The reason for Aiyar's dissatisfaction is the dazzling success of the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games, which has drawn praise even from a previously sceptical Western media. After having lapped up with evident glee all the shocking stories of malfeasance and incompetence, the foreign media must have been as pleasantly surprised as its Indian counterpart in the ability of the Games organizer to put up a marvellous show.

However, if Aiyar is unlikely to share their joy, it is because he had said that he would be extremely unhappy if the Games were a success. In his view, the sporting event was a colossal waste of money in a poor country. To vent his displeasure, therefore, he decided to “get the hell out of the country” during the Games. In whatever tourist spot abroad that he is now, he must be avoiding looking at the morning papers - or at least at the sports pages.

Arundhati Roy's disquiet is for another reason. It is the sign that the Maoist uprising, which she had hailed as the dawn of a new era, is seemingly fading away. The rebels have not been able to launch the kind of sudden, surreptitious attacks on the security forces in recent weeks as they did earlier with devastating effect.

It is possible that the police and paramilitary forces have drawn the right lessons from their earlier mistakes, which made them appear like sitting ducks for the Maoists. They have apparently discarded their casual attitude, which almost routinely made them ignore the so-called standard operating procedures while venturing into Maoist-infested territory.

Arguably, the Maoists, too, have run out of steam. After all, life in the jungle can hardly be a pleasant experience. As long as they were building their bases by either coercing the locals or securing their support with a mixture of Maoist propaganda and an occasional helping hand, the insurgents may have felt fairly secure in their “red corridor”. Their earlier successes against the CRPF and the Eastern Frontier Rifles must have also boosted their morale.

But, of late, they have neither been able to ambush the patrolling police parties as frequently as before, nor blow up transmission towers or railway lines or block development offices. The very fact that they had sent a top-ranking leader like Azad on a peace mission showed that differences had cropped up in their ranks about the wisdom of waging a war against the government.

It may still take months to eradicate the Maoist menace, but few will now say that they pose a grave internal security threat, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said some time ago. However, the point about their decline is that it will leave enthusiasts like the Booker Prize winner high and dry.

At the same time, it is more than likely that sooner or later, she will find another cause to lambast the government. As will Aiyar once he has swallowed his embarrassment about his false hopes about the Commonwealth Games.

But it is not so much the championing of lost causes which distinguishes people like Aiyar, the non-card carrying comrade, as he has been called, and Arundhati Roy, as their disdain and dislike for today's India. Like the communists, they believe that India has slipped into the American and even Israeli sphere of influence, abandoning the old Nehruvian concepts of non-alignment and support for the Palestinian people. It is also pursuing capitalism rather than socialism.

Since Arundhati Roy does not belong to any political party, there can be no quarrel with her ideological stance. But Aiyar's position is different. He is still a member of the Congress and, therefore, has a certain obligation to follow the party line. But the defiance that he has repeatedly shown by mocking the economic reforms and the anti-Maoist drive, apart from criticizing the Commonwealth Games and the government's alleged proximity to Israel, cannot be explained simply as a show of anger over having lost his ministerial portfolios of petroleum and panchayats.

Instead, it is an indication of a desperate attempt to cling to the now discarded ideals of non-alignment and a socialistic pattern of society, which are at present quietly ignored by the Congress. If Arundhati Roy's support for the Maoists suggests a preference for a totalitarian regime in the place of a government elected on the basis of universal adult franchise, so does Aiyar's ceaseless carping. It is almost as if they are echoing what the communists used to say in the years immediately after independence that yeh azadi jhooti hai. If the comrades read the scene wrongly at the time, so have the disgruntled Congressman and the Maoist at heart. (IPA Service)