Watershed Election
Lessons For The Winner, And For The Loser
Lessons For The Winner, And For The Loser
By Ravindra Kumar
If the Left doesn’t learn and Miss Banerjee plays her cards right, 2011 could well turn out to be a fatal blow for Indian Communism. But if Miss Banerjee slips up, 2011 could well become a fatal blow for West Bengal.
AND so West Bengal has finally said goodbye to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its assorted partners. It has done so decisively, and while the Marxists would now like us to believe that change was inevitable after three decades and more in power, they ought to be stunned if only because they had seemed so totally in control even three years ago. But in the victory of the Trinamul and the defeat of the Left, there are lessons for both political groupings.
The Left must realize that no party can afford to employ Stalinist tactics in a multi-party democratic structure. Indeed, a party of the sort that the CPI-M had become in West Bengal ~ one that controlled, even micro-managed the lives of citizens and sought to stifle dissent ~ was an aberration.
Apologists of the Left will disagree; they will argue it was these methods that kept them in power for 34 years. But if they are honest with themselves, they will appreciate basic truths. The Left came to power riding a wave it hadn’t created. It was re-elected the first two times because it followed a broadly socialist, and not overtly Stalinist, agenda. Thereafter it remained in power by distorting elections, through creation of bogus voters and manipulation of the polling process. For at least the past 15 years, it was helped by the wooly-headedness of the Congress and on occasion the national party’s complicity in preserving the status quo in Bengal for gains in New Delhi. It was this ambivalence that forced Miss Mamata Banerjee to form her own party more than a decade ago.
And in the past two decades, especially in the last years of Jyoti Basu and throughout the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee period, the CPI-M became intolerant of dissent, impervious to criticism and arrogant in its conduct. Worse, it sought to convey to the people it ruled that the writ of the party and its leaders could not be questioned. The civil service was whipped into blind obedience, the police became an agent of the party and civil society was bludgeoned into submission. Quite honestly, it was difficult to find more wimpish civil servants than the ones in Bengal after Marxists had put them in their places; a dozen or more needed to be put together to fashion a single working backbone.
On a personal note, this writer’s life as a journalist ~ a span of some 33 years ~ has been spent almost equally in New Delhi and Kolkata. In New Delhi, the Left, especially the Marxists, presented a soft, articulate, liberal face; they were the ones who would present cogently the arguments against the establishment of which they were never fully a part. Their methods could be questioned on occasion, never their intent or the fact that their hearts seemed to be in the right place.
It was on moving to Calcutta as it was in the mid-1990s that the other ~ harsher, wholly intolerant ~ face of Marxists revealed itself, one so different from the impression formed at Delhi’s coffee houses and the India International Centre.
And this face was of a political grouping that was brutal and ruthless, that could institute false civil and criminal cases, disrupt newspaper supplies on a regular basis, surround and attack a newspaper office, order arrests almost at will, sponsor a shadow trade union to foment industrial strife, orchestrate bogus and scurrilous allegations about colleagues, whip up communal passions, keep simple governmental clearances pending for indeterminate periods and, in general, do everything it could to stifle criticism it saw as dissent.
Sadly, most major players in Bengal’s print media allowed themselves to become willing supporters of the Left’s tactics, because the party had three powers that owners found irresistible. One, by its capture of the hawkers’ unions, the ruling party could subtly but surely ensure which paper was delivered to a subscriber and which one was not. Two, by controlling the flow of Government advertisements it could influence bottom lines. And three by offering other largesse, including public land at concessional prices, it could entice proprietors. Sadly many succumbed, one newspaper going as far as to shamelessly advocate violence by the state to quell the protests against land acquisition in Singur and another to proclaim as recently as two years ago that all sensible people were with the Chief Minister.
The fact though that these tactics worked for as long as they did should not suggest that they will work again. And this is the challenge that confronts both political groupings. A Trinamul government must dismantle extra-constitutional structures; the Marxists must recast their politics without leaving space for their various levels of intrusive committees, and by recognizing that criticism is a necessary component of a democracy. In short, while the Trinamul must strive to govern in a generally liberal and democratic fashion, the Left if it wants to be a force in Indian politics must aspire to return to power in the manner of democrats.
The onus is on the Marxists to realise that their ideology, as they have unfolded it in Bengal and Tripura, is an aberration within a multi-party structure of the sort we have in India. Kerala, truly, does not count because the Marxists have ruled as members of broad coalitions that have sometimes included such obvious non-socialist entities as the Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel and because the voter has used anti-incumbency as an effective check on authoritarianism. Outside this country, Communism has worked only in single-party structures. And the methods that might work in Beijing, or once did in Moscow, are unlikely to work in India indefinitely.
Equally, this is a lesson for Trinamul, especially because it may be tempted to replicate ~ at various levels of society ~ the levers that the Left had employed so successfully to perpetuate its rule. That will be foolhardy and counter-productive. Having done away with the so-called dictatorship of an anointed proletariat, it is unlikely people will accept the autocracy of a self-proclaimed, but as yet untested, democrat.
Life has given Miss Banerjee the opportunity of a lifetime. If she is able to offer to the people of West Bengal a responsive and democratic government, she could well force the Left to recast itself as a more liberal, less intolerant political party. The Constitution does not provide for – or permit – Stalinist methods; and even after Indira Gandhi’s tinkering, it allows space only for socialist politics, certainly not for the sort of dictatorship of the proletariat that the Marxists employed over a significant part of the past 34 years on the assumption that voters had endorsed it.
If the Left doesn’t learn and Miss Banerjee plays her cards right, 2011 could well turn out to be a fatal blow for Indian Communism. But if Miss Banerjee slips up, 2011 could well become a fatal blow for West Bengal.
The writer is Editor, The Statesman.
The Left must realize that no party can afford to employ Stalinist tactics in a multi-party democratic structure. Indeed, a party of the sort that the CPI-M had become in West Bengal ~ one that controlled, even micro-managed the lives of citizens and sought to stifle dissent ~ was an aberration.
Apologists of the Left will disagree; they will argue it was these methods that kept them in power for 34 years. But if they are honest with themselves, they will appreciate basic truths. The Left came to power riding a wave it hadn’t created. It was re-elected the first two times because it followed a broadly socialist, and not overtly Stalinist, agenda. Thereafter it remained in power by distorting elections, through creation of bogus voters and manipulation of the polling process. For at least the past 15 years, it was helped by the wooly-headedness of the Congress and on occasion the national party’s complicity in preserving the status quo in Bengal for gains in New Delhi. It was this ambivalence that forced Miss Mamata Banerjee to form her own party more than a decade ago.
And in the past two decades, especially in the last years of Jyoti Basu and throughout the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee period, the CPI-M became intolerant of dissent, impervious to criticism and arrogant in its conduct. Worse, it sought to convey to the people it ruled that the writ of the party and its leaders could not be questioned. The civil service was whipped into blind obedience, the police became an agent of the party and civil society was bludgeoned into submission. Quite honestly, it was difficult to find more wimpish civil servants than the ones in Bengal after Marxists had put them in their places; a dozen or more needed to be put together to fashion a single working backbone.
On a personal note, this writer’s life as a journalist ~ a span of some 33 years ~ has been spent almost equally in New Delhi and Kolkata. In New Delhi, the Left, especially the Marxists, presented a soft, articulate, liberal face; they were the ones who would present cogently the arguments against the establishment of which they were never fully a part. Their methods could be questioned on occasion, never their intent or the fact that their hearts seemed to be in the right place.
It was on moving to Calcutta as it was in the mid-1990s that the other ~ harsher, wholly intolerant ~ face of Marxists revealed itself, one so different from the impression formed at Delhi’s coffee houses and the India International Centre.
And this face was of a political grouping that was brutal and ruthless, that could institute false civil and criminal cases, disrupt newspaper supplies on a regular basis, surround and attack a newspaper office, order arrests almost at will, sponsor a shadow trade union to foment industrial strife, orchestrate bogus and scurrilous allegations about colleagues, whip up communal passions, keep simple governmental clearances pending for indeterminate periods and, in general, do everything it could to stifle criticism it saw as dissent.
Sadly, most major players in Bengal’s print media allowed themselves to become willing supporters of the Left’s tactics, because the party had three powers that owners found irresistible. One, by its capture of the hawkers’ unions, the ruling party could subtly but surely ensure which paper was delivered to a subscriber and which one was not. Two, by controlling the flow of Government advertisements it could influence bottom lines. And three by offering other largesse, including public land at concessional prices, it could entice proprietors. Sadly many succumbed, one newspaper going as far as to shamelessly advocate violence by the state to quell the protests against land acquisition in Singur and another to proclaim as recently as two years ago that all sensible people were with the Chief Minister.
The fact though that these tactics worked for as long as they did should not suggest that they will work again. And this is the challenge that confronts both political groupings. A Trinamul government must dismantle extra-constitutional structures; the Marxists must recast their politics without leaving space for their various levels of intrusive committees, and by recognizing that criticism is a necessary component of a democracy. In short, while the Trinamul must strive to govern in a generally liberal and democratic fashion, the Left if it wants to be a force in Indian politics must aspire to return to power in the manner of democrats.
The onus is on the Marxists to realise that their ideology, as they have unfolded it in Bengal and Tripura, is an aberration within a multi-party structure of the sort we have in India. Kerala, truly, does not count because the Marxists have ruled as members of broad coalitions that have sometimes included such obvious non-socialist entities as the Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel and because the voter has used anti-incumbency as an effective check on authoritarianism. Outside this country, Communism has worked only in single-party structures. And the methods that might work in Beijing, or once did in Moscow, are unlikely to work in India indefinitely.
Equally, this is a lesson for Trinamul, especially because it may be tempted to replicate ~ at various levels of society ~ the levers that the Left had employed so successfully to perpetuate its rule. That will be foolhardy and counter-productive. Having done away with the so-called dictatorship of an anointed proletariat, it is unlikely people will accept the autocracy of a self-proclaimed, but as yet untested, democrat.
Life has given Miss Banerjee the opportunity of a lifetime. If she is able to offer to the people of West Bengal a responsive and democratic government, she could well force the Left to recast itself as a more liberal, less intolerant political party. The Constitution does not provide for – or permit – Stalinist methods; and even after Indira Gandhi’s tinkering, it allows space only for socialist politics, certainly not for the sort of dictatorship of the proletariat that the Marxists employed over a significant part of the past 34 years on the assumption that voters had endorsed it.
If the Left doesn’t learn and Miss Banerjee plays her cards right, 2011 could well turn out to be a fatal blow for Indian Communism. But if Miss Banerjee slips up, 2011 could well become a fatal blow for West Bengal.
The writer is Editor, The Statesman.
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