Endgame for the Left in Mamata’s West Bengal?

They came in hordes. Defying every single ominous forecast of the rally being a flop, Kolkata witnessed a sea of people — the largest congregation of the communists since they lost power – eclipsing Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s public meeting a few weeks earlier. A binocular wasn’t enough to spot the tail end of the gathering; one needed a drone camera. It was a moment of exhilaration for the disheartened state leadership, until former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya came up with a reality check for CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury: “Will this crowd support translate into votes?’’

Bhattacharya is not alone in his misgivings. Political scientist Maidul Islam doesn’t mince words when he says that the upcoming Lok Sabha polls are not a make-or-break for the Left. “The Left is already broken. There’s no future for it in West Bengal.” Professor Biswanath Chakraborty concurs with Islam and says that votes will be polarised in favour of either the state’s ruling Trinamool or the BJP. In fact, he made a grim prediction of the Left not getting a single seat with the vote share likely to decline to a historic low less than 15 per cent.

With every successive election, the Left’s votes share in West Bengal has undergone an incremental decline – from a zenith of 35 seats and 50 per cent share in votes in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, the communists’ fortune hit a new low of two seats in 2014. The bloodbath was worrying to the point that pundits and political observers had decided to write off the Left in West Bengal till the front decided to hold the show of strength at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata last month.

THE SINGUR SIGNAL

But how did the once mighty Left Front lose its grip over the political discourse in the eastern state which was perceived as the cradle of communist movement? Leaders of the front believe that an uninterrupted 34-year rule has been its undoing. Being in power prompted to the failure of organising and leading anti-status quo movement which was the very basis of attaining power for any Leftist organisation. Also, the ill-fated move towards industrialisation at the cost of peasants and workers have alienated the segment which used to form the bulwark of the party. The high-handedness while acquiring land in Singur and Nandigram is widely regarded as the beginning of the end of communist rule in Bengal.

Certain aspects are unique to the state’s politics. In general a vast section of the urban educated gentry, referred to as bhadralok, are left of centre. Being primarily a non-manufacturing state, unorganised workers and sharecroppers form the other bulk. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, sensing the need to woo this class, has sworn to be the true Left ideologically, and opposed FDI in retail, privatisation, decline in interest rates for small savings schemes — issues that the CPI(M) and other Left parties used to galvanise their support base.

But unlike the Left, Didi did not restrict herself to rhetoric. A series of social schemes were announced to keep followers firmly dependent on the party. The social engineering was complete when the ruling party managed to bring in the scheduled castes and minorities under its umbrella by giving them more representation and sponsoring religious events.

The Left was hamstrung as its ideological moorings did not allow it to play the caste and communal card. Despite charges of large-scale corruption, absence of jobs, deteriorating law and order, and imperious behaviour by the TMC’s local leaders, the failure of the Left to mobilise the electorate is a clear indication of its organisational weakness.

MINORITIES FIRST

The BJP’s rise in the state at the cost of the Left can be attributed to the TMC’s politics of pandering to minorities. A series of low-intensity riots coupled with controversy over immersion of Durga idols, pensions for imams and the party’s obsession with wooing the minorities led to grievances among the majority which the BJP cleverly exploited. Again, the front’s anathema and its lack of expertise in exploiting the grumblings led to the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo taking advantage of the ground situation. Former Kolkata mayor and CPI(M) candidate from Jadavpur constituency –where Mamata won her first election – Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, was quick to point out that the saffron party’s rise in Bengal was owing to to sentimental reasons and not ground-level support. This, he says, is borne out by the fact that the ruling party at the Centre is hell-bent on poaching to field candidates for the state’s 42 parliamentary seats.

The BJP leadership doesn’t deny the charges. Instead of growing organically the party has kept its doors open for cadres from the Left and Congress, who feel that the saffron outfit is best placed to take on might of Didi and her workers. It is a model that has heaped rich dividends for the party in Assam and the rest of the North-East.

HANGING ON, GRIMLY

However the Left leaders are still not giving in. Despite a proposed alliance with the Congress falling flat, senior leaders feel that the Lok Sabha polls will see a turnaround in fortune as the state is looking for an alternative. Forward Bloc leader Debabrata Biswas has a word of caution, though: regardless of organising rallies, the Left is yet to take the peoples’ movement to its logical conclusion of the support translating into votes. Former leaders who now like to refer to themselves as “political watchers” still feel that unless new leadership is brought in and the model of top-down command structure is done away while giving more power to local units, reclaiming the lost political space will only remain a dream.