Praful Bidwai

What the Communist Party of India (Marxist) dreaded the most in West Bengal, its bastion for 33 years, has happened. Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress (TC) held an extremely well-attended rally at Lalgarh in the Jangalmahal bordering Jharkhand on August 9, enlisted the support of the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA), and threw down the gauntlet to the Left Front. She stridently read out an elaborate political chargesheet against the CPM and announced the end of Left “hegemony” and the beginning of “a new era” in West Bengal.

The CPM cried itself hoarse against Banerjee’s “unholy” alliance with the Maoists, who control a section of the PCPA. This didn’t quite square up with the PCPA’s publicly expressed ire with Banerjee for not articulating its demands.

The CPM was reduced to making a lame appeal to the Congress (its own rival) to distance itself from the TC on the Maoist violence issue which, it reiterated, like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is the “greatest internal security threat.” This cut no ice.

Banerjee had thrice appealed for nonviolence at Lalgarh. Whether she did so at the goading of non-TC people such as activists Medha Patkar and Swami Agnivesh or writer Mahasweta Devi is irrelevant. She didn’t endorse Maoist violence.

The CPM merely expressed a pious wish: the Trinamool-Congress alliance, widely expected to win next year’s assembly elections, would somehow collapse, creating a thin sliver of hope for the Left Front. But wishes are one thing, strategy is quite another. It’s extremely doubtful that the CPM has a political strategy to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

The deliberations of the CPM’s extended central committee in Vijayawada on August 7-10 to review the political situation didn’t convey that impression. This was the last large plenum before the next party congress. The congress stands postponed because of the West Bengal and Kerala assembly elections.

The Vijayawada conclave, attended by over 350 delegates, produced no change of political line. The CPM reiterated the resolution of the last congress (2008): oppose the United Progressive Alliance’s neoliberal economic policies and pro-US foreign policy, combat the communal Bharatiya Janata Party, and strengthen the CPM’s base among underprivileged people.

Organisationally, Vijayawada made little advance -- by resolving differences between Kerala chief minister V.S. Achutanandan and party secretary Pinarayee Vijayan. Achutanandan didn’t attend the meeting for health reasons. The show of unity highlighted in media briefings reflects necessity (the impending elections) rather than genuine reconciliation.

The CPM has reason to worry about the elections. In Kerala, the Left Democratic Front is widely expected to lose the elections. Its tally plummeted from 19 out of 21 Lok Sabha seats in 2004 to only 4 seats last year. The LDF’s tenure hasn’t been distinguished by bold pro-people programmes. Achutanandan has been fighting damage-control battles against his own colleagues.

Vijayan, tainted by the SNC-Lavalin scandal, faces a CBI inquiry -- the first politburo member of a Communist party ever to have been charged for corruption. Many pro-Left analysts don’t believe that the see-saw pattern of the LDF and the Congress-led United Democratic Front winning alternate elections will repeat itself.

The CPM’s defeat could be worse in West Bengal. If the assembly vote follows the last Lok Sabha pattern, the Left Front’s score will fall from 235 (of 294 seats) to 110-120 seats. It could sink even lower. In 2009, it lost support in all of West Bengal’s regions, barring Jangalmahal, comprising West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia districts, which accounts for 6 Lok Sabha and 41 assembly constituencies. In 2006, the LF had swept the region, winning 37 out of 41 assembly seats. Even in 2009, it won 5 of 6 Lok Sabha seats.

Now, the picture is different. On the 2009 pattern, Trinamool leads the LF in 130 constituencies in seven central and southern Bengal districts. The Congress has a hold on northern Malda and Murshidabad. The TC needs 147 seats for a majority. If it expands the opening it made in Jangalmahal and dents the CPM’s tribal base, an emphatic victory is assured for the TC.

That’s why the CPM mortally fears Banerjee’s foray into Lalgarh. The CPM’s much-dreaded armed cadres (Harmad Bahini) “captured” Jangalmahal from the Maoists only recently. Now, the CPM risks losing it to Trinamool whose thugs can unleash even more violence against the Left. Indeed, if the Trinamool comes to power, there will be large-scale bloodshed in West Bengal -- a prospect no public-spirited citizen can relish.

By early 1990s, it became increasingly complacent. Power, a strong magnet, drew in all manner of people, including unscrupulous operators with no commitment to Left-wing ideas. More than two-thirds of the CPM’s present membership in West Bengal was recruited after 1977. The cadres got mired in corruption. The party turned against its own former supporters.

Then the CPM embarked on rapid industrialisation at any cost by attracting private through sweetheart deals, tax breaks and undeserved subsidies.

The Singur and Nandigram crises were direct effects of this misguided policy and heightened the party’s alienation from the people. The state and the party unleashed violence against the people to take away land, crush resistance, and “teach them a lesson.”