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 For 33 years, the Left Front has been synonymous to West Bengal politics, with people having given it massive mandates for seven successive terms. However, on June 21st, when the Left Front entered into the 34th year of power in the state, the celebrations failed to hide the despair amongst the party members about a distinct possibility of the unthinkable - collapsing of the thus-far impregnable Leftist fort in the 2011 state assembly polls.
In the recent Municipal elections, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left plank managed to win only 18 of the state's 81 municipal councils, 36 seats less than its 2005 tally. Trinamool Congress (TMC) stunned the Leftists in their strongholds Kolkata Municipal Corporation and the Salt Lake City, by winning 95 out of 141 wards and 16 out of 25 wards respectively. The Left Front's trouncing in the Municipal elections, along with the dismal performances in the 2008 Panchayat elections and 2009 Parliament elections, has underlined the erosion of its rural and urban support base. What is alarming is the rate at which this slide has happened - after all, the Left had won the assembly polls of 2006 with a huge majority. The anti-Left sentiment in West Bengal is so strong that TMC is benefiting of it despite Mamata Banerjee's penchant to politicize everything from Maoists violence to train accidents. As it seems, right now the West Bengalis are only interested in voting out the Left; who they are voting in, is secondary to them. Of course, TMC, with its pro-poor show, is smartly exploiting the mounting anger against the Left. The Left fort was built on the unwavering support it generated through major agrarian reforms starting late 70s - to an extent unseen in any other Indian state, and decentralization of power - much before the Indian Constitution encouraged it through 73rd and 74th Amendments. The Left Front enforced land ceiling and effected an equitable distribution of surplus land to small and landless farmers. It enumerated the sharecroppers and secured their rights to crop share and tilling tenure. With the government ensuring good irrigation facility and high quality seeds, West Bengal agriculture boomed. Unlike other agrarian success stories of India, the West Bengal green revolution was unique in the fact that it was based on a small farmer economy. This positively impacted poverty alleviation in the state. Approximately 60 per cent rural households in West Bengal benefited from the land reforms, earning a life-long loyalty of the farmers that kept the Leftists in power for so long. However, with inheritance to the second and third generation landowners, the land has fragmented into much smaller plots; this along with inadequate irrigation facilities and the neo-liberal policies of the Central government, has resulted in decline of agricultural output. Though the share of the primary sector is on a decline, it still accounts for nearly 45 per cent of the work force. The benefits of the much famed land reforms are wearing off and the second generation small farmers, who are increasingly finding agriculture an unviable option, are on a look out for jobs outside of it. To win back its farmer support base, the government has recently announced that it will buy land from willing farmers at much higher rate and redistribute it to the landless. By the look of it, however, this scheme appears more of an appeasement strategy to win back rural masses than an actual workable program. While the Left fared much better than most of the Indian states in land reforms, it fared poorly in both, public and private industrial sectors. In 1947, West Bengal was one of the most industrialized states of India with a huge share of 24 per cent in total industrial production of the country. Due to a combination of factors - including lack of private interest and public investment, and freight equalization policy- West Bengal's share had declined to 12 per cent by 1977 when Jyoti Basu came to power. In the following three decades, the state's share further dipped to a dismal 4 per cent. To make matters worse, lack of infrastructural development and major union problems, made it impossible for any industry to survive in the state. Industrial giants like Hindustan Lever, Birlas, etc. started investing in more favorable states. Left government did precious little to arrest this slide as despite a stagnated organized manufacturing sector, West Bengal was one of the fastest growing states in the 90s. This growth was attributed mainly to a robust agricultural sector, supported by a handsome share from the unorganized industrial sector. The vitality in rural economy had led to substantial growth in the unorganized small scale manufacturing in the state. Thus, the unorganized sector absorbed a lot of workforce, to the extent that number of workers employed in it in the state were, and are still, a lot higher than those employed in the organized sector. West Bengal, in fact, accounts for almost one-fifth of the unorganized sector workforce of India. This is the reason why despite the Left plank's neglect of heavy industries for almost three decades, it continued to retain electorate support. However, the unorganized small scale industries also got adversely affected by the neo-liberal policies. These small players now face stiff competition from organized players, leading to negative impact on their business and are unable to absorb the surplus labor from the agriculture sector. With both the primary and the unorganized sectors contribution to SDP and employment on decline, the Left Front was left to choose between ideology and industry. Little did it know - when it opted for fast track industrialization - that it is stepping into a minefield that would cripple its political fortune. Events in Singur and Nandigram were result of a very inept and insensitive handling of the land acquisition issue by the government. Even the strongest supporters of the Leftists were shocked by the police firing on women and children in Nandigram. The forceful snatching of fertile lands rather than trying to relocate the projects on waste lands, and zero attempts to educate rural masses about benefits of industrialization, badly dented Left's pro-poor image. The new generation Bengalis is neither witness to the corrupt regime of Congress of 70s, nor the direct beneficiaries of Left Front's land reforms. They have no loyalty to the Left and are pro-new political option in the state. They rather have a pure capitalist party, than an ideologically compromised Left. It is ironical that today in West Bengal the Left is considered pro-capital while TMC pro-poor. In line with this new perception, TMC has gained support from many leftist intellectuals, civil society groups, and even the Maoists. Disillusioned with the Left government's support to the Centre in fighting red terror, Maoists sided with TMC calling it a progressive option in their fight against feudalism. At the moment, the Left Front is in deep trouble facing popular anger and charges of rampant corruption and poor governance; as well as possibility of split in the Left plank with couple of smaller parties moving towards an alliance with TMC. Given that it has presence in only few Indian states, losing West Bengal would mean an end to Left's dominance in the national politics too. No wonder, CM Bhattacharya is busy wooing Congress back for an alliance in the 2011 assembly polls. It remains to be seen how the Left deals with the anti-incumbency factor finally catching up with it after a monopoly of nearly three and half decades in West Bengal.  The writer is a political analyst based in Mumbai and specializes in security and governance issues of South Asia.
Semu Bhatt is a Mumbai-based independent political analyst specializing in security and governance issues. She is co-author of Cost of Conflict between India and Pakistan and Cost of Conflict in Sri Lanka.
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