Since 2004, the Left has held a disproportionately high importance in national policy-making, media bytes and coalition politics, while its ideology is reflects mindsets young India finds difficult to identify with. This is not to suggest there aren’t concerns about unbridled, unregulated market-based reforms, or uneven benefits from “trickle-down” for the poor, especially relevant in this period of downturn. However, that agenda has successfully been captured by the Congress. This leaves the Left with nothing but an obstructionist space to occupy — be it on economic policy or external affairs, including specific issues like Indo-US relations and the nuclear deal. It is a space where the Left has rights but no responsibilities, where it is part of the government but is also outside it. Among several trends in these elections, that bluff has been called and the Left reduced to less than half the numbers it possessed in 2004. Barring a few seats elsewhere (including Tripura), the Left holds but Kerala and West Bengal — and it has been decimated in both states.

Opposition-type posturing doesn’t work when one is the government, as in West Bengal. And nor, after more than three decades in power, can one blame the Centre for all one’s travails. The progressive decline in West Bengal’s economic performance, both relative to other states and over time, has been documented. The initial growth momentum based on agriculture and land reforms petered out; deprivation in WB’s worst-off districts is worse than that in some districts in Bihar and Orissa. In industrialisation and land acquisition, typified by Nandigram and Singur, there were genuine issues of compensation and non-transparent procedures, capitalised on by the Trinamool.

... contd.