INDIA: Communism’s ‘Last Bastion’ Votes Red Again

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

KOLKATA, May 8 2006 (IPS) - India’s West Bengal state, called the world’s last bastion of popular communism, is preparing to usher into power its seventh consecutive leftist government, this week.

Opinion polls indicate that the Left Front, a coalition of seven political parties led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (or CPI-M), is almost certain to win the elections to a provincial state legislative assembly that serves 80 million people, for a record seventh time since 1977.

The debate, in this former capital of the British imperialism, is only about the margin of victory when the results are declared on Thursday. The celebrations have already begun and this city of colonnaded palaces is awash in a sea of red, relieved only by the famous crossed hammer and sickle.

The political opponents of the Left Front have begun a now familiar litany of complaints – that supporters of the ruling coalition have “rigged” the elections and used strong-arm tactics to intimidate voters. It is further contended that the Left Front has been winning election after election because its sympathisers control the local administration and the police force.

These charges have been refuted and dismissed by spokespersons of the Left parties who argue that there could not have been any manipulation simply because votes cast against the communists in six successive elections have accounted for roughly half of the valid votes polled in fairly close contests.

Over the past few weeks, the Election Commission of India – that is statutorily responsible for conducting elections in the country – has pulled out all stops to make special arrangements to ensure that the current round of elections is conducted in a “free and fair” manner.

The commission has deployed federal paramilitary forces in strength to prevent partisan local officials from influencing voters and staggered the elections over five days (on Apr. 17, 22 and 27 and on May 3 and 8) to ensure the presence of federal forces in adequate numbers.

”Why are elections in West Bengal staggered over five days?” Prakash Karat, general secretary of the CPI-M demands to know. He told IPS that the commission’s decision has cast aspersions on the impartiality of the state’s administration.

Why have the strong anti-incumbency sentiments that have prevailed in all states in India been conspicuously absent in West Bengal? Supporters of the Left Front attribute this to the quality of governance and a land reforms programme that ensures greater rights to tillers of the land, implemented through the 1980s.

Independent analysts add that another important consideration that has aided the Left Front is the weakness of its political opponents – the main opposition party in the state is the Trinamool Congress. “Both the Trinamool Congress and the Congress (of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh) cannot really match the organisational strength of the Left – they can’t even find enough supporters to act as election agents in all the polling booths in the state,” points out Amiya Chaudhury, a political analyst and psephologist.

Five years ago, the Trinamool Congress struck an electoral alliance with the Congress against the Left but failed and this time around there is no electoral understanding. ”The division in the anti-Left votes has made life that much simpler for the communists and that has helped them further enhance the positive image of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (who became chief minister of the state in November 2000),” says Surojit Mukhopadhyay, sociologist and fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences.

Bhattacharjee, 63, who took over the reins from former chief minister Jyoti Basu, now nearly 93, has acquired a reputation of being a practical “new Left” leader who is not afraid of welcoming foreign investors to the state and who has stated time and again that it is not possible to establish socialism in one province in an essentially capitalist country. Basu, the original ‘pragmatic communist’ has the distinction of being India’s longest serving chief minister – nearly 25 years.

For this election, the Left has inducted many young supporters as candidates and dropped older representatives, including over a dozen ministers in the state government.

Whereas the base of the communists in West Bengal has been largely rural, the chain-smoking Bhattacharjee has focused his government’s attention on the renewal of Kolkata, that served as India’s capital till it was moved to New Delhi in the first decade of the last century.

The city soon became notoriously decrepit and has only in recent years begun a programme of revival, visible in a second bridge over the Hooghly river and a modern underground railway, besides new flyovers and the multi-storied buildings that tower over the colonial structures of another age.

The “look urban” strategy of the Left appears to have paid off, for the opposition won only one out of six parliamentary seats in greater Kolkata – traditionally anti-Communist – during the April-May 2004 general elections to form the federal government in New Delhi.

Although issues concerning voters during federal elections are different from those in local elections, supporters of the Left argue that they would perform well. “Bhattacharjee has become the darling of the urban upper classes and middle classes – they see in him a reflection of their hopes and aspirations,” says Sumit Mitra, author and journalist, who is now a vice president with Reliance Industries, a large diversified corporate entity based in western Mumbai city.

A factor that has helped Bhattacharjee is that his principal political opponent, Mamata Banerjee, who heads the Trinamool Congress, is perceived as a maverick who cannot be relied on. A spinster and former federal minister for railways, Banerjee has allied herself at different times with the fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and with the federally ruling Congress party, in her efforts to unseat the Communists but succeeding only in sowing confusion.

Opponents of the Communists contend that the Left too has been opportunistic in its political strategy. In New Delhi, the Manmohan Singh government is dependent for its survival on the outside support of 61 communist members of parliament.

In West Bengal, on the other hand, the communists and the Congress are arch political opponents.

“There is no contradiction in our position,” says Sitaram Yechuri, parliamentarian and a member of the politburo of the CPI-M. “In New Delhi, we are supporting the Congress-led coalition for the specific purpose of keeping communal forces represented by the BJP out of power and on the basis of a common minimum programme. At the same time, we are opposed to many of the (pro-liberalisation) economic policies of the Congress and are opposing the party tooth-and-nail in West Bengal.”

“They are just a bunch of hypocrites,” retorts Tathagata Roy, member of the West Bengal legislative assembly and head of the state unit of the BJP, referring to the communists. “They want to share power (at the centre) but not be held responsible – they believe in an ideology which has been rejected in most parts of the world.”

The West Bengal government has accused successive non-communist governments in New Delhi of discriminating against the state – such as through initiating a policy of “freight equalization” of coal and steel prices that robbed the eastern region of many of its locational advantages.

As a result, West Bengal, once a centre of steel making and heavy industry, has seen many large factories shutting down and throwing hundreds of thousands of workers out of their jobs. But liberalisation has given the state a lease of life through new opportunities presented by foreign direct investment.

“We are trying to encourage firms using information technology as well as small and medium companies to come to the state,” says Nirupam Sen, the state’s industry minister. He told IPS that West Bengal had also gradually got rid of its image as a state with militant trade unions and poor work ethics. “That is why Japanese, Korean and Indonesian companies are investing in the state.”

Sen acknowledges that West Bengal has a long way to go before it can alleviate the poverty and unemployment that persist in certain pockets in the state, in districts like Purulia, Bankura and Medinipur. “We are still the only political coalition in the state that is trying to do something for the poor. Just because we are inviting foreign investment, it doesn’t mean we have forgotten the interests of the working class and the unemployed,” says Sen.

The state faces problems of separatism in its northern district of Cooch Behar. Illegal immigration from neighbouring Bangladesh is a major political issue in districts like Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia and north 24-Parganas.

Undivided Bengal was partitioned twice, first by the British colonial government in 1905 and then in 1947 when India became politically independent and East Pakistan was hived away in the name of religion.

In 1971, East Pakistan became the independent nation of Bangladesh, following a devastating civil war. An influx of refugees that began during the war has reduced to a trickle but continues as a result of relatively better economic conditions West Bengal.

Ironically, if the Left Front wins again it will be because of its policies of liberalisation rather than the doctrinaire Marxism of the past.