Thus, while the land distribution revolution – described by a distinguished editor as Bengal’s ‘New Permanent Settlement’ - gave a tremendous momentum to CPM rule in West Bengal, unleashing its unprecedented endorsement for seven terms, the imposition of stultified politics brought it crashing down. Politics, CPM leaders believe, is more important than mundane economic developmental activity. Lurking behind this ‘revolutionary’ thinking is an emasculating proposition. Namely: creation of wealth has to be subservient to its equitable distribution. What is equitable? That decision is left to gheraos and bands that pervaded the West Bengal scene for full two decades. Driving out industry and entrepreneurship from West Bengal, and pulling its industrial rating down to veritably the lowest level.

The comrades in West Bengal had learnt no lesson from the collapse of the Soviet rule in Russia and the East European countries. Nor from the happenings in China, where in approximately the same span of three decades, the Communist Party of China had transformed a poverty-stricken nation into an economic power house admired as a global super power.

‘’It’s the economy, stupid” – this slogan coined by James Carville for BILL Clinton’s second presidential campaign paid handsome dividends. It embodies a fundamental of policy making, namely, that building economic strength should be first priority in a nation’s affairs. It is essentially a Marxian precept, contained in the famous ‘Communist Manifesto’ authored by Marx and Engels some 160 years ago, which ascribes the shape of the economy as the base on which is built a nation’s social, political and cultural super structure.

Alas, the comrades in West Bengal failed to grasp this Marxian precept. Their slogan is : ‘Politics is in command’, and the mandate of seven terms of electoral voting did give the CPM enormous power which could have been used for restructuring and stimulating West Bengal’s economy. But the revolutionary ideology that gripped the CPM in West Bengal stood in the way, reversing the Marxian precept. It is to this ideology that Marx referred, when he wrote to his ultra-revolutionary son-in-law in 1981: “If this is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist.”

The not-so-revolutionary Deng Xiaoping understood better how to apply Marxism in our times to developing nations such as China. His famous statement – “To be rich is glorious: that is the Marxism of today”—transformed the ruling Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people from food famines to a prosperous, dynamic nation. A period of thirty-four years is a long one – and CPM rule in West Bengal from 1977 to 2011 created many an aberration. Not leading the state from agrarian revolution to industrial development, but the reverse, and a cultural stultification. The charismatic Jyoti Basu, finding his upward mobility halted by economic stagnation, sought ethnic recourse to buttress his name and fame and the vote bank. He championed Bengali the wrong way, by forbidding English teaching in primary classes from 1981 onwards – for nearly two decades. This parochialism was a great disservice to the youth of Bengal, who have been handicapped in a big way.

There has been a second halter round the neck of West Bengal CPM: a national leadership headed by an academic, the great Prakash Karat – quite a contrast to the pragmatic Harkishen Singh Surjit, his predecessor. Prakash Karat has been a distinguished student leader and ardent Marxist. But leadership of a party governing several states, and with veritably a veto in national affairs thanks to the CPM being an important member of UPA-I, required pragmatic politics and non-dogmatic Marxism. Unfortunately, Prakash Karat lacked both.

His dogged opposition to the Indo-US nuclear treaty was a disservice to the country – for the treaty was the best thing to happen to India, brightening the science-technology horizon, and at the same time adding a new dimension to India’s security parameters. Even worse was the CPM pull-out from the UPA, which added to the woes of West Bengal CPM. Apart from this being poor strategy, it militated against Marxian ideology, which favours partnership with the bourgeoisie as against feudal and communal forces in a developing country. Even talk of building a third-front in partnership with lumpen elements was poor strategy and politics.

This chapter of national affairs ushered in by CPM’s national leadership added to the West Bengal CPM’s woes. The worst contribution of the national CPM leadership to West Bengal’s affairs was the expulsion of the much respected Somnath Chatterjee. This perhaps was the unkindest cut of all, to use a Shakespearean metaphor. (IPA Service)