There are no permanent friends or foes in politics. CPM leader Sitaram Yechury made this explicit when he said in a TV talk show that the CPM is willing to do business with the UPA after elections. What does this mean?

One future scenario could be the UPA wins the trust vote, the nuclear deal is through but the UPA is short of a simple majority in the next elections. The Left then steps in, like it did after the 2004 elections, works out a common minimum programme with the UPA and supports the government.

Or the government fails the trust vote and the country goes to polls. The UPA fails to win a majority on its own and seeks the Left's support that the latter agrees to offer. The only possible exception to these scenarios is a clear victory for the NDA or the UPA in the next elections.

The Left doesn't desire an NDA victory as of now, at least, and a Left government at the Centre is not even a distant possibility. So all that the Left can hope for in the immediate future is a UPA government at the Centre, which is what we have now.

Why then dislodge it? Why stage this unwarranted circus when political stability is an absolute necessity for the country to tide over the economic slowdown? Political parties should hold fast to their ideologies. But should ideology be allowed to become a prison that prevents a party from making realistic assessments of the ground situation?

The CPM is aware of the necessity to balance theory and practice. The Indian Left is a pioneer of coalition politics, balancing textbook theory with existing social and economic realities. Those compromises helped the CPM to form governments in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura.

Surely, the party doesn't regret its entry into parliamentary democracy and stints in office in various states. Many Left MPs consider voting with the BJP against the government as a sin worse than letting through a nuclear deal that is perceived to be pro-US by some leaders. The CPM leadership may clarify that on the issue of the nuclear deal there is no coordination with the NDA to topple the government, but it can't deny that the Left and the NDA now have a common goal, the defeat of the UPA government on the nuclear deal. The CPM is scouting for new friends to achieve the goal.

But it is begging the question why put in all this hard work towards destabilising the government, if the future should belong to a UPA-Left coalition.