Professor Arindam Chaudhuri - A Man For The Society....
Ashis Kumar Biswas, Senior political
journalist based in Kolkata
It was eventually a convergence of their mutual interests that helped seal the seat alliance between the Congress and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal. Both sides appreciate the seminal importance of the West Bengal Assembly election. The outcome of the 2011 polls in Bengal and Kerala would have national significance. For the TMC, a defeat at the hustings would raise questions about its very survival.
Congress insiders maintain that these elections would influence the trend of national politics in the years ahead, assuming that the ruling Left Front is defeated. The opening shots of the bitter battle between the Congress and the CPI(M) in particular were fired by the latter. Led by party general secretary Prakash Karat, the CPI(M) withdrew its support to UPA-I on the Indo-US nuclear deal and sought to defeat it in a Lok Sabha vote. The rest is history.
Congress leaders acknowledge that party president Sonia Gandhi, who along with the Prime Minister, walked the extra mile to retain Left support for the UPA, has not forgotten the snub. For both, marginalising the CPI(M) is priority number one — a task which the disastrous outcome of the 2009 Lok Sabha polls for the Left made easier for them.
Despite game efforts made by the CPI(M)' suave man– for-all-seasons Sitaram Yechury and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who made occasional soothing noises about the Congress, there has been no softening in the hard stance adopted by the ruling Congress. Unlike in the past, Bengal has not been accommodated much in its acute self-made financial crisis by Delhi of late. Even if defeating the CPI(M) involves tolerating the whimsical and populist ways of the TMC's leader, on land acquisition, price rise or its ambivalence on Maoists, so be it.
Once the Left is cut to size, its very existence would be open to question. Winning consistently in West Bengal is the bedrock that supports and sustains the CPI(M). Already marginalised at the Centre, the CPI(M) now struggles to survive in the one state which helps it maintain its identity. Its power to dictate terms to ruling formations in Delhi is in question.
This would spawn a rightist shift in national politics, post May 2011. The weakened Left would be forced to rediscover its lost relevance. Its dependence on secular, democratic parties like the Congress would increase. The late S.A. Dange's arguments favouring closer ties with secular democratic forces led by the Congress would then come true.
As for the TMC, its urgency to win is more acute than that of the Congress. Although the TMC runs the railway ministry, its increasing mass following from Darjeeling to Digha remains the foundation of its present national eminence and power, something that had served the CPI(M) earlier.
For the CPI(M), the unfolding political script in West Bengal carries an element of déjà vu. In 1977, what had helped the Left Front to come to power was the total consolidation of all parties and forces, right or left, on a pro-democracy anti-emergency platform, against the Congress. And in 2011, it is a similar consolidation of forces, from the Maoists to the Matuas, that confronts the ruling Left on an anti-CPI(M) agenda. Already, this has ensured a 3 to 8 per cent anti-Left vote swing in different parts of West Bengal since 2009.
CPI(M) leader Gautam Deb talks about only 11,00,000 votes separating the Left Front from the Congress-TMC vote bank in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls (the latter polled 1.96 crore votes, the Left 1.85 crore). This means, the Left Front needs to win back only 10 votes in each of the state's 56,000-plus polling booths.
Simple? Time will tell. But what of the nearly 50,00,000 new voters enrolled for the Assembly polls, mostly youths with no evocative memories of Vietnam, Che or the Emergency? The struggle to win back the hearts and minds of the disillusioned is harder than Gautam Deb lets on.
However, the Left is fighting back hard, doing its best to regroup. And it is a travesty of truth to say that in 34 years the Left Front had ”done nothing for the state”. The state's administration functioned fairly well until the early 1990s. Older voters remember that quite clearly. The fight is not easy for either side. For all their determination and unity of purpose, the Congress-TMC alliance will court their own peril if they underestimate the power of the Left to hit back.
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Ashis Kumar Biswas, Senior politicaljournalist based in Kolkata
It was eventually a convergence of their mutual interests that helped seal the seat alliance between the Congress and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal. Both sides appreciate the seminal importance of the West Bengal Assembly election. The outcome of the 2011 polls in Bengal and Kerala would have national significance. For the TMC, a defeat at the hustings would raise questions about its very survival.
Congress insiders maintain that these elections would influence the trend of national politics in the years ahead, assuming that the ruling Left Front is defeated. The opening shots of the bitter battle between the Congress and the CPI(M) in particular were fired by the latter. Led by party general secretary Prakash Karat, the CPI(M) withdrew its support to UPA-I on the Indo-US nuclear deal and sought to defeat it in a Lok Sabha vote. The rest is history.
Congress leaders acknowledge that party president Sonia Gandhi, who along with the Prime Minister, walked the extra mile to retain Left support for the UPA, has not forgotten the snub. For both, marginalising the CPI(M) is priority number one — a task which the disastrous outcome of the 2009 Lok Sabha polls for the Left made easier for them.
Despite game efforts made by the CPI(M)' suave man– for-all-seasons Sitaram Yechury and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who made occasional soothing noises about the Congress, there has been no softening in the hard stance adopted by the ruling Congress. Unlike in the past, Bengal has not been accommodated much in its acute self-made financial crisis by Delhi of late. Even if defeating the CPI(M) involves tolerating the whimsical and populist ways of the TMC's leader, on land acquisition, price rise or its ambivalence on Maoists, so be it.
Once the Left is cut to size, its very existence would be open to question. Winning consistently in West Bengal is the bedrock that supports and sustains the CPI(M). Already marginalised at the Centre, the CPI(M) now struggles to survive in the one state which helps it maintain its identity. Its power to dictate terms to ruling formations in Delhi is in question.
This would spawn a rightist shift in national politics, post May 2011. The weakened Left would be forced to rediscover its lost relevance. Its dependence on secular, democratic parties like the Congress would increase. The late S.A. Dange's arguments favouring closer ties with secular democratic forces led by the Congress would then come true.
As for the TMC, its urgency to win is more acute than that of the Congress. Although the TMC runs the railway ministry, its increasing mass following from Darjeeling to Digha remains the foundation of its present national eminence and power, something that had served the CPI(M) earlier.
For the CPI(M), the unfolding political script in West Bengal carries an element of déjà vu. In 1977, what had helped the Left Front to come to power was the total consolidation of all parties and forces, right or left, on a pro-democracy anti-emergency platform, against the Congress. And in 2011, it is a similar consolidation of forces, from the Maoists to the Matuas, that confronts the ruling Left on an anti-CPI(M) agenda. Already, this has ensured a 3 to 8 per cent anti-Left vote swing in different parts of West Bengal since 2009.
CPI(M) leader Gautam Deb talks about only 11,00,000 votes separating the Left Front from the Congress-TMC vote bank in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls (the latter polled 1.96 crore votes, the Left 1.85 crore). This means, the Left Front needs to win back only 10 votes in each of the state's 56,000-plus polling booths.
Simple? Time will tell. But what of the nearly 50,00,000 new voters enrolled for the Assembly polls, mostly youths with no evocative memories of Vietnam, Che or the Emergency? The struggle to win back the hearts and minds of the disillusioned is harder than Gautam Deb lets on.
However, the Left is fighting back hard, doing its best to regroup. And it is a travesty of truth to say that in 34 years the Left Front had ”done nothing for the state”. The state's administration functioned fairly well until the early 1990s. Older voters remember that quite clearly. The fight is not easy for either side. For all their determination and unity of purpose, the Congress-TMC alliance will court their own peril if they underestimate the power of the Left to hit back.
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
Arindam Chaudhuri: We need Hazare's leadership
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