Challenges for Left

The Left parties can reverse their decline and strengthen themselves only through candid self-criticism and by returning to mass work. More crucially, the Left must recognise and emphasise the cardinal truth that the neoliberal state is fundamentally authoritarian and must necessarily dispossess people and suppress or limit their social, economic and civil-political rights. The Left can rise to these and the other challenges it faces only if it enunciates a distinctly emancipatory vision of social transformation based on Marxism, offers a cogent alternative to neoliberal economic and retrograde social policies, fights for an egalitarian income policy and income and wealth redistribution through higher taxes on the rich, devises innovative political mobilisation strategies, and widens its appeal by participating in struggles on issues that deeply concern working people. Besides outlining such programmatic perspectives and strategies as an integral part of a humane politics which empowers working people, the Left can greatly gain in credibility and popular acceptance by developing sector-wise alternatives on issues such as land, water and shelter rights, equitable access to energy sources, sustainable agriculture, rural job generation, urban development, ecologically sound housing, transportation, neighbourhood schools, culture, and egalitarian education and skill-generation programmes. Among the emerging issues the Left must grapple with are the new authoritarian and communal structures growing within the Indian state as it evolves an Islamophobic counterterrorism strategy and deludes itself that left-wing extremism is Indias greatest internal security threat and then uses a militarist approach to deal with it.