What People of Bengal Think as Bengal Goes through Elections

On my way home from Calcutta airport by taxi, I asked the driver who, he thought, would form the next government in Bengal. “Didi,” he replied. “Does the Left not have any chance of returning this time?” I pursued, trying to provoke him.

“In their 35 years they have not done much. People are leaving the state for economic opportunities. People are fed up with them.” “But will Didi be able to maintain peace?” I continued. “Leftists are also guilty of destroying peace.”

After a while the taxi made a rattling sound and the driver drew it up at the corner of the road. I boarded another taxi and asked the driver who would win the elections this time. He got a little startled by my asking and hesitantly said, “Didi."

West Bengal is going through a historic election where Left, a coalition of left parties which came to power in 1977, might see its 35 years of unbroken stint in power brought to an end by TMC (whose leader is popularly known as Didi), which together with the Congress is the Left’s opposition in Bengal. The election has a global significance as Bengal is among the very few places where you still have a Left government.

Neither of the sides (govt and opposition) is leaving anything to chance. The TMC claims the Left hasn’t done anything expect oppressing people and pushing the State back. So there is a yearning for paribartan (change) among the people.

On the other hand, the Left is going to the people on a note of apology admitting that it has made some mistakes and if given a chance would like to rectify them. The Left alleges that, if brought to power, the TMC would create chaos and confusion in the state.

Verbal exchanges taking place between the government and opposition are adding to the atmosphere. There is nothing new to verbal exhanges between two contesting parties, but here every attack and counter attack flying back and forth seems to be springing from a deep well of loathing for each other.

The fight also has a cultural aspect. The Left in Bengal represents a high-brow cultural space long monopolised by culture snobs who see TMC as challenging it and trying to gatecrash into it, diluting its exclusivity. Budhadeb (Bengal CM) and the leftists in general belong to this hallowed zone and Mamta (TMC chief also known as Didi), being from a lower-middle class background, doesn't.

The Left’s barbs are mostly aimed at the TMC’s low-browism. To counter the Left’s culture attacks, the TMC is claiming to have support of culture-elites (writers, directors, etc) whose views often shape public opinion in Bengal.

But what do ordinary voters think?

There are two kinds of Left enthusiasts: one is the card-holding members and another is the culture-loving snobs. Both types claim the Left will come back again but their self-righteous anger also give away their doubt about their prophesy.  Among them are mainly state government employees.

People with less cultural pretentions, however, display little doubt that the TMC would form the government but they also admit that no one knows what would follow once the TMC comes to power.  They say at least Left for all its flaws is a party of educated ideologues while the TMC is a party patched together with street rag tags. These are mainly ones working in private companies.

There is another stream of thought being given by people with leftist leanings but a rational bent of mind. They suggest if you really want to destroy the TMC, you should give them an exposure to power for sometime. And at the same time, it will not harm the Left to be in opposition so that after being in power for 35 long years, they get an opportunity to introspect and probably come back stronger.

For the uninitiated, it can all become very confusing.

Calcutta Diary

This December I went to Calcutta after one and half years. To avoid traffic, the cab driver chose a different route from the airport to go to my home. On the way I encountered the changes that have taken place in the city.


I saw IT complexes, some already made and others under construction. I also saw swanky malls; nowadays you find them everywhere in Calcutta. But as the cab went past Salt Lake – a place which was developed later and remains unlike the rest of the city – the optimistic mood sank. I met old buildings awaiting repair for years, narrow by-lanes, traffic gridlocks, dust and grime and a sea of people.

This part of Calcutta introduced me to another change. Unlike few years ago, when where ever you went you saw red Left posters, now you mostly see green buntings and hoardings of Trinomool Congress (the opponent of Left in West Bengal).

The driver informed me that a political procession was out clogging all important roads of the city, hence the traffic jam.

After reaching home, I read in the newspaper that the strike was called by the Left parties. I thought in other cities ruling parties rarely call strikes that disrupt the normal city life.

After a few days of my stay in Calcutta, my niece got engaged. On the engagement day, I met many family members and friends I had not met in a long time. There were discussions on various topics but the one that got me involved was politics. State assembly elections are nearing in Bengal and I wanted to guage public mood.

There were various views on the decline of Left government in Bengal and while everyone was disappointed with Left, no one seemed to offer an alternative. They seemed upset with the Left but not happy with the prospect of Trinamool coming to power. “So would a coalition of Congress and Trinamool with a Congress CM work?” I asked. Some agreed with me. (But I read later that Congress has a very weak presence in Bengal and many of its leaders are moving to Trinamool Congress.) Later regreted sounding too political.

One of my cousins, who was once a card-holding member of the Left, said in Karnataka people are happy and prosperous in cities while farmers in villages are committing suicide. “Farmers are committing suicide in Andhra Pradesh and not Karnataka,” I retorted. My cousin was a little surprised to see my sharp reaction.

Winter is a season of book fairs in Calcutta. The one held at Maidan is a grand affair visited by noted Bengali writers. Budhadeb Bhattacherjee, the CM who is known for his literary inclinations, visits the fair every year. This time at the fair he said the end of Left in Bengal could be the end of everything. It sounded like the last flickering of a dying lamp.

Few days after the political debate at my niece’s engagement, I tried to figure out why I reacted so sharply to my cousin’s comment about urban Karnataka being happy while the rural Karnataka suffers – and identified the source of my anger: Traditional Leftists have a way of discrediting others’ success to underplay their own failures. But for this reluctance to learn from others, Calcutta could be a different story today.

On my way back to the airport, I saw those IT complexes again and left the city with optimism.

Left Politics in Bengal by Monobina Gupta

India is never short of political problems and doomsday theories. One of the political theories that’s doing the rounds is whether the Marxist government in Bengal is on its way out. Monobina Gupta’s book Left Politics in Bengal analyses this issue approaching the Left rule in Bengal through its coming to power, 35 years of stay in power and its slow degeneration from a revolutionary party to a power-grabbing machine.

Monobina’s scanner hardly misses anything taking into account smallest of details and humblest of men and their contributions to Left’s deterioration as a party. She blames Left’s fall from grace mainly on two factors: its reliance on violence as a means of perpetuating power and its intolerance of dissent and dissenters. And attributes Left’s continuity in power despite its lack of performance to two things: a) subversion of the electoral process where elections are either rigged or people coerced to vote for the party; b) jingoistic speeches which always create an enemy to blame Left's failures and problems on. This has helped Left, she alleges, be seen as a pro-poor underdog fighting for the masses against imperialist powers who are constantly conspiring to keep a toiling people down who are led by the Robinhood party. She says they have used the Congress and the CIA alternately as the enemy. This creates a certain emotional bonding between the party and the people it leads where the people develop a sense of victimhood and sees the party as their savior. This has always been a ploy of the communists, she says. Infighting among various Left parties has also been a cause for concern. Being from West Bengal, I agree with her.

 To support her analyses, she cites parallels from history. Instances of Lelin and Stalin and their belief in violence to help a ‘larger’ cause find generous mention in the book.

Although Budhadeb Bhatterjee, the current West Bengal CM, has come in for criticism, Jyoti Basu the Left patriarch of Bengal has been praised for the most part. She interestingly details the hours in 1996 that led to the decision that Left wouldn’t be part of government formation at the center with Basu missing out on his opportunity to be the prime minister. She describes Basu as a pragmatist who mostly found himself in minority in his party.

On the other hand, Monobina doesn’t invest hopes in Mamta Banerjee, the leader of the main opposition party, Trinomool Congress. 

Although the language is a little heavy and impersonal with long sentences and journalistic approach, it doesn’t take away from the readability of the book. The paragraphs are sometimes packed with details that are so local to Kolkata that an outsider may feel a little put off. Initially the book may also read like a catharsis of bitterness about the Left. The overall narrative, however, is very gripping and anybody searching for an answer to why the Left continues to rule Bengal for so long will find it interesting.