http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091222/jsp/frontpage/story_11895209.jsp

But wait! Today Goldman Sachs investors (in the Promised Land) demanded that executive bonuses be reduced to pay more dividends to them. Clearly those morons don’t like others to succeed at their expense…

GB is still good fun on those content-free reviews of third-class movies, but I will henceforth skip his political commentary. I mistook him for someone more mature and nuanced than he has proved to be.

First off, fantastic article! I wish the editors of the Calcutta based newspapers wrote such stuff, even in the Bengali ones. I agree with you on what the CPM has brought/introduced to West Bengal: intellectual stagnation, political violence, and economic decline. But why did people support them for so long? Here the answer is a bit more complex and still more devious than the sheer gratefulness of the peasantry.

During “Operation Barga”, carried out in the very early years of CPIM rule, the land distribution was done in a rather peculiar way . Actual proprietorship of land was never distributed (a fact that is key to understanding Singur and Nandigram). What was distributed and fixed was usufruct rights for the tiller, who was generally a sharecropper, small tenant, or sometime even a landless laborer. All of these types were subsumed under the title “Barga-dar”. Now, the original owners of the land remained the former middle class farmers, called “Jote-dars”, who now had title to the land, but, had no right to change the tenancy or even the rent. In action, this is similar to the forced occupation tactics (Jobor-Dokhol) used in urban and semi-urban areas under the CPM.

The deviousness of this structure was that the ‘usufruct’ rights were mostly not recognized by law or not duly processed. So, the “barga-dar’s” right to the land he/she tilled depended on the CPM. In short, as long as the party stayed in power, the “barga-dar” had control over his or her own land.

Now, what happened in Singur and Nandigram has roots in this power structure. The CPIM reportedly approached a number of original owners to hand over land. These original owners had not had control over the land since 1977. They agreed to sell the land at rock bottom prices because as any rational actor would clearly comprehend: at least now the owners were getting paid something against the nothing they had earlier. Thus, the CPIM attempted to evict the “barga-dar” who had voted for all these years simply because the CPIM guaranteed their land usage rights. A very similar parallel can be noted in the downward spiral of CPIM support after “Operation Sunshine”, which attempted to evict the hawkers from large segments of Calcutta streets. A further parallel, which supports your theory, is that Mamata bagged the entire support of this group.
This leads to a further question: why did Buddhadeb make these moves? I would argue that even before Buddhadeb these moves were being made, but only in urban areas (Operation Sunshine being a case in point). However, the reason is that despite Aseem Dasgupta (the state Finance Minister’s) budgetary gymnastics, West Bengal was headed toward bankruptcy. And, as you have noted above, bankruptcy and retrenchment would threaten the entire patronage network that had been slowly built from the 1970s. It would threaten the pay of the thousands of employees of State Government owned nationalized firms, large sectors of the transportation system, the informal networks of muscle men in the various clubs and the varieties of clients in the rural sector.

Buddhadeb decided to undertake rapid re-industrialization. Some call him a Stalinist. He is alleged to have been a founding member of the Marquis de Sade club at Presidency College. However, I think that the larger goal was correct, but the implementation was wrong. Tragically, aside from the needless violence, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya drove a stake through the CPIM’s one card to victory: control over land.

Finally, I think Mamata has adopted the CPIM stance on issues, but I do not think industrialization and development will stop. It will happen not because of Mamata, but despite her. The central reason is that the intellectual environment and the policy environment have completely changed in the rest of India. Remember, when CPIM talked about nationalization in 1977, the thought environment was dominated by socialism: banks had been nationalized by Mrs. Gandhi a few years earlier, other firms too had been nationalized, such as IISCO, Assam Cement, etc.; even Siddharta Shankar Ray had nationalized Great Eastern and the Tram Company.

At present, people in West Bengal see what exists in Bombay and Delhi, even Chandigarh. They travel a lot more, perhaps ironically due the economic decline of the state. The middle class have largely abandoned government institutions: whether public schools and colleges or jobs in the public sector. And, ironically, the CPM’s success has worked against it. They did undertake some infrastructure projects at the village level: some electrification; paved roads; access to credit and markets. The result is that the Bengali farmer has access to television, knows more and, consequently, does not want his kid to grow up to be a farmer: thus defeating the fundamental assumption of peasant based communism. In essence, Bengal will move on in a capitalist route. Perhaps a bit slower, until Mamata realizes which side the bread is buttered on, but surer, since the violence is bound to subside after the Assembly elections.

Anyway, great article: very detailed and thought provoking,

Vasabjit

Would really like to know what happened which is not hapeening in other parts of India?Please tell me.
I am currently in Bangalore supposed to be the IT capital of India–but the powercuts happen so often and at all times of the year not only in summer like in Kolkata that you wonder why no one says anything about it?
Look at Maharastra supposed to be one of the richest state—ever heard of a part called Vidarbha famous for farmer suicides?
Look at Gujarat and it riots(a point I am sure Arnab will very easily not mention).Look at Haryana supposed to be another rich state—it is also famous for highest number of killings of the female foetus.Can go on like this for each and every state.West Bengal is not of gold and neither ar the leftists good.But one needs to look at the entire picture look at the country of which it is part of India—a country calling itself a democracy and still is esentially been ruled by 1 family since independence.Isnt that laughable?

When the CPM turned “less villainous” bongs rallied for Mamata Bandh-opadhaye. How then can u blame her for her Singur mess if she owes her electoral victory to that.

The psyche of the bong voter is more to blame than the pathetic leaders of WB and also for the supposed lack of choice in political leadership. Why wud a politician of any party bother to run on a platform of development and investment in WB? It won’t impress the “cultured” bongs.

PS. I thank my ancestors for leaving WB in the 1920s. Most probashis feel the same way.

They have gifted their core positioning away to Mamata on a platter..so that she and her band of merry men can espouse the cause of the ’shorbohara’ and reinvest all their energies in restoring the status quo..

If there ever has been anyone who has been Jyoti Basu’s truest disciple, its our beloved Didi..

If you come on a blog to defend the CPM and the Left, at least be a bit ore informed and intelligent about it, rather than just calling Arnab a liar. We all know what has happened to WB in the last 30 years. Yet you are defending it. This flies in the face of all reason and goes into the realm of hallucination.

Maybe you should see a doctor.