek to disrupt the BJP’s shot at power. This prospect becomes more real with latest opinion polls suggesting that the Tamil Nadu verdict could be very fragmented and the AIADMK, led by Jayalalitha, may not get more that 20 seats. Currently Jayalalitha is seen as possibly carrying the biggest bloc which could pledge support to the BJP post poll. Congress is hoping that it doesn’t perform as badly as opinion polls are suggesting, and if it manages close to about 120 seats, then it would be in a position to rally a whole range of parties on the lines hinted at by A.K.Antony. Leaders like Prakash Karat, Lalu Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Mayawati, Jagan Reddy, Chandrashekhar of TRS may be willing to work out a coalition which is supported by the Congress. Politics, after all, is the art of the possible. M.K.Venu is Executive Editor of Amar Ujala Group.