Call for Mid-Term Poll and the Left

back into the Mala street; he even has the audacity to add that when they were chasing the Malas back, the Mala women pleaded with them to desist, and they obliged; and further that Manne Seshaiah pleaded with them not to attack him since he was not a party to the conflict and they magnanimously spared him; but just then 'somebody' assaulted Seshaiah from THE CPI(M) general secretary, EMS Namboodiripad's call for midterm polls, endorsed subsequently by the CP1 National Council and taken up by the CPI(M)'s West Bengal state committee for active public campaign, appears to have emerged as the central political slogan for mass mobilisation for the immediate future. While the slogan has all the trappings necessary for dramatic appeal as well as a plausible political justification, the overall correctness Of the call can be assessed only on the basis of a deeper and rigorous examination. For, in Marxist tactics, elections have to be viewed not merely, or even mainly, as a standard constitutional remedy for a critical development. Elections have to be viewed, says Lenin, "in connection with a definite political situation". In the particular context of the present Indian situation, this criterion concretely means a realistic evaluation of the prospect of, not only securing the defeat of Rajiv Gandhi and his Congress Party, but also the emergence of a really radical alternative as the winner, or even as a powerful opposition bloc in the newly elected House, based on an appropriate platform.