Fifth, because of all these factors and as election results showed, some of the CPM’s political constituencies are up for grabs and that can create de facto administrative vacuums. The party was the state and the state was the party. When the party loses considerable influence but retains formal power, a weakened state machinery can look as helpless as it did in Lalgarh. Sixth, and related to the fifth, the CPM’s capacity to meet violence with violence is now circumscribed by fears of further political setbacks.

Bengal’s problem is that all these defects in the CPM machine will stay on after Lalgarh is taken away from the Maoists. It is also that today’s Maoists, even if they are bested in Lalgarh, are different from those in the ’60s. Then, the breakaway men from the CPM led a ragtag, primitively armed bunch (spears were a frequent weapon of choice) and the leaders engaged in arcane debates about how to asses Chinese communist leaders like Lin Biao (he tried to assassinate Mao). Today’s Maoists, organised, well-armed, disciplined and operating across states, make Charu Mazumdar and his lot look like amateurs.

Bengal’s rural stasis and the CPM’s inability to provide a political-economic solution to it, plus the degradation of administrative capacity make the state’s poorest districts at least a frighteningly attractive site for Maoists. The political consequences of this are unpredictable, to put it mildly.

If Mamata Banerjee becomes a different politician, say, roughly in the Nitish Kumar mould in terms of her approach to development politics, she can be Bengal’s creatively countervailing force. But will she?

... contd.