By Sujoy Dhar, IANS
Kolkata : West Bengal's Communist government completes a remarkable 30 long years in office with a dramatic ideological U-turn over promoting industry that has left its legion of supporters stunned.
Yet, it has set a world record in being the only communist government to have been democratically elected six times ever after taking power on June 21, 1977 at the head of a coalition of Left-leaning parties that capitalised on the mood following former prime minister Indira Gandhi's emergency rule in India.
A divided opposition has been unable to unseat the nine-party Left Front in election after election. But with protests breaking out over the government's decision to take over farmland to build industry, West Bengal is witnessing, perhaps for the first time, an anti-Left sentiment that is unprecedented.
Surprisingly, many leftwing sympathisers have turned critics. Sheikh Rafiq of Nandigram is one such person.
Rafiq, who grew up worshipping the brand of communism advocated by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), is now a rebel with a cause. The 34-year-old minces no words while slamming the party, which he says has gained such heights because faceless millions like him faithfully watered it.
With Nandigram already simmering over the proposed land acquisition for a special economic zone (SEZ) envisioned by reformist Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, Rafiq is an indicator of the shape of things to come.
"We will die but not give up an inch of land," Rafiq said. "For 30 years we supported CPI-M, voted them to power and now the treacherous behemoth that we created is trying to swallow us."
On March 14, Rafiq was punished as policemen and armed cadres of CPI-M stormed Nandigram and killed over a dozen protestors who were opposing takeover of farmland for industry.
It was on June 21, 1977 that 64-year-old London-educated communist Jyoti Basu took oath as chief minister of West Bengal, heralding the birth of a government that has gone on to win one election after another and seemed invincible until the recent mass protests against land acquisition.
CPI-M leaders say more than 13,00,000 acres of land have been distributed among poor and landless people since 1977. In a state where about 83 percent of agricultural land is with the poor and marginalised farmers, the programme still continues.
But with Chief Minister Bhattacharya – who makes no bones talking about the "mistakes" of militant trade unionism – pledging to industrialise West Bengal in a big way, many of the poor are wondering if it will be at their cost.
This has already led to violence in places like Singur and Nandigram, which are trying to find a prominent place on West Bengal's industrial map.
"What is ironical after 30 years of Left rule in West Bengal is that the people of Nandigram who are fighting the Left are mostly their supporters," explains Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury, a political scientist at the Rabindra Bharati University.
"Once they said 'langol jar, jami tar' (he who wields the plough owns the land). So when the transition is taking place, the process is violent. It is because the Left is trying to do in three months what they have not done in 30 years.
"If we try to list the positives of the Left Front government, the biggest is perhaps land reforms. Democratic decentralisation of power through the Panchayat system is also another success," Basu Ray Chaudhury told IANS.
"In Bengal surplus land was acquired and distributed to the farmers and share-croppers. In Singur, they are the people who are on the forefront of agitation," he said.
Kanu Sanyal, one of the founders of India's Maoist movement, lists the positives and negatives of Left rule in West Bengal as he sees it.
"The CPI-M did good work only in its first five years of power and never after that. Actually, the CPI-M or even the CPI (Communist Party of India) do not believe in total land reforms," said the reclusive Naxalite who has re-entered active politics after farmers' protests in Singur.
Bhattacharya asserts that he is still a communist "but I now believe more in democracy… But I am not practising communism here any more, what I am doing is (fostering) capitalism".
It is difficult to believe in these times that it was only a year ago that the Left Front won a whopping 235 assembly seats, riding on the image of the suave Bhattacharya and his brand of industry-wooing liberal communism.
Said noted economist Aviroop Sarkar: "The chief minister is on the right track so far as his impetus on industry is concerned. But the manner in which he proceeded has inherent loopholes. I think the Singur deal was not too profitable as the huge subsidy rolled out for the Tatas is not economically beneficial in long run."
Though the communists in Bengal have often been blamed for driving away industry from the state, the corporates are less uncharitable now.
Said Rumela Das, a housewife in south Kolkata: "We voted for the Left despite its failures because there is no credible opposition in this state. Despite all their arrogance, they offered us a stable government.
"The chief minister is trying hard to industrialise the state, but even there the opposition is opposing it just for the sake of it. Industry cannot come up in the air. The opposition should have bargained hard for better compensation to farmers than create a situation that would drive away the Tatas," she felt.