How Bengal was won

The staggering victory of the CPI(M)-led Left Front in West Bengal this week is remarkable for obvious reasons. No political party in the country, and possibly none in the world, has managed to secure the people’s mandate seven times in a row. For years together, opposition parties and the media had attributed the CPI(M)’s electoral success to “scientific rigging”. So shrill and sustained was that propaganda that even some Left sympathisers outside the state had begun to wonder whether there was, perhaps, an element of truth to that charge. The Election Commission, by singling out West Bengal for special treatment and enforcing the most strict monitoring mechanisms this time, has ended up doing a great service to the Left Front. By winning a three-fourths majority in an election that was widely regarded as the most “free and fair” poll ever held in the country, the CPI(M) has proved that its electoral victories are, and were, based on mass support.

But the real significance of the 2006 assembly elections — one that has important implications for political parties and governments across the country — lies elsewhere. It is that the Left Front has managed to get a renewed, and enhanced mandate, not because of the “reforms-friendly” policies pursued over the last five years but despite it.

Much has been made of the role of the ‘Buddha brand’ in this election. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s success in wooing private investment, zeal in transforming Kolkata into a business-friendly metropolis and determination to make Bengal the most favoured destination for the IT sector and real estate entrepreneurs certainly struck a chord with the state’s business community and urban middle class. His can-do spirit also managed to imbue an infectious enthusiasm among a section of new voters who had grown up in an atmosphere of industrial decay and urban despair. The slight shift in the traditional anti-Left vote this time certainly helped the Left Front. But the Bengal story is much bigger than that.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s initiatives may have been new to West Bengal but they had been pursued by the Centre and other state governments for quite a while. Ever since the paradigm shift in the Indian economy in 1991, elected governments in India have followed neo-liberal economic policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. The Rao government’s policies were carried forward by the Vajpayee-led NDA dispensation. And with the Centre no longer dictating the pace of growth in the states, state governments began racing against one another to woo private domestic and foreign investment. Visible “feel good” signs — better urban infrastructure, sleek IT centres, and middle class consumerism — frequently followed.

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