One of the deficiencies of the peace process has been that its main stakeholders never tackled the vital issues in time. The issue of rehabilitation of the combatants and especially of those disqualified combatants could not be taken seriously and it has lingered for a long time. As there is a silver lining in every cloud, the government with the cooperation of the Maoist leadership has recently started the process of rehabilitation of the disqualified combatants under the supervision of UNMIN. In politics, too, it is always better late than never.

Generally, politics is accepted as a game of possibilities. Politicians try to play with a conviction to score certain achievements. Since all conditions, both negative and positive, are not in their hands, they get unexpected results sometimes. Hence, shrewd politicians explain their failure

to their followers reasonably and encourage them to get ready for the next stage of the game with new vigour to accomplish the next goal. Thus moves the game of politics.

Observers are at times aghast at the outbursts of some Maoist leaders after they left the government. They always cry foul whenever they fail to achieve

their desired ends. They hardly introspect objectively or own responsibility for the happenings. They always hold external conditions responsible for their failures. Contrary to the law of mutual penetration of opposites, they get disturbed with opposition both inside and outside party. As realist, instead of accepting the opposition as a natural phenomenon, they go for negating it. After leaving the government they held the government formed on the basis of the majority in the CA as unconstitutional. The government has the natural right to bring its annual budget and get passed the vote on accounts bill. Now, after numerical defeat in

the House, their negation of the budget hardly justifies the dialectical process. In negation of negation, there is affirmation. By leaving

the government abruptly in the middle of the fiscal

year, they deprived themselves of the benefits of the budget and failed to have their next budget fulfilling their ambitions. They could neither start the process of the adjustment of the combatatants living in the cantonments nor the process of rehabilitation for the disqualified combatants. But they could prove their indispensability in writing of the constitution and the onward movement of the peace process.

Significantly, the Maoist leaders have to address simultaneously two distinct audiences: first, their cadres in cantonments and their political followers whose votes and sympathy they have received during the last CA election and secondly, the common mass. The first one has to be informed and convinced differently taking recourse to their political stand, whereas the common mass has to be approached in the larger context of politics. In the present context, it is feared that if they go on negating, they may lose not only the mass support, but also their cadres gradually.

After the CA election, the Maoists had three objectives before them. First, they had to form the government, in which they succeeded after a delay of about three months. Secondly, they had to proceed with the adjustment of their combatatants and to maintain the law and order situation in the country. They neither improved the law and order situation in the country nor progressed towards the adjustment of the fighters. Thirdly, there was hardly any satisfactory progress also on writing the constitution. But they resigned midway without accomplishing the goals. Knowing the unfavourable situations for the smooth sailing of their government, they moved ahead unwittingly. It is a fact that no constitution can be drafted sidelining them in the CA. But this is also true that they cannot write the new constitution on their own, whether they like it or not. They could have informed their cadres and party leaders about their constraints over manoeuvring the situations and political compulsion of adjustment to the given reality.

Before leaving the government, they could have

evaluated the achievements made through the CA

objectively. If they had succeeded if only partially,

they could have completed it by moving forward. If

they had failed, they would have pondered over their failure to correct their ways to achieve the goal. Presently, the last opportunity

before them is to decide finally to choose the peaceful method of getting social

and political transformation or revert back to their

traditional method of revolution. If they choose the peaceful path, they have to cooperate with the other political parties.

Otherwise, they may miss the opportunity of leading the country in making a democratic constitution. Of course, for hat they have to learn lessons from the countries that had pangs of great social and political transformation through the adoption of the dictatorship of the proletariat at a point of time. After all, negation of negation is a gradual adjustment to the emergence of or reshaping of the present as a synthesis in the future.

Prof Mishra is former election commissioner