Opinion Ready to go

In pointing an accusing finger at him,there is a conscious and concerted attempt at suppressing the bigger threat before the Left in Bengal: of rapid disintegration and decline. The party is not only being rejected,but there is a strong element of hate against its rank and file,primarily because of rampant nepotism,the accumulation of personal wealth by party leaders and their relatives,arrogance and hypocrisy at all levels. These factors have much to do with the fall of the Left in Bengal but are being deliberately overshadowed.

Bhattacharjee, therefore,stands battered and bruised. He looks a defeated man,with nowhere to turn,with no way to avert the impending doom of his government and party. His administration,which came in with such promise to transform Bengal,is now a lame-duck ministry. The reforms agenda has stopped. The problem of employment has become worse; last fortnight,when the government distributed forms for recruitment of several thousand teachers,40 lakh applicants picked them up. The placement in 60-odd private and government engineering colleges has dipped by about 70 per cent in the past two years. Even in the IT sector — one of Bhattacharjee’s thrust areas — over 2500 seats remained vacant as there were no takers. No fresh industrial investments are coming. Everything has fallen flat.

What has grown? Political violence in this changing of the guard. According to one estimate,over 510 political murders have been committed since the 2006 assembly polls. Within a small block of Lalgarh alone,over 112 murders took place after the joint security forces began operations from mid-June 2009. Amid this growing political strife there is definitely a sense that the government lacks the power and authority to ensure the rule of law. There is a crisis of credibility.

What the latest by-poll results have projected are crucial changes at the micro-level. The panchayat polls of July 2008 showcased the alienation of the Muslim voters from the Left,particularly the CPM. It marked a silent revolution in rural Bengal,with the Trinamool and Congress bagging 1505 village panchayat seats as against the Left’s 1597. (In 2003,the Left controlled almost 80 per cent of these.) The maximum erosion was evident in Muslim-minority belts; these constitute 27 per cent of the population.

In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls,the opposition combine made further inroads,having hijacked the land issue. The Left’s edge has always been on account of its land reforms programme in the ’80s. But the Singur-Nandigram fiasco turned that into a negative. The Lok Sabha results also showed a middle class swing away from the Left. Now,the assembly by-poll results highlight another crack in the Left’s vote bank — the alienation of the SC/ ST population. The Left lost Rajgunj and Kalchini — two reserved seats out of the 10,to the Trinamool and a Gorkha Janamukti Morcha-backed Independent.

The SC/ ST population in Bengal is estimated at 22.5 per cent (15 per cent SC and 7.5 per cent ST) and accounts for 59 SC and 17 ST seats — a total of 76 out of 294. In 1991,the LF won 75 out of these 76 seats; in 2006,70. While trouble brews around the tribal belt in Bankura-Purulia-West Midnapore in south Bengal,the reverses suffered in the reserved seats in the north send truly ominous signals for the Left.

Neither Bhattacharjee nor the party seems to be ready with a substantive response to the crisis. Given a free choice,the Bengal CM would truly like to seek a fresh mandate sooner than March,2011.

subrata.nagchoudhury@expressindia.com