Subir Roy: The legacy of Jyoti Basu

The near-universal tributes paid to Jyoti Basu on his death underline the fact that his appeal extended far beyond the narrow groove in which his communist party lives. In his lifetime, this wide appeal climaxed in 1996 in the prime ministership being offered to him. And the supreme irony is that it was not his opponents but his own party which denied him the chance to lead the nation. In response, he did not quit the party but described its decision as a historic blunder. This symbolises the central reality of Basu’s life. He was far bigger than the small turf from whence he came but did himself an injustice by not quitting that address.

Basu was at the forefront of the rise of the left in West Bengal since the mid-sixties but the Left Front, led by the CPI(M), wielded effective power for the two decades of the eighties and nineties when he remained chief minister. The left is credited with having actively worked for, not just presiding over, the de-industrialisation of West Bengal. Under him, it is also credited with giving the state decades of unparalleled political stability in an age of defections. It also promoted the secular credo and maintained communal peace in a region with a history of communal strife that had led to its dismemberment and partition. Plus, the Left Front government in the eighties carried out through Operation Barga systematic land reforms to recognise the rights of sharecroppers, laying the foundations for a remarkable performance in agriculture.

Where did all this take West Bengal? The short answer is: In relation to other states, it began and ended the two decades under Basu at the same place. According to the National Human Development Report 2001, West Bengal ranked eighth among India’s 15 important states in 1981, 1991 and 2001!

A disaggregated picture yields further insights. West Bengal began and ended the period 1981-98 at about the same place, moving from fifth to sixth, in per capita state domestic product. Among all the criteria, it performed the worst in unemployment, its rank remaining at thirteenth or third from the bottom during 1983-2001. Against this, its best performance was in infant mortality where its rank, already high at a respectable sixth, rose to fourth by the end of the 1981-2006 period. So, the best that can be said about Basu’s stewardship of West Bengal is that he was able, over the two decades, to stem the rot that had been initiated by the left movement from the mid-sixties.

How can accolades be heaped on a man with such a report card? Basu was obviously more than party leader and chief minister. He conducted himself with grace and commanded respect. His personal probity and dignity made him stand out among the general run of senior politicians of his time in the country. The extra touch, which earned him the respect of those in high places, often came when he had to intervene, sometimes behind the scenes, to balance between the waywardness of a formidable agitational machine and the responsible role expected of a holder of high office.

One example of this is recounted by IG Patel in his memoirs on how he sought and obtained Basu’s help during 1982 when the Reserve Bank of India was unable to finalise its yearly accounts because of a staff agitation in Kolkata. Eventually, the employees agreed to close the books. “Obviously, Jyoti Babu had leaned on Sen (the RBI union leader) to do the right thing — and he did it graciously, ” says Patel.

Two anecdotes told to me by the late Shankar Gupta, one-time private secretary to Basu, give a measure of the man behind the façade. During a night halt at the Kolaghat dak bungalow, Basu was furious with a lot of things not working. But next morning, when the caretaker was presented before him for a dressing down, Basu took one look at him and dismissed him from his presence without uttering a word. Then he turned to a bewildered Gupta and said, “No point in talking to a man about upkeep when he has not even shaved himself in the morning.” On another occasion, Gupta found Basu upset after a trip from the Soviet Union. The reason: The flush in the toilet at Moscow airport was not working. When Gupta tried to aver that it was a small technical hitch, Basu cut him short and said, “ It is not a technicality, it is a matter of culture.”

Basu was nobody’s fool. He knew the reality around him and had his own standards, intervening deftly and occasionally with a bit of statesmanship to ease things. His cardinal failure, for which history will downgrade him, was his unwillingness to challenge the party and its agenda. In the end, he remained an apparatchik.

subir.roy@bsmail.in