THE DOUBLE challenge of the growing communalisation of the polity and the adverse impact of globalisation on the working classes stirred a number of socialists to try to get together, with a view to coordinating their scattered efforts. They were disillusioned no less by the tardy implementation of some of their cherished programmes such as social justice and devolution of power. Privatisation of public sector units and several Government departments was, apart from playing havoc with the reservation policy, affecting the working class. While joining in the campaigns against communal forces and globalisation with all other groups, they felt it necessary to establish an organisation which could contribute distinctly to these struggles and also work for the consolidation of like-minded socialists under one canopy. Those among them who had been in contact with various activist groups were discovering how scattered the old socialist cadres had become although they were actively working on several issues affecting the lives of the poor. The Socialist Front is the result of the urge among those who have learnt from the experience of working with the masses that a broad platform of the democratic left is essential.

The Pune-based S.M. Joshi Socialist Foundation, with Madhu Dandavate and Mrinal Gore as president and acting president, decided to convene a three-day camp. It invited all those socialists who accepted these premises and were strongly opposed to the policies pursued by the National Democratic Alliance Government. The camp, held in the first week of June, had been preceded by a preliminary one-day meeting in January, to test the waters. The background for the discussion in the camp was an article by a distinguished trade union leader, Bagaram Tulpule, general secretary of the Hind Mazdoor Sabha from 1952 to 1963. The article was published in the Janata weekly of Mumbai which also brought out several other articles on the same theme. The camp analysed the causes of the rapid growth of communalism with particular reference to the Gujarat violence on the first day and globalisation the second day. On the last day, it discussed the organisational forms to be adopted and came up with the resolve to set up the Socialist Front.

Leading socialists in the Janata Dal (Secular), the Samajwadi Jana Parishad, the People's Union of Civil Liberties, the Hind Mazdoor Sabha, the National Alliance of People's Movements, Yuva Kranti Dal and the Lokayan joined it, as did some unattached writers, journalists, academics and former bureaucrats. Notable among them were Umraomal Purohit, general secretary of the HMS and president of the All-India Railwaymen's Federation; S.P. Shukla, former Finance Secretary of the Government of India; Rajindar Sachar, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, R.H. Mehrotra, former Justice of the Allahabad High Court; and Rajendra Dhasmana, all closely connected with the PUCL; V.P. Singh, general secretary of the Samajwadi Jana Paishad; and G.G. Parikh, vice-president of the Yusuf Meharally Centre. Two former Maharashtra Ministers, S.S. Varde and Bhai Vaidya, were also present as were Vijay Pratap of Lokayan, Savita Bajpayee, a former Madhya Pradesh Minister, and Sunilam, MLA and president of the Kisan Sangharsh Samiti, Madhya Pradesh.

Having set up the Socialist Front, the first task of the participants was to finalise the dates to hold State-level meetings which would create some machinery in every State with the involvement of the maximum number of socialists committed to secularism and a just economic and social order. In these meetings, too, discussions will revolve round making socialist ideas relevant to the present conditions. For, everyone realises that not much meaningful thought has come out to enrich the theory and practice of socialism during the last three decades, while conditions have drastically changed the world over and in India. For instance, the question of the modernisation of technology was not raised as sharply in the 1960s as in the last decade. Nor was the threat to the physical environment as grave then as it is now. Moreover, the disintegration of communism in the then Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has been falsely presented by the vested interests as the total rejection of the ideals of equality and fraternity. Socialists who never accepted the policies of those countries as truly socialist and democratic, have, nevertheless, to defend these core values of socialism. They have to point out that the absence of democratic polity, centralisation in all spheres of public life and total control of the party over them led to the downfall of the communist system in Europe, and unless other communist-ruled countries change their ways radically, they too would fail.

The Socialists' dilemma has been confounded by the defeats suffered by social democrats in Western Europe where till 1998, socialists were in power in 13 of 15 states. Although the Indian socialists never accepted their welfare state model, they found them the closest ideologically, even if differing sharply with their foreign policy options. After the founding of the Socialist International in 1951, its Euro-centric perspective drove socialists in Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, India and other developing countries to set up the Asian Socialist Conference in 1953. However, as democracy was extinguished in Indonesia, Myanmar and Nepal, the ASC was wound up for all practical purposes by the early 1960s. The frequent splits among socialists in India had by then enfeebled them so that they could not resurrect that organisation.

But that is old history as are the splits which tore asunder the movement as a whole. Even now, the socialists totally opposed to the communalist politics of the NDA and its surrender to global capitalism are divided. The Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Samajwadi Janata Party, the Janata Dal (Secular) have parliamentary representation, while the Samajwadi Jana Parishad, the Loktantantrik Samajwadi Party and the Lok Shakti Abhiyan do not. Yet, this account does not exhaust the list of all the socialist groupings. All those who have retained their ideological commitments and did not have to become pragmatic under the compulsions of the deteriorating electoral practices could coordinate their efforts to pursue a common agenda of the resurrection of socialist values. The concept of Lok Shakti — people's power — as enunciated by Jayaprakash Narayan, can be the pole star of these efforts.

Socialists have remained united in several organisations such as the powerful national trade union centre, the HMS and the Rashtra Seva Dal. The S.M. Joshi Socialist Foundation, Nanasaheb Goray Academy, Keshv Goray Trust, Dr. P.V. Mandlik Foundation, Lohia Trust, Yusuf Meharally Trust, Madhu Limaye Trust and Acharya Narendra Dev Samajwadi Sansthan are some of the anchors which also bring them together. As do cooperative societies such as Apna Bazar in Mumbai, the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the Forest People and Forest Workers Organisation, the NAPM, the Indian Solidarity Committee and socialist study groups. The Socialist Front would ensure that they join hands for reviving the socialist movement on ideological lines. Since other leftist groups have also gained new insights, mutual discussions and joint actions with them could help build a broad platform of the democratic left.