Leftwing decadence an infantile disorder

Does the Left Front in West Bengal stand isolated from the people after enjoying their support for over three decades?

Pranay Sharma Kolkata

"How did you manage to isolate yourself so wonderfully from the people in such a short space of time?"  The country's first communist chief minister, EMS Namboodiripad, was asked by Jawaharlal Nehru after the police fired upon striking workers in Kerala's old port city of Quilon in 1959. Namboodiripad never recovered from the crisis and the first communist government in India lasted less than two years.

The crisis the CPM-led Left Front (LF) faces in West Bengal presently is no less grave, although its story may be somewhat different. The CPM-led coalition has been in power in the state for over three decades. It has won an unprecedented seven consecutive terms in office since 1978. In the assembly elections of 2006, its victory has been emphatic: it won an overwhelming majority in the 294-member house.

The question posed before Namboodiripad is being asked of the Left Front today. Does the Front stand isolated from the people after having enjoyed their support for so many years?

There are no easy answers. Any attempt at writing off the LF Front in a hurry can be a mistake. For the past many years it has been the champion of the poor. It has been the architect of radical land reforms and 'Operation Barga' that gave ownership rights to thousands of sharecroppers and landless peasants in the state. It has implemented the Panchayati Raj system that devolved power to the rural areas.

The Front has been the symbol of unity of the Left parties. Its success at being viable and sustainable provided the CPM and its allies with the platform of making the transition from a regional, political outfit to the status of the nation's 'conscience-keeper'. It has remained a force that intervenes on behalf of the people, be it in preventing the growing closeness between India and the US, or in propping up the 'secular' Congress-led UPA coalition at the Centre to keep the BJP's Hindutva brigade at bay.

Few would deny that the crisis within the LF, particularly the CPM, is perhaps the worst it has faced in many decades. It is an irony that it comes at a time when the party's general secretary, Prakash Karat, is being featured on magazine covers as the newsmaker of the year for putting the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre in a crisis over the nuclear deal. Many more questions are being asked across the intellectual and political spectrum about the crisis emerging within the CPM and the need for serious introspection.

As the year comes to an end, many in the Left parties would perhaps remember 2007 as 'the year of the crisis' — a crisis the CPM has brought upon the LF and on itself by its sheer arrogance and refusal to involve those people who will be forced to give up their land for setting up industries in an investment hungry state.

Apparently, there has been no public acknowledgement of the mistakes and the reasons that have led to this pessimistic state of affairs. The central leadership is backing the Bengal CPM and Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya to the hilt. There have been protests from LF partners. A minister and RSP leader, Kshiti Goswami, had threatened to resign from the LF government. Veteran Forward Bloc leader, Ashok Ghosh, has decided to lead a march to Nandigram to defy the CPM this month. CPI leaders remain morose in public and vocal behind closed doors.

There is a growing opinion in Bengal today that raises one of the biggest challenges to the LF's legitimacy. Unlike in the past, it does not come from political parties like Mamata Banerjee's Trinamul Congress or the Congress and BJP. The challenge is posed from within the Left fold as it raises serious questions over the CPM and LF's authority to be the main arbiter of the Left and democratic forces in the country.

The challenge that has been thrown up from a series of movements in Kolkata and elsewhere in Bengal, be it on Singur or Rizwanur, Taslima Nasrin or Nandigram, or food riots in Bankura and Midnapore, drives home a simple point: the opinion and voice of the Left forces cannot be limited to the Left Front. It goes far beyond and encompasses a large section that stretches from Maoists to Marxist-Leninists to all those democratic and progressive people who still take pride in calling themselves the 'Left', including those not affiliated to any party. Nor is it limited to West Bengal. The debate has gone far beyond Bengal.

Four decades ago, a similar debate had raged through the country. It was in 1967 when the police gunned down nine peasants in Darjeeling district's Naxalbari. It had split the Left almost vertically, particularly CPM leaders and rank-and-file, all over India. The debate was not confined to drawing rooms or coffee house tables; it had spilled over to college campuses, streets and backlanes of Calcutta and many other cities, villages and tribal areas. A bloody and protracted war was fought between CPM cadres and the new rebels, their main adversaries, the Naxalites, most of whose leadership came from within the CPM.

Ten years later, the CPM took the initiative of forming the LF. At the time of its formation, two of its main adversaries, the Naxalites and CPI, were in total disarray. The Naxalites, many of whom had joined to float their own political outfit, the CPI(ML), had splintered into several groups while fighting petty battles with rival factions. The CPI was making amends for its politically disastrous decision to align with Indira Gandhi's Congress while backing the Emergency from 1975 to 1977. It was a much humbled and leaner CPI that came to the Left alliance, after taking a conscious decision to play second-fiddle to the CPM.

In the intervening period, many significant changes have taken place within the Front, more precisely, the CPM. It was its anti-establishment character that had traditionally attracted a large number of youth to its fold. But after being in government for 30 years, the party today has become part of the establishment. More than 90 per cent of its members are those who joined the party since 1977. There are serious doubts whether it is the CPM's ideological moorings or its ability to expand the web of patronage that attracted them to the party.

In the districts and rural areas of Bengal, a new elite has emerged who form the party's backbone. They are the chief political functionaries and key figures in the panchayats and other rural administrative bodies and also the main beneficiaries of the LF's economic pie.

The crisis is not only about Singur or Nandigram. It is about the LF's legitimacy to rule. There are questions over its inability to offer an alternative model of government, its failure to provide governance with a human face. Its inadequacy in creating a machinery that is for the people; one that cares and safeguards the interests of the poorest of the poor.

The anger and disenchantment is over the traditional arrogance, apathy and indifference that police officers and administration officials continue to show to the needs of the people even after being in a state ruled by the LF for 30 years. It is about the dismal performance of the government on key social sectors like education and health. More importantly, it is about the CPM's failure to accommodate dissent. It is about the party's uncanny knack of silencing opponents or anyone who holds a different view and its weakness to encourage sycophants and camp followers.

It is difficult to predict how the crisis will play out. The civil society of Bengal who took to the streets of Kolkata last month to register protest and outrage over Nandigram are mainly artistes, writers, professionals and journalists. They are not political activists. It may be a while before they take to the streets again. The Calcutta High Court's verdict on the acquisition of land for the Tatas in Singur is due. It may well go against the government. If that happens, it will be yet another setback for the CPM.

The LF partners, some of whom have started distancing themselves from the CPM, have announced their intention to fight the panchayat elections in Bengal, due in May next year. These may be ominous signs for the CPM. It is premature to say whether these cracks will bring down the LF. As it happened in the past, the CPM may still bounce back and re-establish its supremacy in West Bengal. But will it bring about any significant change in the character and conduct of the CPM as it did after 1967 when it was forced to prioritise land reforms? Or will it become more arrogant and self-assured?

The last time the CPM faced a major crisis, it started from Naxalbari. Its present crisis is over Nandigram. It may be a matter of coincidence that both start with the letter 'N' and has nine letters in English. Marxists are not known to be superstitious. But then, with the changes that have taken place in the party in the last 30 years, it may not be so difficult to speculate that there can be quite a few in the CPM now who might start believing in numerology.