Is Left losing ground in Bengal?

After 32 years of witnessing “one-sided” electoral affairs, West Bengal is experiencing a tough contest this time. Of the total 42 seats in the state, the ruling Left Front is facing a tough contest in 30-odd seats in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

Nilotpal Basu, a member of the CPI(M) central committee, admits, “We (the Left) command not more than 50 per cent of the vote share in the state. So, now that the Trinamool Congress (TC) and Congress joined hands it is to be expected that we would face a very close contest in a number of seats.”

This is not the first time that the TC and Congress entered into an electoral alliance against the Left. The Left leaders like Shyamal Chakrabarty would never fail to remind that the experiment failed miserably in polls. Yet, CPI(M) leaders admit that they are facing a serious contest this time. What made the difference?

 

Trinamool chief Mamata Benerjee and Congress leader Subrata Mukherjee would like to point to one factor: The Left’s seemingly pro-capital stance at the cost of the peasantry, resulting into Nandigram and Singur movements. The peasants, who remained loyal to the Left Front for the last 30 years, got their shock of the life when they saw how the Left Front government’s police brutally took possession of their farmland in Singur for Tata Motors’ Nano car plant and then tried to repeat the same in Nandigram for setting up a chemical hub there.

The peasantry in rural Bengal — a mainstay of the Left vote bank — started shifting their allegiance following the Singur and Nandigram episodes. The second factor, as pointed out by Manas Bhuian, the state Congress leader, is an offshoot of that. The electoral arithmetic in the state was such that because of the fractured Opposition, the Left used to win disproportionately higher share of seats in the elections. For example, in the 2006 Assembly elections, the Left voting share was slightly above 50 per cent, yet it got 235 out of the total 294 seats in the Assembly. The realisation that a united opposition could only take on the Left was imposed on the leaders by the people at the grassroots level.

In the last two years, a trend was set by the people when they started defeating the Left candidates in the school committees by forming an ‘unofficial’ alliance. It was repeated in panchayat elections too. Though Mamata Banerjee declined to have any alliance with the Congress, the people at the grassroots level forced this alliance upon the political parties. After the setback in the panchayat polls, the CPI(M) leadership assessed the situation and concluded that because of the ‘unholy alliance’ at the grassroots level, the Left suffered defeat in a number of districts. So, this time, when the Congress and the TC officially decided to fight the elections united, it was not an alliance from the top. Rather it was an alliance forged and imposed by the people on the party leaders.

For the first time in the state, many Left-inclined intellectuals and artists have come out openly against the Front. The Left leaders have grudgingly admitted that an anti-Left wave has been blowing in some parts of the state. The heady success in election after election had brought a change in the behaviour pattern of the party workers. According to state CPI(M) secretary Biman Bose, three main factors created a distance between the party and the people: arrogance, corruption and nepotism. Bose had advised his comrades to go to people and seek forgiveness for their arrogant behaviour.

Though Nilotpal Basu still claims that the Left would be able to overcome this ordeal successfully, he admits that the winning margin will come down to minimum.