LESSONS FOR LEFT-LEANING GROUPS

by Emma S. Orozco

In our country, leftist groups exist and so far their number has not increased in the house. Their supporters in the Senate have turned somersault in their stand vis-a-vis the present administration. It would be good for them to look for lessons from the experiences of the leftists, now having problems of dwindling numbers in the parliament in West Bengal, India. Following is an excerpt of the news of BBC. With deep apologies for having shortened it to fit into this blog.

Bastion of Indian communism crumbles

For decades it was a fortress for the Left, but now Indian voters have radically reshaped the politics of West Bengal. The BBC's Subhir Bhaumik, in Calcutta, considers where it all went wrong for a once untouchable political force.

Anti-incumbency has finally caught up with the ruling Left coalition in the Indian state of West Bengal, which has been in power for 32 years. On Saturday, the coalition could only manage to win 15 of the state's 42 parliament seats.

The opposition alliance of Trinamul Congress and Congress swept the thickly-populated state, where the Leftists had pioneered land reforms and institutionalised local self-government to build up what appeared, until not so long ago, an unbeatable political support base with the rural poor at its core. The fiercely anti-Left Trinamuls won 19, the Congress won five and a smaller socialist ally won one seat.
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Some say the use of organised muscle-power by the CPI(M) to take over the fertile croplands, especially in the embattled southern enclave of Nandigram, dented the party's pro-poor image.

"The police firing that killed 14 peasants at Nandigram two years ago, the terror struck by armed CPI(M) cadres on rows and rows of motorcycles donning red neck scarves, and the defence of peasants by the opposition supporters were all captured live on television, " says Bengal Left-watcher Ashis Ghose.

"The whole state saw the face of Red Terror for the first time in three decades and that turned even the urban middle class against them."

Even the highly-respected Bengali intelligentsia - some of India's best writers, playwrights, poets , film-makers and artists - turned against the Left coalition and took to the streets demanding political change.

The Nano, the world's cheapest car, was to have been made in West Bengal.

"In Bengal, the intelligentsia commands huge respect. They are generally anti-establishment and have been largely with the Left, but no longer ," says Basu Ray Chaudhuri. Bengal's leading psephologist.
17 May 2009