THAT THE CONGRESS and the Left parties are not the best of political bedfellows was never in doubt. Even if there is some dispute on the question whether the modern day Congress party truly believes in the classical Nehruvian concept of secularism, with its soft tilt towards minority sensibilities aimed at nothing more than assuaging their feelings of insecurity, there can be no doubt on where it stands in the matter of economic policy— decisively right of centre. The Left parties are acutely aware of it but nevertheless choose to go along with the Congress as the electoral verdict of last year leaves them with no other alternative.

What this means is that on matters where the Government has chosen to ignore the more radical alternative that is in accord with the Left's own thinking, the Left parties were largely reduced to putting in some token protest just to preserve their ideological purity but otherwise going along with the official line. Thus, in the case of the petroleum products price hike, the Left had been more inclined towards a policy of letting oil companies take a hit on their bottomlines or getting the Government to bear the burden; but when the Government went ahead to increase prices, the Left stopped with launching a protest rally. But the Government's decision to go ahead with offloading of a part of its stake in BHEL is something else altogether. Here, at last, is a case which if left unchallenged could be said to hit not only at the very core of the Left's ideology but also at a significant segment of its support base — the organised working class in the public sector. After all, there is nothing to suggest that this is just a one-off exercise and, hence, could well be the proverbial thin end of the wedge of a process of restructuring PSUs out of their public ownership character, as the Left apprehends. The Left has consistently held the view that this is inimical to national interest, and cannot be faulted for believing so, now.

The Left-endorsed National Common Minimum Programme is not legal document but a political statement. Hence, it will be entirely out of place to do any nitpicking on the true meaning of the word `privatisation' referred to in the document. If the two parties understand the expression to mean two different things then clearly they have to thrash the issue out in private. Even now, the Left with its gambit of deciding to opt out of coordination meetings is sending out the signal that while it is serious it would not, at the same time, like to inflict on the Congress the embarrassment of a public capitulation. But the Congress, it would seem, has chosen to engage the Left in a game of high stakes political poker. Either the Congress reckons that the Left's concerns on preserving the secular fabric of society far outweigh its economic ideology and so would not dare pull the plug on the coalition or the party believes that in a fresh election, which is inevitable if the confrontation is taken to its logical conclusion, the public would deal it more powerful cards.

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