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POLITICS-INDIA: Left's Bengal Bastion Shaky After 30 Years in Power
By Praful Bidwai
NEW DELHI, Jun 29 (IPS) - India's Left parties have just set an international record by completing 30 uninterrupted years of elected power in the major state of West Bengal.
Not only is this is an unprecedented achievement in India, where 80
percent of all ruling parties have lost elections to their rivals in
the past three decades, it remains unparalleled anywhere in the world. Perhaps no other political party or coalition, from across the
political spectrum, has surpassed this accomplishment in any other
democracy.
India's Left Front (LF) - which mainly comprises the Communist Party
of India-Marxist (CPM), the Communist Party of India (CPI), the
Forward Bloc, and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP)- also
wields enormous power at the centre as the key allies of the
federally-ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh.
Fifty years ago, a coalition led by communists had set another
pioneering record by winning power in free and fair elections in
India's southern state of Kerala - the first communists to do so in
any democratic country in the post-War world. That government was
dismissed two years later by the then federal government. But the LF
bounced back and presently holds power in Kerala.
Impressive as the LF's record is in West Bengal, it is not without its flaws and limitations. Even the state government's own "Human
Development Report", released in 2004, admits the record is "mixed"
- "with some important successes and also some areas of inadequate
achievement, as well as certain emerging problems."
Since 2004, the Left has been drifting towards neo-liberal policies,
especially as regards industrialisation. Like the Centrist and
Right-wing parties, it too emphasises GDP growth, regardless of its
social impact. West Bengal, with a population of of 80 million people, currently records 8.55 percent growth, the highest of any state in India.
"This does not minimise the historic achievement of the LF in West
Bengal," says Achin Vanaik, from the political science department of
Delhi University. "Two factors explain this. One is land reform, and
the second is decentralisation of power through village-level bodies
called panchayats (local councils)."
The LF launched India's biggest land reform programme, under which 2.3 million share-croppers secured tenancy rights from non-cultivating landowners and a three-fourths share of the crop.
This reform accounts for more than half the total area transferred in
Independent India's land reform. It reduced rural poverty by an
average of 2.2 percentage points a year between the early 1980s and
the early 1990s.
Devolution of power to the panchayats (village level administration)
complemented the land reform and empowered huge numbers of
hitherto-disenfranchised people.
These reforms were the key to the LF's repeated electoral victories
and enabled it to raise its representation in the state legislature
from two-thirds of the total six years ago, to three-fourths last
year.
The LF has provided West Bengal with a robustly secular state, with an unblemished record of maintaining inter-religious community harmony and peace. "This is particularly noteworthy given the growth of Hindu-sectarian forces like the Bharatiya Janata Party since the mid-or late 1980s in many other states," comments Vanaik.
Equally impressive has been agrarian improvement under the LF. West
Bengal has witnessed some of India's highest rates of increase in
agricultural production and crop yields.
In contrast to this stands the Left Front's middling to poor
performance in the social sector.
"Barring a doubling of the literacy rate and a halving of the infant
mortality ratio, West Bengal's human development record is patchy, at
times well below the national average", says D. Bandopadhyay, a former
senior civil servant responsible for the design and implementation of
land reforms and some other social schemes.
For instance, admits the government's "Human Development Report": "As
in other parts of India, the public health system in West Bengal has
been undermined by recent globalisation and macro-economic processes
which have effectively reduced the ability of the state government to
ensure access of the people to safe, timely and effective healthcare."
Thus, West Bengal lags behind many other states in access to health
facilities, nutrition levels among women and children, availability of medicines and primary healthcare facilities. The ratio of doctors per million people in the state is six times lower than the national
average.
Education in West Bengal too is marked by high school dropout rates in the 6-14 age-group. The total number of such children is 0.96 million, even higher than in adjacent Bihar state, considered India's worst cesspool of social and educational backwardness.
Of India's 24 districts (of a total of about 600) that have over
50,000 children out of school, as many as 9 are in West Bengal.
Similarly, employment generation and rates of reduction in rural
poverty have slowed down, the latter to half its annual rate compared
to the period 1983-1993.
Yet, the Left Front government has been negligent in implementing a
new national programme guaranteeing 100 days of work to each family of the rural poor. West Bengal has the lowest rate of generating
employment under the programme - a mere 14 person-days per family,
against the national average of 43, in place of the promised 100 days
a year.
Hunger and food inadequacy have proved persistent in West Bengal. The
2004-05 National Sample Survey, a large-scale representative exercise, showed that food inadequacy experienced by its rural population is a high 12 percent, much higher than some of the poorest states like Orissa or Assam.
On top of this patchy record comes the Left Front's gravitation
towards a neo-liberal policy of industrialisation, which relies
entirely on private capital. In recent years, its government has
promoted projects like a car factory at Singur, 40 km from Kolkata,
and Special Economic Zones, which are tax-exempt enclaves meant to
promote exports.
These projects have meant the forcible acquisition of land and
provoked vigorous protests. Some of these protests came to a head
earlier this year at Singur, and at Nandigram, a village 160 km from
Kolkata.
In March, the state police opened fire on protesting farmers at
Nandigram, killing 14. This precipitated the biggest crisis in the
history of the Left Front. The families of the victims have been given no compensation. No major leader of the CPM, the LF's dominant
partner, has visited Nandigram.
The crisis now threatens to weaken the LF's greatest collective
strength: unity and ideological cohesion. It could erode the Left's
support among workers and peasants and eventually turn it into an
elitist, Social Democratic entity favoured by the middle classes.
Yet, the CPM leadership appears to have learnt no lessons from the
crisis. They have ruled out any rethinking on neoliberal
industrialisation. Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee says: "There is no turning back from industries for us."
"The Left must radically rethink its strategy", says Vanaik. "If it
wants to offer an alternative pro-people vision for society and create a model worthy of emulation, it must change course."
*****
+RIGHTS-INDIA: Massacre of Peasants May Slow SEZ Plans (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36949)
+SEZ government site (http://www.sezindia.nic.in/)
+ POLITICS: India's Left Going the Lula Way? (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35748)
+ Communist Gov't Evicts Farmers for Industries (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34673) (END/2007)
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