The Bahujan Samaj Party has won an absolute majority in the UP assembly and a single party majority government will be formed in UP for the first time after 14 years. This has been brought about through an election conducted in seven phases. This 7-phase method has enabled the ruling bourgeois class of our country to bring about an absolute majority in favour of one party, in order to push forward and hasten the pace of the capitalist reform program.

Both the Congress Party and the BJP have been extremely discredited in the eyes of the voters in UP for a long time. Ever since the destruction of Babri Masjid in December 1992, every election has resulted in 3-way or 4-way division of votes, with no single party winning a majority. This has resulted in unstable, short-lived coalition governments for the past 14 years. The big bourgeoisie and its collaborators have been dissatisfied with this situation.

Unstable coalition governments have not been able to push through the policy reforms that the bourgeoisie wants. For instance, the program to reform the agricultural marketing framework, to enable big corporate monopolies to gain control over the agricultural surplus and bleed the peasants dry, has not advanced in UP to the desired extent. UP is one of the few among the major states where the Agricultural Products Marketing Act is yet to be amended. UP is also the only state that is yet to introduce the Value Added Tax, a reform of the state tax system in the interest of the capitalist class.

All these facts indicate that the main objective of the bourgeoisie in the 2007 elections has been to make sure that it leads to the formation of a single party majority government that would last at least 5 years. This is the main reason for introduction of a 7-phase election process. With exit polls after each phase, it gives great scope for influencing the voters in the subsequent phases, to generate a ‘wave’ and manufacture a ‘mandate’.

The bourgeoisie used the estimated outcome of the early phases to gauge which among the parties that have ruled in UP is the least discredited. It then unleashed its psephologists and political journalists to create a media blitz or ‘wave’ in favour of the selected party, the BSP in this case. As the elections approached the 6 th and 7 th phases, the media had already created a lot of hype that the BSP would be the winner. This helped to expand BSP’s lead and take its seat tally above the 200 mark.

The BSP’s victory reflects what the bourgeoisie wants in the given circumstances. It does not indicate what the majority wants. In fact, the majority of people did not cast their vote. The voter turnout in the UP election was less than 50%.

The workers, peasants, small shopkeepers and other self-employed, who constitute the vast majority of the population in Uttar Pradesh, have clearly expressed what they do not want. They do not want the capitalist reform program aimed at expanding the influence and domination of the big corporate monopolies, Indian and foreign. They do not want the growing criminalisation of politics. They do not want sectarian violence for partisan political ends.

One of the striking features of the UP election results is that the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) won not a single seat, for the first time in this state. Following the announcement of the results, Comrade D. Raja of the Communist Party of India is reported to have said that there is need for introspection. Yes, the members and supporters of the CPI must think seriously as to why the level of support for their party has declined so drastically over the past 50 years in this most populous state.

The Communist Party of India won as many as 47 seats in the first elected UP legislative assembly in 1957. It was the second largest party in the state at that time, both in terms of vote share and seats. What is the reason that support for the CPI has today been almost eliminated in Uttar Pradesh? This is a question that does need serious introspection.

The UP elections in 1957 took place at a time when the political climate in the country was characterized by intense class contradictions following the replacement of British colonial rule by Congress Party rule under Nehru. The Nehru regime was unleashing brutal repression on the fighting forces. It was a time when the toiling and oppressed masses of people looked towards the undivided Communist Party of India as the alternative to the deceptive and hateful Congress Party rule.

In the Program adopted by the CPI in 1951, it was clearly stated that the Constitution adopted in January 1950 “is not and cannot be called a truly democratic constitution but is a constitution of a landlord-capitalist state, tied to foreign imperialist interests”. The Tactical Line stated, in its preamble, that the complete liquidation of feudalism and achievement of full national independence and freedom cannot be realised in a peaceful, parliamentary way. “These objectives can be realised only through a revolution, through the overthrow of the present Indian state and its replacement by a people’s democratic state” (Tactical Line of CPI, April 1951).

In the 1950s, the CPI called the Congress government headed by Nehru a “Government of Great Betrayal” and as a “government of lathis and bullets”. It contested elections by calling on the workers and peasants to join hands to usher in a people’s democratic government.

Comparing 2007 with the decade of the 1950s, it is an indisputable fact that the political line of the CPI has turned into its opposite. Members and supporters of CPI find it extremely difficult and embarrassing to defend their party line of supporting the Manmohan Singh government and its capitalist reforms.

The transformation in the political line of CPI, abandoning revolution from its agenda, is the main reason for the loss of support among the toiling masses for this party, in UP as well as in other parts of the country.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has never had the kind of mass base that the CPI once had in UP. It won 2 seats in the UP assembly in 2002 by allying with the Samajwadi Party, which it promotes as a secular alternative. In the 2007 election, the CPI(M) hoped to retain these two seats by continuing to ally with the SP while also pretending to criticize its government. However, it lost both the seats and its vote share has fallen to an all-time low.

The biggest disadvantage faced by the activists of CPI(M) is the fact that their leaders have emerged as the most loyal supporters of the Congress Party led UPA Government at the centre. Their credibility has taken a further beating recently, following the police terror and violence in Nandigram. With the central leadership supporting the state terrorism unleashed by the West Bengal government against peasants resisting their displacement, the activists of the CPI(M) find it very difficult to campaign among the peasantry in other parts of the country.

The main reason for the drastic decline in the vote and seat shares of the CPI and CPI(M) in Uttar Pradesh lies in their abandonment of revolutionary principles. A communist party that merges with parliamentary democracy and abandons the revolutionary class struggle will inevitably lose support among the workers and peasants.

Communists in the ranks of CPI and CPI(M) must stand up in defence of the revolutionary conclusions of Marxism. They must oppose and strive to defeat the line of conciliating with the capitalist reform program, of defending the existing Indian State and parliamentary democracy, and of tailing behind the Congress Party in the name of keeping the BJP out.