Why is the Left in such a state of hysteria? What is worrying them so much that their senior leaders have taken to making the silliest charges like blaming the US for the West Bengal government’s problems in Nandigram? Could there be method in this Marxist madness?

When it comes to the Left, I am a conspiracy theorist. I believe that our Marxist friends are working to an agenda whose objective is to ensure that India’s economic reforms stall sufficiently for China to not be threatened in any way. China is 20 years ahead of us anyway, and mostly because it abandoned socialist economic policies at least 10 years before we did. It has already made the reforms we are still struggling to make, but what is all right for China is not good for India unless it’s West Bengal. This seems to be the Marxist view and we ask too few questions.

I have words left for only two or three. Why is the proletariat in West Bengal still in such bad shape that the ‘aam aadmi’ has almost no access to such basic needs as good schools and hospitals? Why, after 30 years of Marxist rule, is West Bengal so far from becoming a proletariat paradise? Why is the war against poverty nowhere near being won?