Leaders like Biman Bose who have an acid tongue are now sugarcoating their words: “There must have been deviations. We will have to analyse and correct these,” he says. This is what the panchayat polls have delivered. It is also reassuring that the CPM state leadership sounded committed to industrialisation even after the battering. The reform that they should be looking at, post this election, is the way the party runs at the grassroots level. The current trend, if unchecked, can bring bigger disasters for the Left and the CPM in the Lok Sabha polls, expected later this year or the state assembly polls in 2011. Significantly, in this panchayat poll, the opposition at the grassroots level evolved their own strategy to fight the CPM by way of consolidating the anti-Left vote in favour of one opposition candidate. And they have put up, for the first time, a formidable political opposition to the CPM in the rural segment.

The bitter lessons from the panchayat polls, if learned properly, should rescue the CPM from bigger perils in future. For the state, as a whole, it is only too good to have a strong opposition to the Marxists in rural Bengal.

subrata.nagchoudhury@expressindia.com