All that’s right with the Left

What has helped the Left is the image of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who became Jyoti Basu’s successor as chief minister, and is often compared to Deng Xiaoping, discovers Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Many individuals who are not familiar with West Bengal have wondered what makes this state unique among the 28 states in the country. Why has the electorate here voted a Communist government to power seven times in a row since 1977—some sort of a world record?

The political opponents of the Left Front, a coalition of seven parties led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), used to claim that the supporters of the ruling regime would ‘rig’ elections through strongarm tactics and intimidation of voters. It was further argued that over the years, the Left had won elections because its sympathisers control the local administration as well as the police force. This time round, however, such claims are not being made with the usual vociferousness because the Election Commission had pulled out all stops to ensure that elections were conducted in a free and fair manner. In fact, for the first time, elections in the state were conducted over five days.

The Communists and their supporters had always claimed that they could not have manipulated the outcome simply because the votes cast against the Left have accounted for close to half of the total valid votes polled in seven successive elections. In the current round, the vote share of the Left Front went up only marginally from 49.4 per cent in 2001 to 50.2 per cent. However, given the way the first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all electoral system works, the number of seats held by the Left in the 294-member West Bengal Assembly went up impressively by 36, from 199 to 235.
More importantly, the anti-Left vote was splintered. Five years ago, the Trinamool Congress led by Mamata Banerjee had ditched the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the National Democratic Alliance on the flimsy excuse that George Fernandes had not quit the government after the tehelka episode. The Trinamool then cobbled up an alliance with its parent, the Congress, and the combine obtained 39.3 per cent of the total votes cast. The Trinamool ended up with 60 seats while the Congress had 26 (including three Independents). This year, the Trinamool stuck with the BJP—which does not have much of a support base in the state—ending up with 28.9 per cent of the vote and 29 seats; the Congress won 21 seats with two Independent legislators supporting it.

Interestingly, the Trinamool managed to retain much of its support base in Kolkata—the Left hardly increased its vote share in the city (from 42.3 per cent to 42.5 per cent)—winning nine instead of eight seats. It, therefore, is clear that although sections of the urban upper and middle classes have apparently moved towards the CPI (M)—during the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, only one anti-Left candidate won, and that was Mamata herself—residents of urban areas, especially Kolkata, by and large still oppose the Communists.

To return to the substantive question: why have the strong anti-incumbency sentiments that have prevailed in all states in India been conspicuous by their absence in West Bengal? Those who support the Left Front argue that this is largely on account of the quality of governance of the state government, its land reforms programme and "Operation Barga"—a scheme to provide more rights to tillers—that were initiated through the 1980s. The weakness of the Opposition had made life that much simpler for the Left: far from matching its organisational strength, both the Trinamool and the Congress cannot even find enough supporters to act as election agents in all the polling booths in the state.

What has undoubtedly helped the Left is the image of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (who became chief minister in November 2000), who is often compared to Deng Xiaoping. Bhattacharjee, 63, who took over the reins after Jyoti Basu, now nearly 93, is not afraid of welcoming foreign and multinational inverstors and has stated time and again that it is not possible to establish socialism in one province in a capitalist country. Basu, too, had an image of being a "pragmatic" Communist with the distinction of having been India's longest serving chief minister—nearly 25 years. In this election, in order to counter anti-incumbency sentiments, the Left inducted over 100 relatively young candidates into the electoral fray and dropped older representatives, including over a dozen ministers.

Whereas the base of the Communists in West Bengal had been largely rural and among those who benefited the most from its development schemes, the chain-smoking Bhattacharjee has focused much of his government's attention on the renewal of Kolkata, the state capital that also used to serve as India's capital till the first decade of the 20th century. The city that had become notoriously decrepit has been improved with a second bridge over the Hooghly, an underground railway, besides new flyovers and multistoreyed buildings.

Opponents contend that the Left has also been opportunistic in its political strategy. In New Delhi, the Manmohan Singh government is dependent on the support of 61 Members of Parliament belonging to four Left parties. In West Bengal, on the contrary, the Communists and the Congress are arch political opponents. The CPI (M) claims that there is no contradiction because it is supporting the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance coalition for the specific purpose of keeping communal forces out of power. At the same time, the Left remains staunchly opposed to many economic policies of the Congress, which it believes are no different from those followed by the BJP.

The West Bengal government has realised that it cannot continue to accuse the Centre of having neglected the state for decades by, among other things, initiating a policy of ‘freight equalisation’ of coal and steel prices that robbed the eastern region of many of its locational advantages. Once a centre of steelmaking and heavy industry, many large factories have shut down, throwing hundreds of thousands of workers out of their jobs. Now, the state wants to jump on the IT bandwagon. During his media conference on May 11 after the elections, Bhattacharjee was beaming when he announced that the Tata Group would be setting a car manufacturing plant in the state.

What cannot be denied is that West Bengal has a long way to go before it can alleviate the acute problems of poverty and unemployment that persist in in districts like Purulia, Bankura and Medinipur. The proportion of the state's population living below the poverty line is said to have come down from over half three decades ago to just over a quarter at present, or close to the national average. The state also faces problems of separatism in its northern district of Cooch Behar and infiltration from Bangladesh is a major political issue in districts like Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia and North 24-Parganas. The undivided province of Bengal was partitioned twice, first in 1905 and then in 1947, when East Pakistan was created. On the second occasion, the state witnessed the influx of a large numbers of refugees. In 1971, after East Pakistan ceased to exist, there was another round of refugee influx into West Bengal. That the state’s ravaged economy has witnessed a revival in recent years has helped the Left retain power.