The Left's 'own goals'

In the first open confrontation that the Left has had with the United Prpgressive Alliance government, it has suffered comprehensive defeat. The decision to privatise Delhi and Mumbai airports stands; and the striking employees of the Airports Authority of India had the assurance even before the strike that none of them would lose jobs.

There was no public sympathy for wildcat strikers, who could demonstrate no valid cause, and the inconvenience suffered by some 200,000 passengers over four days alienated both the Left and the unions.

Nor could it be claimed with conviction that it was a matter of ideology: Kochi airport has been functioning as a private enterprise for many years, and new private airports are already being built in Bangalore and Hyderabad, so the idea of private airports is neither new nor anathema.

Even tactically, the Left bungled because air traffic controllers and public sector airline employees continued to work, so all that the strikers could achieve was nuisance value, not disruption of air services.

A key question is whether the government's display of spine marks a new phase in its endless face-offs with the Left. Certainly, it has chosen to ignore the protests over the Iran nuclear issue and has once again voted with the US.

Indeed, the Left was shown up quite badly when Russia and China went along with the US on the subject, making the shrill criticism of India's stance seem mildly ludicrous. Prakash Karat of the CPI(M) had to beat a hasty retreat, telling the TV cameras that his party would re-consider its position - which was making the best of a bad situation because 80 per cent of the vote turned out to be on the US side in the International Atomic Energy Agency, and India was shown to be part of the international mainstream.

It might be argued that some of this is just shadow play, and the Left didn't really want to stop the privatisation of airports, since one of its leading lights, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the chief minister of Left Front-ruled West Bengal, had said last year that he would like to privatise Kolkata airport.

Equally, the Left Democratic Front in Kerala has never criticised or come in the way of the privately-run Kochi airport. The Left's aim, ahead of the elections in West Bengal and Kerala, was probably to demonstrate to the big public sector unions and their members that it still supported them, a sort of Communist equivalent of going to a temple or church.

And Nilotpal Basu, a Rajya Sabha MP belonging to the CPI(M), said on TV on Saturday that the strikers had never made employment a demand because they knew their jobs were safe.

It might seem like clutching at straws, but some good may still emerge from this sorry episode, if the Left realises the limits of its power to block change and reduces its reliance on disruptive methods of protest.

Even more important, though, would be for the government to conduct privatisation fairly. It is undeniable that this one hasn't been above valid criticism about inconsistency in procedure; the court will now decide whether the inconsistency was also illegal.

The other question is whether choosing bidders for a monopoly airport service on the basis of how much of their revenue they are willing to share with the AAI is a good idea, because the incentive becomes to either overcharge for the services provided or to skimp on the quality of that service so as to save money that must be handed over to the AAI.