By IANS,
New Delhi : Why does the ruling Left Front in West Bengal appear so vulnerable ahead of next year’s assembly polls and why is there a sense of doom? These were among the posers during a discussion at the release here Thursday of senior journalist Monobina Gupta’s book “Left Politics in Bengal: Time Travels among Bhadralok Marxists”.
The discussion, moderated by senior journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, saw the panelists raising issues concerning ideological moorings, organisational structure, policy framework, and factors behind the Left Front government’s uninterrupted 33 years in power in West Bengal.
Initiating the discussion, Yogendra Yadav, senior fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) spoke of the vulnerability of the Left Front ahead of the next year’s assembly polls. He said that governments come and go but prospect of losing elections in West Bengal appears to be beginning of a huge collapse for the Left Front. Throwing up questions, he wondered why Left leaders appeared vulnerable and why was there a sense of doom.
Describing the over three decade rule of the government led by Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) in West Bengal as something unparalleled in the history of the world, Aditya Nigam, joint director of the programme in social and political theory at CSDS, disagreed with the political parties who credit the Left’s victories to scientific rigging.
“I do not think it is possible to win polls after polls through scientific rigging,” he said.
Nigam said the rapidity of decline of the Left Front government, which won a handsome victory in the 2006 assembly polls, was unimaginable and added that a popular movement had been handed over to the Maoists by the ruling dispensation in Lalgarh.
Senior journalist Diptosh Majumdar said that that CPI-M in West Bengal became “bigger that the state and the government” and its role was visible everywhere.
Neerja Chowdhury, political editor, The New Indian Express, and a columnist, wondered why the Communist parties, despite always pleading the cause of the underprivileged and relatively spartan life styles of their leaders, had failed to click in the Hindi heartland, which has some of the country’s most backward districts.
Monobina Gupta, who has worked with The Patriot, The Telegraph, Mail Today and IANS and has extensively covered the Left parties, said that she had not imagined the “scale of disaster awaiting the party and the government” when she began writing the book,
The 272-page book, published by Orient BlackSwan, traces the Left Front government’s rise to power in the wake of the 1975 emergency. It tells the story of how a Communist leader almost became India’s prime minister, and how the CPI-M, powering its way to electoral victory through promises of empowerment to the most wretched, began to gradually lose support.
The book also looks at the structure of Communist organisations.