West Bengal by-elections results provide Left Front much needed shot in the arm

The results of the by-elections to eight Assembly constituencies and one Lok Sabha constituency in West Bengal provided the Left front and particularly the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) with a much needed shot in the arm. After being in office for four years and in the context of mounting pressures from opposition parties on various issues, the Marxists had started worrying about their popularity being eroded.The only way they could be sure was through the by-elections and they had insisted on these being held with unusual vigour. Even Chief Minister Jyoti Basu threw away his usual reserve to call Chief Election Commissioner S.L. Shakdher names (Basu repeatedly called him a Congress(I) stooge) when it appeared that Shakdher was not prepared to hold elections in West Bengal.The Marxists' victory has been overwhelming. Not only have they gained a seat, they have gained in votes. At least in one constituency the rise in votes was beyond the expectation of even CPl-M leaders. After a tour of the small assembly constituency of Kumarganj in West Dinajpore district, the party's state secretary, Promode Das Gupta, was openly unhappy at the situation there. In the 1977 election, the CPl-M had won the seat by just 6,000 votes and the party was not very sure of retaining it.When counting of votes began on June 15, tension ran high at Writers' Building, Calcutta, as Kumarganj could not be reached through the telephone. Then a little after 4 p.m. came the news that the Marxist candidate had won by 12,000 votes. Incidentally, immediately after the polls on June 14, West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee-I (WBPCC-I) president Ajit Panja had said that if the elections had been conducted fairly anywhere in West Bengal then it was at Kumarganj.Electoral Gains: The CPI-M has also made significant inroads in the traditional Congress(I) constituencies of Sujapur and Kharba. In the 1977 assembly election the present Union Energy Minister A.B.A. Ghani Khan Choudhury, had won from Sujapur by a margin of 33, 000 votes which was not unusual considering the fact that during his five-year tenure in the Siddhartha Shankar Ray Cabinet, from 1972 to 1977, he had spared no effort to nurse the constituency. Basu (left) and Das Gupta: Aware of the dangersEven after joining the Central Cabinet, Sujapur has always been uppermost in Choudhury's mind and he has been generous in providing the locals with coal permits. It was largely at his initiative that a number of banks opened branches at Sujapur and elsewhere in Malda district. This time also the minister personally supervised the election at Sujapur. But though the Congress (I) won, its margin fell from 33, 000 in 1977 to 19, 000. In Kharba, another constituency in the district, the Congress(I)'s margin has been reduced from 16, 000 in 1977 to a mere 3, 400.The message is clear. The Marxists' sustained effort for the last four years to build up and consolidate bases in the rural areas has been paying dividends. The largely clean and efficient implementation of the food for work programme, which found jobs for the rural poor during the lean seasons. 'operation barga', a sincere bid to protect the interests of sharecroppers, ensuring a minimum daily wage of Rs 8.33 for landless labourers, and vesting the panchayats with greater authority, which for the first time has brought to the rural masses a sense of participation, have all gone to win for the Marxists the kind of support which they never enjoyed before.Opposition Chaos: The Marxists have also been helped by the total disarray in the camp of the largest opposition party, the Congress(I). The party continues to be plagued by factionalism as was evident during the campaign for the Serampore Lok Sabha seat. With several senior leaders showing no interest in the election, Congress(I) candidate Shantimohan Roy was forced at the last minute to rope in a middle-ranker, Kazi Abdul Gaffar who had to come from his sick-bed to get some work done. Serampore is a traditional leftist seat and it is a measure of the earnestness with which the Congress(I) wants to fight the CPI-M in West Bengal that no senior leader was willing to take up the Marxists' challenge there.Subrata Mukherjee, WBPCC(I) member, was away in Rome and his supporters were not very much in evidence. The chaos in the Opposition camp must have weighed heavily in favour of the Marxists at even such wholly urban constituencies as Manicktala where the CPI-M improved its position to win by over 16, 000 votes. The Congress(I) could take no advantage of the Left Front's failure to deal with power and transport issues which are highly relevant to urban voters.The lone opposition party which may derive some satisfaction from the polls is perhaps the Gorkha League. The party had given a call for poll boycott at Darjeeling and only 35 per cent of the electorate exercised their franchise there, the lowest in the state. The party may well claim this to be an expression of support for its demand for a separate state for the Nepalese. With Gorkha League supporters staying away, the Marxists had no difficulty in winning the seat for the first time. Before the election, Congress(I) ministers including Pranab Mukherjee, Union minister of commerce, had repeatedly tried to get the League to change its boycott decision, but to no avail.Doubts: Thus on paper things could not have been better for the CPI-M. The by-elections were preceded by the municipal polls and the Left Front won an absolute majority in 68 of the 87 local bodies. However, the party has to do some serious thinking about why it lost in places like Budge-Budge and Berhampore. The reasons seem to lie deeper than the ones being offered by Marxist leaders like complacency and traditional middle class conservatism in urban pockets in the districts. The party could have done better but for differences within its ranks and lack of understanding with other Front constituents.Within the party questions are being raised as to what next. After it decided to be mass-based, the party's membership has swollen in the last four years from 36,000 to 80,000. With similar increases in the ranks of front organisations, the CPI-M today influences 10 million people in the states, a position which communists never enjoyed before. Yet there are doubts, both in sections of the leadership and the ranks, as to whether the new entrants would continue to remain in the party once the attack comes from the ruling class. Das Gupta told India Today: "We are handicapped by a shortage of middle cadres." In any communist party, it is the middle cadre which is vested with the responsibility of politicising the ranks and the masses and the shortage in West Bengal may well prove to be a serious handicap.Unease: Not everyone in the party is happy with the present state of affairs. The unease stems largely from the fear that by being in power in a bourgeois structure the party is losing its revolutionary ardor and purity. The massive structure that is coming up on Alimuddin Street to house the party's new headquarters and the printing of Ganashakti, the party's evening daily, have given rise to apprehensions that the CPI-M is also set on the path "to degenerate into a comfort-loving, compromising party like the communist parties of France and Italy."While these apprehensions may be baseless there can be no denying the fact that many formerly militant "comrades" wear a look of smug satisfaction, particularly those who have access to the Writers' Building and are only too willing to oblige bureaucracy. That the leadership is aware of the danger is evident; Basu once said during an interview. "We are conscious of the danger of our comrades falling prey to the lures of a bourgeois system and so we constantly review their activities." But with most leaders occupying senior posts in the Cabinet and being kept busy, it is doubtful to what extent they can maintain this watch.As the results of the by-elections indicate, the CPI-M is all set for returning to power for another five years when the general elections take place next year. And continuance in office will only increase the dangers of its members "getting soft". There are already people in the party who feel that the best thing that could happen to them as communists is a quick dismissal by Delhi and a rigged election next year which will prevent them from coming back to power.Attack Awaited: The implication is that with its present strength in the industrial and rural areas, the party will then be able to launch mass movements which would also have their impact on other states. Senior leaders like Das Gupta also realise the "pointlessness" of communists coming back to power in a state every five years. Says Das Gupta: "Of course, it would be childish to assume that the ruling classes would allow us to go on ruling here. The attack is bound to come." However, while the "attack" is being welcomed, nobody seems sure whether the party would be able to hold its own when it comes.The issues relating to the style of functioning while in power and the course for the future are expected to come up when the party holds its state conference this year, after three years. Also likely to come to the surface is the growing disenchantment with the kind of leadership being offered by the Central leaders. The three who have particularly fallen from the grace of West Bengal Marxists are M. Basavapunniah, Harkrishen Singh Surjeet and P. Ramamurthy who are considered mainly responsible for the strange spectacle at the national level of the CPI-M changing horses from Morarji Desai to Charan Singh to Sharad Pawar.They are branded as the "Russian lobby" and the fear seems to persist that they would try to force the more militant West Bengal Marxists to fall in line with their peculiar brand of politics which may even call for adoption of a less strident attitude towards Mrs Indira Gandhi.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 16, 2013 11:53 IST--- ENDS ---

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West Bengal by-elections results provide Left Front much needed shot in the arm

The results of the by-elections to eight Assembly constituencies and one Lok Sabha constituency in West Bengal provided the Left front and particularly the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) with a much needed shot in the arm.

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