The Left in India - including the Maoist extremists - despite their ideological distortions, their utopian fantasies, their proclivity to violence and intimidation, their intolerance of dissent, their hostility to freedom, and their gross historical and policy errors, appear to be able to tap into this reality, even as all other political formations - and India's economic planners - fail to recognise or address it. Crippled 'national' parties, with their perpetual and opportunistic leaning on the crutches of mobilisation in the name of Mandal and Kamandal, and the directionless and divisive regional groupings that have no vision beyond bribery to offer the electorate, are ceding vast territories to the Left - and this is at least partially visible in the results of the recent elections. It is more dramatically visible in the growth of the radical Left, which further exploits the spaces vacated even by the 'moderate' Left, and this, precisely, is what explains the enormous growth of Maoism in so much of the country.