Kanchan GuptaA deathly silence hangs heavy at Muzaffar Ahmed Bhawan, 31 Alimuddin Street, in central Kolkata, the CPI(M)’s headquarters in West Bengal. In the courtyard of the squat building, indistinguishable from the other nondescript houses on either side of this narrow lane off Lower Circular Road, journalists have gathered, hyena-like, to feed on the corpse of the party felled by the Trinamool Congress in a historic battle for power. On the first floor, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, stunned by his defeat in Jadavpur, considered the invincible bastion of the Left in the city, is in a huddle with senior party colleagues. I look for the ebullient, unputdownable party secretary and Left Front chairman, Mr Biman Bose, who told me less than a fortnight ago that the Marxists would retain power, albeit with a vastly reduced majority; he had asked me to meet him after the results were declared. A party apparatchik tells me, rather whispers into my ear, “Bimanda prochondo tension-ey aachhen. Ekhon dekha korben na. (Bimanda is very tense. He won’t meet anybody now.)”
That’s understandable. It’s around noon, all the results are yet to be declared, but the trend, or to use a cliché, the writing on the wall, is clear. Ever since the rigged election of 1971 that saw the Congress come to power in West Bengal after the disastrous United Front experiment accompanied by repeated spells of President’s rule during the late-1960s, the CPI(M) has been in an unassailable position: Always on top. None of the comrades, each one of them looking thunder-struck, who had gathered at the party office could have ever imagined such a wash-out. Perhaps despite their show of bravado they knew deep within that power would slip out of their hands this time, but they were convinced, till Friday mid-morning, that they would have a sizeable number of legislators to remain a political force to reckon with even if they had to sit on the Opposition benches.But with 40 MLAs and a defeated leadership — nearly every senior Minister, along with Mr Bhattacharjee, has lost this election — it’s bleak and uncertain days ahead for the CPI(M). With the Marxists stripped of power and legislative strength, Big Brother won’t find it easy to keep the flock together; lesser allies could soon be straining at the leash.
Ironically, if one of the main reasons why the Left has been trounced in so decisive a manner in this election is its farmland-for-factory policy (distorted to a great extent in the public perception by misleading media reportage, exaggerated allegations of ‘oppression’ and ‘suppression’ of farmers by the Opposition, and callous indifference of the CPI(M)’s party bureaucracy), Mr Abdul Rezzak Mollah, the Minister for Land Reforms in the Left Front Government, has bucked the trend by winning with a decent margin. So has Mr Surjyakanta Mishra, the Minister for Health and a member of the Central Committee. In their ability to survive the tsunami of ‘poriborton’, or change, lies the reason why others stand shamed in a corner today.
Mr Abdul Rezzak Mollah was never comfortable with the manner in which the Left Front Government, more so the CPI(M), went about pushing its industrialisation policy, taking farmers for granted. He remained rooted to the ground, a man of the masses whose interests the Marxists have long ceased to represent, leave alone protect. Similarly, Mr Surjyakanta Mishra chose not to forget the source of political power — the people. The rest became victims of the debilitating political disease called power-induced arrogance.
“We were used to our leaders talking to us from the ground floor. Then they moved to the first floor. Next it was the second floor. Later, they would occasionally look at us from the third floor. After a while, even that stopped. They just forgot about us,” an elderly voter of Jadavpur told me during the election campaign. He had voted for the CPI(M) since 1977 and was a card-carrying member of the party. He gave up his membership three years ago and had decided to stay at home on voting day. “I can’t make myself vote for the Trinamool Congress. But I won’t vote for the CPI(M). So I am staying home this time.” Arrogance is something that comes naturally to our politicians, irrespective of the colour of their party flag or their ideology, if any. Other parties have suffered on account of it, most notably the BJP many of whose leaders continue to be afflicted by the virus of arrogance.
A second factor that worked against the CPI(M) in this election (as also in the 2009 Lok Sabha poll) was the disappointment caused by Mr Bhattacharjee failing to live up to the expectations raised by ‘Brand Buddha’. The same man who had led the Left Front to a whopping — some would say stunning — victory in 2006, decimating both the Trinamool Congress and the Congress, has this time led his party and allies to a crushing, humiliating defeat. How much is he to blame for the Left Front’s failure? Or, let me put it this way, is he alone to blame for the Left, as we have known it in West Bengal, becoming a footnote of the State’s contemporary history?
In all fairness, it must be said that he tried in his own way to deliver on his promise of rapid development with equitable growth. He coined the slogan “Do it now!” which of course nobody remembers, or cares to remember, today. He defied party dogma to declare that the capitalist path was the route to achieving the socialist goals of the CPI(M). He refused to endorse bandhs and insisted on going to work every time the CPI(M) forced the city and the State to go on strike. In an age of political corruption and intellectual dishonesty, he remained spotlessly clean and spurned the trappings of office. Ms Mamata Banerjee may have made Bata’s rubber bathroom slippers fashionable, but long before her arrival on the centre stage of West Bengal politics Mr Bhattacharjee had set an example worth emulating by refusing to move out of his two-bedroom apartment in a rundown Government housing colony.
Yet, in the end, Mr Bhattacharjee failed. He failed because the party failed to stand by him, it refused to recast itself as an organisation in tune with the times, it rudely negated his efforts to liberate the Government from the clutches of an increasingly corrupt and dysfunctional party bureaucracy. Yes, he made wrong decisions, but which head of Government can claim to have taken only right decisions? If he erred by going along with the Salem Group (it remains a mystery as to who pushed the dodgy Indonesian firm’s envelope) and being obsessed with the Tata small car project at Singur, it was the party’s responsibility to gently bring about a course correction. It didn’t.
What the ‘Party’, as the CPI(M) came to be known, did was to promote individuals bereft of integrity, honesty and probity. In the process, as Mr Bhattacharjee steered a ship that had sprung a million leaks to nowhere, corrupt party card-holders like Anuj Pandey (you wouldn’t have heard of him, but the gut-wrenchingly poor tribals of Lalgarh have) prospered, only to bring about the fall of the very Government which ensured their ill-desreved, ill-gotten prosperity. Mr Biman Bose has promised “choolchhera bishleshan” but we can be sure nothing will come of either introspection or self-criticism unless the CPI(M) makes fundamental corrections. That would be equally true for any other party. Rectification is more than just a word that sounds impressive but, more often than not, means nothing.
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