Even now, as their catalogue of defeats from the panchayat to the Lok Sabha and then the civic polls delivers the unmistakable message that even the Bengal left is mortal, not all LF coalition partners are reconciled to their imminent political irrelevance, Reactions within the CPI(M), the RSP, the Forward Bloc and the CPI have swung from one extreme to the other.

On part of the smaller allies, leaders like Nandagopal Bhattacharya, Manoj Bhattacharya, Kshiti Goswami and Ashok Ghosh have appeared in sackcloth and ashes. In contrast, except Senior Minister Subhas Chakravarty, who admitted that the people no longer “wanted” the Left, no one from the CPI(M) has yet acknowledged these defeats with minimum grace.

The difference between their private perceptions and their public behaviour also did harm the Left parties in these electoral battles. The late Anil Biswas used to say that the CPI(M) never takes elections lightly, nor its adversaries. “After all the Cong (I) wins a steady 35 to 40 per cent of the total votes, the BJP also wins a few,” was his usual refrain to newsmen. Then the Trinamool Congress emerged as the biggest nucleus of anti-Left votes.

But if Biswas was cautious, the same cannot be said for his senior and junior leaders within the CPI(M).This writer recalls even the great Jyoti Basu saying complacently at times, ”If the Trinamool Congress, the BJP and the Cong(I) were to combine, the left could be defeated, but what is the point of talking about this, this will never happen..” Talk about complacency!

Look at the pre-election slogan for the 2006 assembly polls: ”The only alternative to the Left Front in Bengal is a more EFFICIENT Left Front.” It was as though the opposition did not exist! This, from a coalition under whose rule, chronic power shortage, labour strikes and lock-outs, a broken down health and education system, rampant unemployment, and an almost non existent police force, had become synonymous with West Bengal. The state also fared poorly in literacy, women trafficking, floods urban traffic management and development. Some efficiency, this.

Ironically the outcome of the 2006 assembly polls, which gave the LF 235 seats as against a trounced opposition in a house of 294, is as responsible as any other factor behind the present decline of the Left. Ecstatic Left leaders, their supporters and sympathetic commentators in the national print and electronic media ignored two critical trends of 2006:

The Trinamool Congress won only 20 seats, but was second to the Left parties in 211 seats!

The vote split (to which Mr. Basu referred!) between the Trinamool Congress/Cong(I) and the BJP and other smaller parties, resulted in Left victories in at least 80 seats.

Clearly, even seasoned left veterans ignored the importance of these figures. There can be no other explanation for chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's presumptuous assertion, ”Who will stop us from implementing our programmes? We are 235, they are only 30!“

Just as during 2006 and later, Bhattacharjee was the new darling of the establishment press nationally, in 2009 it is the fashion to decry him and his proactive industrial policy. True, it is during Bhattacharjee's tenure that the non-Left parties, barring the BJP, have worked out the widest possible consolidation against the LF in rural and urban areas. But the fault does not lie in Bhattacharjee or his policies. He is paying for the sins and inefficiency of leaders like Jyoti Basu. The man was sincerely trying to take a backward state forward, to make chronically inefficient government departments more accountable. It is a pity that not only the allies of the CPI(M), but important segments within his own party and organisations (the CITU is one!) worked overtime to sabotage his efforts.

There have been some very odd repercussions: In the Lok sabha polls, in many areas, such as South Kolkata, RSP supporters voted for the Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee, not Robin Deb, the CPI(M) candidate. The same is being said for supporters of the Socialist party, an LF constituent, in both Midnapore districts. Relations between the RSP and Forward Bloc on one hand and the CPI(M) on the other, were not exactly cordial in most parts of the state, resulting on cross voting during the 2009 Lok sabha polls.

A senior CPI(M) State Committee member who was in the Rajya Sabha, told crestfallen party followers,” Dissensions within LF ranks have cost us dear.”

But this is only half of the story. To begin with the CPI(M) is in no position to take this up with its allies, which are seriously pondering whether to stay in the Left Front. They understand as well as anyone that things are not likely to improve for the LF in the short or even the medium term. And CPI(M) members themselves admit, “What to speak of other parties, many of our own supporters did not vote for us in the Panchayat or the LS polls. It is common knowledge that our district units in two Midnapores, the North and South 24 Parganas and Nadia are corrupt organisations. Scores of complaints have been sent to Alimuddin Street about how some local leaders have amassed wealth and behaving like mafia overlords. Our leaders did nothing. Now they say to the media that they did not know what was happening and send us questionnaires to find out what went wrong, after the horse has bolted!”

The emergence of Ms Mamata Banerjee as an authentic, alternate political voice from West Bengal could not have come at a worse time for the divided house that the Left Front in Bengal is at the moment. No one within her own party, let alone others, gave her or the Trinamool Congress much of chance after the 2004 Lok Sabha polls and the 2006 assembly elections. With her impulsive behaviour bordering on gracelessness, her wild, reckless comments (she even blamed floods and the Bird Flu outbreaks on the CPI-M!) made her a ridiculous contrast to the suave, well-read, presentable Buddhadeb, who was being treated as royalty wherever he went.

The credit for the remarkable political turnaround in 2009 must go to Ms Banerjee, her unflinching devotion to the non-Left cause, her iron determination never to accept defeat and her capacity for hard work and enduring pains!! No wonder, she has emerged as the most important leader from West Bengal, even as Bhattacharjee is seen to falter and grope for answers!

For the first time, the ranks of the intellectuals split down the middle and many artists, fed up with the partisan ways of the left, joined Mamata in droves. These people include top film artists, actors, painters, singers and critics. Their ranks have been swelled by highly respected former bureaucrats, officials and scholars. This had never happened with the non-Left opposition in Bengal. Led by Mamata, it is truly a peoples” opposition to the Left. At every major step, she seeks and listens to the suggestions and guidance from her respectable band of advisers, sometimes to the chagrin of party loyalists.

And it is clear that the LF now has to deal with a new, more mature Mamata, who has not let her success go to her head. She has urged her followers to remain polite and responsible in their victory, not to seek political revenge. As she repeatedly warned her followers at the impressive July 21 rally in Kolkata, they must not create disruptions or disturbances, or attack their CPI(M) opponents.

She is painstakingly monitoring how many railway projects can be implemented as quickly as possible in West Bengal, to create some jobs. She spoke softly even about the Tatas, with whom she had a running battle earlier.

In one way she has taken over the mantle from Bhattacharjee, who remains clueless how to respond to the biggest challenge to his chair and his party. Unlike Bhattacharjee, Mamata has the unqualified support of everyone within the Trinamool and Congress and of most people within the state Congress. There is no doubt she will get a supportive centre and an efficient railway ministry to do effective work in the state. Bhattacharjee, heading a proverbially inefficient state government where five ailing senior Ministers cannot attend office, can only fall further and further behind. (IPA)