What it means to campaign for the left in West Bengal
by VIJAY PRASHAD
Due east of Kolkata, near the Chandrakona forest is the village of Chandur. In this village, Ajit Bhuiyan is well known for his commitment and affection for the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the CPI-M. On March 30, in the evening, a group of fifty members of the ruling Trinamul Congress (TMC) Party attacked Ajit Bhuiyan’s son who works as veterinarian. They then assaulted Ajit Bhuiyan himself. Many CPI-M cadres have been attacked in this region, indeed across West Bengal, with TMC men like these killing one hundred and thirty nine party cadres of the Left Front between May 2011 and January 2014.
The precise reason why these men targeted Ajit Bhuiyan on March 30 is that on the next day, TMC leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was to be at a campaign rally in nearby Keshpur for her party’s candidate for the Lok Sabha (parliament) seat of Ghatal, the film star Dev. At the rally, on March 31, Banerjee arrived four hours late. Her helicopter had malfunctioned. As usual she wanted to milk the episode for political gain, “Many people didn’t wish me to visit Midnapore today,” she said. “We were supposed to come by helicopter. At the last moment, the helicopter developed a snag. We will have to check whether the snag was technical in nature or political.” Banerjee makes it a point to say that the CPI-M wishes to kill her. There is no evidence of any such conspiracy. Nonetheless, this is her standard line. It is what authoritarian populists do – they like a bit of drama, accusing their opponents of attempted murder and then using that emotional upsurge to cover over the lack of a genuine popular political programme. Her candidate for the seat is a film star. “I am a novice as far as politics is concerned,” Dev said. His party leader didn’t care for any discussion on this. “You should vote for Dev,” she said. “He is doing very well in films.”
Counterpunch for more
Righting the left
by JAWED NAQVI
Where is the left in the crucial Indian elections and what role is it hoping to play when the hurly-burly is done with? People say the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has gingerly stepped into the vacuum the left’s palpable absence has created. And it is a fact that the AAP has picked up many of the motifs that were or still are identified with communists and old socialists.
For instance, high-octane corruption was hitherto seen as a facet of a politician’s compromised morality, his proclivity to become rich overnight. The AAP has brought the politician’s corporate ally into the frame, starkly, irrevocably.
To begin with, belling the corporate cat has not been an easy enterprise for most Indian parties, notably including the communists. Other than the legendary Feroz Gandhi and a little less stridently, though still relatively earnestly, communist deputy Gurudas Dasgupta, politicians have been coy in going for the jugular of big business, the fountainhead of corruption in India.
To name names authoritatively of big tycoons or to spell out their precise nexus with the political class has been a rare occurrence. Some years ago a Bahujan Samaj Party MP had dared to publicly unveil a dossier on Reliance Group, but he later switched his party.
Journalist Hamish MacDonald wrote a researched exposé of the house of the Ambanis in 1998. The book was not even allowed to be circulated in India though how or why this could happen remains a mystery. I am not aware of any communist intervention in parliament or outside, much less from a bourgeois party, to probe how an important exposé could just disappear from the country’s bookstores.
On the contrary, there is an oft-quoted comment, which riles. Tycoon Mukesh Ambani apparently assured Hillary Clinton, that she need not worry excessively about Indian communists since they were potentially better at free market business than their Chinese counterparts. Eyebrows were raised again when the Left Front, while in power in West Bengal, reportedly helped Ambani favourite Pranab Mukherjee pluck an unlikely Lok Sabha victory. Mukherjee showed up in MacDonald’s insightful book on Reliance. He figured in the AAP’s anti-corruption campaigns.
When Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980 after a stint in the post-emergency wilderness, Reliance founder Dhirubhai Ambani was said to have escorted her on the victory lap. There is little irony that the AAP sees a reversal of roles whereby Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate, is the new favourite of big business. The AAP stresses though that Mukesh Ambani is running both Congress and BJP politics.
Dawn for more
(Thanks to Harsh Kapoor)