From here on, it is easy to repeat the conventional story. The Bengal CPM didn’t need industry because villages had become anytime vote machines and it was not until intelligent, realistic, nice Buddhababu came along that the CPM understood the need for industrial capital. Like any conventional story, bits of truth in this obscure the more fundamental truth. Yes, a variation of class warfare against “big capital” was presided over by the party. Which is why between the early ‘80s and the late ’90s, Bengal, along with UP and Bihar, saw negative growth in industrial employment in the organised sector. But this deindustrialisation was a big change as well and, as is seldom appreciated, it had to be managed. The CPM did it by encouraging unorganised, non-rural economic activities.

A fine analysis by Abhirup Sarkar (EPW, January 28, 2006) estimates that the share of unregistered manufacture in total manufacturing in Bengal jumped from 30 per cent in the ’80s to a staggering 60 per cent in the ’90s. Obviously, informal employment went up sharply as well. Sarkar estimates, by taking marginal workers (who work less than 183 days a year) as the yardstick, that informal employment grew by more than 15 per cent annually in the ’90s.

These were people working as small traders, street traders, cabbies, shopkeepers and all their assistants and, as Sarkar points out, all of them face huge job insecurity and frequently have to operate outside formal commercial laws and rules. This huge army of informally employed will respond gratefully to a protector. Enter the CPM. Informal employment increase isn’t confined to Bengal. But only in Bengal is there a political set-up ruthless enough to design a wide-ranging social contract and then maximise its benefits.

... contd.