Are the regional parties really crumbling? Has there really been a clear Congress wave across the country? Can the CPI(M), the PM's worst ideological foe, ever recover from the severe blow it has suffered?

The Congress Party's spectacular performance - an addition of 61 seats - and the downfall of Lalu Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan and Mulayam Singh Yadav have led some to conclude that after two decades, people are beginning to reject the identity politics of regional parties. The Akalis, Telugu Desam, AIADMK, PMK have all been pushed to the corner. The new generation outfits like that of Chiranjeevi, Raj Thackeray and Vijayakanth have failed to open their account. In all such places, Congress has made a stunning recovery.

Yet it is naïve to talk of a return to bipolar politics. For, JD(U), Biju Janata Dal, DMK, Trinamul Congress, National Conference, Telugu Desam and RLD, have all improved their position. The first five have emerged the largest single party of the state. The signal they give is that they are going to be there for a long time to come. The total seat tally of the two pan-India parties has gone up marginally. But there is little improvement in their total vote share. Some even attribute the success of Rajashekhara Reddy, Narendra Modi and Sheila Dikshit to their strong regional identification. So it is wrong to say the Congress has begun recapturing the space it lost to the provincial parties.

What about the Congress wave? For all appearances, it is very much felt from Assam to Punjab and Kanyakumari. It won 61 more MPs. In UP, its vote share went up by 6.25 per cent and seats from nine to 21. In Andhra Pradesh, seats rose from 29 to 33. In Punjab seats went up from two to eight, Rajasthan four to 20, MP four to 12, Maharashtra 13 to 17 and Kerala nil to 13. The 'wave' benefited even its electoral allies except the NCP.

Janpath loyalists see the Congress resurgence as an instant effect of the Rahul's leadership. Others attribute it to the UPA's social programmes. For some, it is endorsement of reform and nuclear deal. Now some channel analysts have compared the Congress recovery to the Indira waves of 1971 and1980. However, a closer look will show how facile are such parallels. True, Rahul's go-it-alone' experiment has paid rich dividends in UP but flopped in neighbouring Bihar. At least in six mainstream states - West Bengal, Bihar, Haryana, Tamil Nadu; Maharashtra and Gujarat - either the Congress vote share dipped or it got less seats. This can't be the sign of a 'wave'.

All this, by no means, is to underplay the major strides made by the ruling party. But such shows should not lull the Congress leaders into a make-believe world. What has happened this time was that a string of state-specific micro dynamics has created the illusion of a mighty pan-India Congress wave. In Maharashtra, for instance, MNS of Raj Thackeray helped the Congress by cutting into the Shiv Sena votes (3.11 per cent vote share). Thus even while the Congress's vote shared dropped (4.6 per cent), its seats went up from 13 to 17. In Andhra Pradesh, it was the newly formed Chiranjeevi party that had helped the Congress. And Congress got an extra four Lok Sabha seats despite a 2.61 per cent vote share loss.

Vijayakanth in Tamil Nadu took away the bulk of anti-DMK votes. In Kerala, about 5 per cent of the BJP vote was transferred to the Congress (Last time, BJP high command had punished some Kerala leaders for 'selling' votes for money). In West Bengal, the party simply rode the crest of a Mamata wave. While the Congress can take credit for its good showing, it should not get entrapped in the self-generated hallucinations.

The crisis of the Indian Left is much more complex than most of us think. True, the Kerala comrades can still recover after minor surgeries. There it is partly a cyclical crisis the LDF and UDF alternately suffer. But in West Bengal, the CPI(M) is in deeper trouble. If its well-oiled network can crumble when Prakash Karat talks to Naidu and Navin or when the Left quits the UPA on the issue of nuclear deal, then there is some thing seriously wrong with it. The same steel machine had all the while withstood more severe physical assaults and political jolts.

The besieged party bosses will have to work at two levels - take to immediate correctives and reinvent the three-decade-old party apparatus. Taking up the second first, the Bengal CPI(M) faces a triple challenge. First, decay has set in its network, especially rural. Since the 'operation barga' days, the generation reared by H.K. Konar and Pramod Dasgupta have faded out. Thirty-two years of power has taken a a heavy toll on the cadre calibre and quality despite periodic purges. Surprisingly, there were no major scandals, at least at higher levels. But instances of dadagiri and cadre extortion are plenty. Where persuasion fails, highhandedness begins.

The rupture of communication with people, party and government came into the open following Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's land takeovers for industry. The bureaucracy did it, and when things went out of control, it was too late for the party to handle. A similar disconnect marred the old symbiotic links on industrialization and labour policy. Bhattacharjee had to finally fall back on the party when the corporates and middle classes quickly ditched him. The disconnect is such that the CPI(M) even lost its traditional Muslim support.

Second, the party bosses will also have to cope with the intense consumerist pressure on the rural people. Massive trade penetration in rural areas and improved prosperity are causing loyalty problems. The new generation with higher aspirations and a different life style are easier victims to alien exposures than their toughened elders. The Kerala comrades could effortlessly overcome such prosperity-related challenges. The third is a common challenge to the entire Left.

The deep spread of the print and electronic media to the urban and rural homes with their brute anti-Left tilt is playing havoc with the communists. Traditionally, the cadre is trained to believe only what the leaders said at party meetings and viewed 'bourgeois' media with suspicion. That may still be true. But that is not the case with the large number of fellow travellers and common people. There has been a marked intensification of the anti-Left campaign by the regional media and news channels after July last. Bhattacharjee's misadventure has only acted as a spark on the decaying system. The question is whether all this can ever be set right. (IPA Service)