If the Left parties could successfully block the Indo-US nuclear deal by threatening in all seriousness to withdraw their outside support to the UPA goverment, why can't they adopt the same tactic to force the Centre to rollback the steep hike in the prices of petroleum products, including LPG? Is the worsening plight of the majority of the country's people, already reeling under the skyrocketing prices of essential commodities and whose miseries are now compounded by the rise in petroleum prices not as serious an issue for the Left as the nuke deal? The two questions were doing the rounds today as the state remained shut down for the second consecutive day because of two back-to-back bandhs - one sponsored by the Left Front and another by the Trinamul Congress and its allies. When the CPI-M general secretary, Mr Prakash Karat, was asked the same questions after the Left parties had gone to town protesting against the spiraling prices, he said the nuke deal had reached a stage that made the pull-out threat the only way left to stop the Centre from taking the "disastrous" step. But the rising prices needed a "calibrated response" which meant a series of steps as so many ministries were involved, including agriculture, commerce and law. In the same vein, Mr AB Bardhan, CPI general secretary, defended the Left plan to organise bandhs and demonstrations against the hike in petroleum prices. "We can't issue the pull-out threat, since that wouldn't have prevented the UPA government from going ahead with the hike. Moreover, the term of the government is soon to expire," he said. Asked whether enjoyment of power and privileges that stems from keeping the UPA government in place is the main reason for not threatening withdrawal of support on the issue that hurts the common man most, Mr Bardhan merely said : "It's for the media to bring to light if such privileges are really being enjoyed." CPI-M state secretary Mr Biman Bose wasn't even prepared to respond to the challenge thrown by Trinamul Congress chief Miss Mamata Banerjee to the Left parties to withdraw their support rather than organise "sham" protests such as yesterday's bandh. "My answer is, she has no moral right to talk this way," Mr Bose said. This only strengthened the suspicion that there were other more compelling factors that made the Left parties, especially the CPI-M, take the extreme step of threatening to topple the government on the nuke deal, even though the deal does not affect the majority of the people the way the rising prices and the fuel prices hike do. The Marxists' politics of bandh to protest against the rise in petroleum prices not only betrays their hypocrisy, but also reveal the tacit understanding they have with the Congress when the latter revised the prices. The game that the two are playing is that while the Congress would continue to impose the burden of their economic mismanagement on the people in full knowledge of the Left, the CPI-M and its partners would try to prevent the BJP and other Opposition parties from using popular discontent as a potent weapon against it in the 2009 Lok Sabha poll.