The CPM had an urban/ semi-urban strategy as well. Unregistered manufacturing has a huge share in total manufacturing in Bengal. Unregistered manufacturing is basically economists’/ statisticians’ code for non-farm establishments offering informal employment. This was a pool that could be and was offered the bargain of “protection” in return for political support.

These political-economic strategies were of course supplemented and in some cases made possible by the CPM’s takeover of state institutions. This then was the CPM’s machine, and it has the following problems.

First, land redistribution is an exhausted option. So, political challenges can’t be met that way anymore. Second, farm growth has petered out and the CPM’s politics makes technological changes in labour intensive/ small-plot cultivation particularly difficult. Third, because farm growth has halted, the CPM’s neglect of rural infrastructure and welfare provisioning is starting to matter. The last National Sample Survey showed a shocking 47 per cent of Bengal’s poor don’t have cards that entitle holders to subsidised food grain under various schemes. Many districts, including West Midnapore, locus of the current violence, have social and physical infrastructure indicators that compare with or are worse than those of Bihar, Jharkhand and poorer parts of Uttar Pradesh. Fourth, the CPM’s attempt to create industrial employment as a partial answer to these problems has come up against agitationist politics that draws some sustenance from this neglect. Next to Lalgarh is Salboni, the site of a proposed 10-million tonne steel plant. Salboni is a wasteland in terms of basic development, as is Lalgarh.

... contd.