File picture of Nano

The only inspiration for the opposition in Bengal is CPI(M)’s flawed past

The game of realpolitik involves a hidden streak of the unsaid and the unuttered, which does not show up on camera in two-second bites. But certain historical junctures bring to the surface those fault lines and ironies. The Singur and Nandigram issues have all the makings of a conflict that can force open those fault lines in Bengal.

There is no certainty that anytime soon, Mamata Banerjee’s madness, like that of King George the Fifth, will surrender to the voices of reason. It is similarly unlikely that CPI(M) will let the Tatas run away from the state like their brethren did in the sixties and seventies. Big capital, frightened by the spectre of communism, had then sought shelter in Mumbai and elsewhere.

But old cultures die hard; in Bengal politics, often they don’t. So in a display of supreme irony, now the Leftists are the flag-bearers of capital and Mamata is the obstructer-in-chief, eyeing the vast rural base of the CPI(M).

The style and maybe the substance have transmuted. But the culture hasn’t. Mamata’s show of public defiance and disruption, owes its genealogy to the CPI(M), whose cadres were well-tutored in disruptive and dissident tactics. Mamata has only taken over from where the CPM left off.

But how and when did the CPM vacate that space in the first place? Why did it leave the hallowed, if somewhat hollowed communist chimera and embrace what, by any accounts, is pure capitalism? Was it externally driven — the collapse of the Soviet Union, the changing economic landscape in China or Vietnam — or did it have an internal, purely domestic impetus? No doubt the old communist dreams of those countries had helped the CPI(M) dangle the carrot of a great future to its followers. Bengal had seen its industries vanish and the impoverished population bought into the CPI(M)’s grand project.

Part of the Party’s political base was in the industrial wastelands where people were left jobless due to the flight of capital. The other part were the farmers who joined the CPI(M) in the hope of transforming their lives; especially after the Green revolution had bypassed them.

To keep its rural and mofussil base intact, the CPM had to show itself to be anti-metropolitan, which meant attacking computerisation and taking English out of primary education. The result? Bengal’s present crumbled under the weight of a future that would never come. The CPI(M) stood by paternalistically, guarding a generation that grew up unsure of itself and its place in the world.

But, the world was changing outside and with it, India was experiencing convulsions, too. As other states began prospering once reforms were instituted, there were those in the CPI(M) who realised that the myth of a prosperous agrarian Bengal would be unsustainable for long. To make sure the state grew out of stagnancy, it had to change tracks and embrace speedy industrialisation. Which meant a change in its party culture — the strikes, the bandhs and the violence that had become hallmarks of the CPM’s style of functioning.

Also, by the mid-nineties, the Left parties’ vote share started dwindling from a healthy 40 per cent that it had enjoyed in the 80s. In fact, at any time during the nineties, a united opposition could have dislodged the CPI(M). Some party leaders quickly saw the writing on the wall. They realised that globalisation was raising expectations even among its own faithful. Younger Bengalis did not see merit in the party’s anti-technology stance. There was a real danger that the party would become irrelevant. The future was already here; there was no time to lose.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was quick on the uptake and saw that the future of his party was not in peddling empty aphorisms to the hoi polloi. It was in making peace and working alongside the middle class. Braving the objections of his colleagues, especially at the centre, he has forged on, wooing capital from within and outside the country. The middle-class shifted to him in droves.

The danger is that he may have left his traditional bases open to others like Mamata, who has spotted the chinks in the party’s armour. Not only has she studied the CPM’s political language carefully, she has gauged —perhaps correctly — that there are still sections in the rural hinterland who may not be in thrall of rapid industrialisation. Like Banquo’s ghost, the CPI(M)’s old dreams refuse to fade away.

Now, the poor have found solace with Mamata and her ilk. Mamata on her part has occupied the anti-industry ground and she is finding support and traction. Both sides have exchanged garbs. Meanwhile, Bengal’s future glory seems to be in permanent limbo.