Left- A fading mirage

The Soviet Union crumbled way back in 1992 and for the Left front in India it took 15 more years. They have not completely disintegrated in this part of this world but they are well on their way.

Leftist movement in India started in the 1920s. After independence it was a bastion of the intelligentsia. To be called a Leftist was an honor in itself. It was seen as a path that only the enlighted follow and a quality that makes one stand over the and above the rest. Even today university and college students spend long hours in discussing and understanding the leftist ideologies and its effect.

A leftist as in the general perception is a beacon for the mass and he is a different entity from the general mass It is his being a leftist that separates him from the right and the rest.

80 years and still the left is limited to only three states of Tripura ,Kerala and West Bengal. Comparatively BJP is a much younger party and yet it has gone in stature and is one of the two major national party of India. It has a much more wide spread presence in India than the Left.

If we pick up an imaginary ‘leftist preamble’ the first line will read that it is a party for the poor, the downtrodden and the downcast. The majority of this countries population comes under this definition and still the Left cannot say that it represents them.

The left prides itself with having horde of intelligentsia on board. Every political party would be more than happy to have the likes of Sumit Sarkar ,Praful Bidwai , Mahasweta Devi as its supporter. Post Nandigram most of them have come out in open criticizing the Leftist government in Bengal.

But what about the participation of the common mass? Why does it fails to invoke trust in the youths of the other parts of the country? And what about the poor and the trodden?

It has managed to rule Bengal for more than three decades and with around 55 MPs in a house of more than 540, has also managed to sway this country in which ever direction it wants to.

The cadre strength of the Left is one that every party would envy. And it is this cadre strength that makes sure that elections after elections are won by force and it’s this cadre that sees to it that protests are suppressed and territories are reclaimed by killing innocent people.

For the left economic development implies taking one step forward and two steps back, for them US is a greater evil than China and for them any foreign industrial body is East India company in disguise and a precursor to economic bondage.

Nandigram has exposed the truth about the left. Tasleema Nasreen’s eviction has shown that for the left hooliganism is more vital than freedom of speech.

Relish the fall of the Left for their will be nothing left of the Left after this. I may be wrong and the Left may still cling on for some more time but that doesn’t mean that they are here to stay. It only means that their fall will be more painfully prolonged.

http://desicritics.org/2007/12/29/052103.php

Will the meek ever inherit the earth?

Earlier in the 90's when India had just ushered in the new liberalization policy it use to be a fight between the state government and the opposition, but Nandigram and Singur have shown that finally the concerned section of the whole deal, the peasants and the landowner have got some due and recognition. The investor and the big companies have nothing to lose, simply because they don't come into picture until the land has been acquired and transferred to them.

In episodes like Nandigram and Singur, there are mostly four different parties, are involved. The State government, the Investor, the Opposition and finally the displaced, people who even after having everything at stake, are the last one who always manage to squeeze in, though 'just'.

It's a toss between economic development at the cost of displacement on one hand and status quo at the cost of economic development on the other. The only thing which tilts the balance in favor of such land acquisition is that there is no precedent which has given out a message against taking land, wherever this has been done, prosperity has followed, be it Bhopal, (not UCL; but BHEL) or be it Bhilai.

The above two episodes have also shown that love for one's own land is stronger than say, love for a political party. The leftist government in Bengal has been ruling the state for many years now, and it has been an unchallenged one. Still it faced resistance from the very people which voted it to power when it started the acquiring process. I now heard that the process has been shelved, and from Nandigram it has moved to Barasat-Sonarpur area, primarily because the government expects less resistance there.

Similarly when Sumit Sarkar, a staunch leftist vented his opposition against the acquisition, it showed that individual ideology is more loyal then the party ideology, and Mr.Sarkar deserves accolades for voicing his opinion, even though it was against the party mood.

Facts can be manipulated, hidden away, but still they can't be completely erased. The left government when confronted on the issue of forcible acquisition said that people were giving their land voluntarily and produced affidavits to further strengthen its argument, though it's a different story that most of the person shown to have filed the affidavit weren't having any land in the contentious area.

We saw a senior Congress leader who is also a Union minister driving pillion on a motorbike, which showed his urgency to meet and sympathize with the people of Singur who earlier had faced the police ire. Sadly that same feeling of being a people representative was missing in the case of Nithari, which was much closer than Singur, though later we saw some of the political heavyweights coming to Nithari, playing the usual and customary blame game and leaving with a word or two of condolence, but by then the damage was already done.

After every such incidents when the common man is at the receiving end, politicians are always their to make their presence felt. In Nandigram is was at the expense of people who were being displaced, it differs, sometimes its at the expense of people who have suffered due to riot, and sometimes its at the cost of a father who has lost his child. The reasons is never the same, it always differ. But the politicians do turn up, without failure.
In the end it always boils down to the stakes involved, not the human, emotional stakes but the political and materialistic one.


Abhinandan Mishra