SUBVERSE: Make or break

13 Oct 2008, 0001 hrs IST, Rupa Sengupta The PM was recently asked if he foresaw the Left supping again with the UPA. To this he answered with characteristic wryness: he wasn't an astrologer. Given the ups and downs of political alliances in what is called the Coalition Era, no less than astrology can help chart the trajectories of political outfits. Not that the question posed to the PM was baseless, given recent hints of a Left-Congress thaw. Sometime ago, the Congress's Priya Ranjan Das Munshi spoke in one voice with the Left about the need for Tata's Nano plant to stay on in Singur. On his part, CPM bigwig Prakash Karat patted the Congress for fighting communalism. What was up? In the run-up to the Indo-US nuclear deal, the Left ditched the UPA for what it bizarrely called the Congress's surrender to "imperialist"... [read full story]