World's largest democracy rests on communist whims

NEW DELHI - There is a certain irony to the fact that recent elections in India saw communist parties become the main power-brokers in the world's largest democracy.

Broadly pursuing an agenda that many say will stilt the nation's development, the communists gained power in two of five provinces, claim 63 seats in Parliament and form the backbone of a new coalition Government.

In eastern Bengal state, the Communist-led Left Front was celebrating its seventh consecutive victory, making it the world's longest-running elected Communist Administration: in office uninterruptedly for nearly three decades.

A Communist-led coalition of nine parties also comfortably wrested power from the Congress Party in Kerala state.

In India's federal structure that includes 29 states and six centrally administered regions, provincial legislatures are responsible for everything other than defence, currency, railways and communication, which are federal areas.

The 63 seats represented the communist bloc's best election performance, and made them architects of a Congress Party-led coalition that displaced the Hindu nationalist-headed Government.

Their new political muscle also resulted in Parliament electing its first ever Marxist speaker, Somnath Chatterjee. However, despite supporting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's new coalition, they declined to join due to policy differences.

Such a move, opponents say, will see holding power from the outside of government which could be used to topple coalition leaders.

Critics also say their communist principles will act like a dead weight on the country's economic growth and global profile.

Marxist Governments in Bengal, Kerala and Tripura have insisted on market reforms with a human face, and have consistently opposed labour reforms, seen as essential for attracting overseas investment and boosting the economy.

They have also stalled privatising state-run, loss-making industrial behemoths as their employees constitute a committed vote bank for the communists.

In Bengal unions have paralysed the state's industrial growth, forcing its once booming businesses and manufacturing units to either close down or move.

Over the past two years, however, communist leaders have attempted to pacify India's booming financial markets by claiming that they welcome foreign investment provided it augmented existing productive capacities, upgraded technology and generated jobs.

The communists make no secret of their dislike for the US, especially at a time when PM Singh is edging strategically and militarily closer to Washington.

India's Communist Party - before it split in 1964 into the CPM supported by Beijing and the other rump the CPI backed by Moscow - was the world's first to be democratically elected in Kerala in the late 1950s.

This caused alarm at home and abroad, and led to the US stepping up its obsessive covert anti-Communist drive in India and for decades looked upon it with ill-informed suspicion.