Don’t goof up on Hazare, comrades!

The statement following the meeting of the state committee of the Communist Part of India (Marxist) in Kolkatta taking exception to the agitational methods of Anna Hazare gives a sickening feeling that the party’s state leadership remembers nothing about its debacle in its 30-year old citadel just a few months ago. The CPM should have been the first to know that debunking Mamata Banerjee’s agitation took it nowhere and landed it in a cul-de-sac. The heart of the matter is that laws will be made on the maidans in today’s India where the political class has repeatedly failed the nation and the choice of indulging in bourgeois politics in the rarefied vistas of central Delhi no longer exists. The Left has two options: It either connects with the tsunami of popular opinion disgusted with the state of affairs in the country, or, alternatively, it might choose to become the dinosaurs of Indian politics and settle down as nice-looking museum pieces. That is the stark truth.