Clearly, where the common people are concerned, the change of government from the Left Front to Trinamool Congress has made no difference since both the regimes are based on muscle-power. It is even possible that the faces of some of the individual goons are the same as they have switched their allegiance from the earlier set of rulers to the new ones.

The reason for the transfer of loyalty is easy to understand. It provides immunity from being booked by the police. It follows that the erosion of the rule of law is the common factor between the disciples of Marx and the votaries of “Ma, Mati, Manush” — the vacuous romanticism of the new rulers who cannot be pinned down to any identifiable ideology, whether Left-wing or Right-wing.

If Nandigram saw a raid by Marxist cadres to evict the Trinamool’s supporters while the police looked the other way, the latest incident of violence saw the roles being reversed in Bhangar where the followers of the CPI(M) were attacked by Trinamool activists. Explaining the assault and arson in Bhangar, a Trinamool leader boasted that the communists would have been wiped out if Mamata Banerjee had given the call for badla or revenge instead of for badla or change.

This proud thumping of the chest was no different from what Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said after the “invasion” of Nandigram — that it was a “tit for tat” operation for the earlier ouster of Marxist supporters from the area by Trinamool. Before the operation, a green signal for it was given by none other than the politbureau member, Brinda Karat, when she called for giving the Dum Dum dawai or medicine to the CPI(M)’s opponents, which recalled an incident in the Dum Dum area some years ago when the cadres had taken the law into their own hands.

What such belligerence denotes is not only disdain for law and order, but also the belief that there is no room for the opposition in the state. In short, it is a recipe for an authoritarian, one-party state. However, there may be an additional reason for the consequent dependence on the hoodlums. Where the Left was concerned, the violence in the initial years, which led to the flight of capital, was ideological in nature since the comrades were not only consolidating their political position, but also inducing a “revolutionary” temper in the cadres by encouraging their militancy.

In the Trinamool’s case, there are probably two reasons for the goondaism. One is the spirit of badla for the attacks, which the party had suffered at the hands of the Marxists when it was out of power. That period also saw the entry into the party of elements known more for crudeness than culture. The other reason is that after assuming power, the party — and, more specifically, Mamata Banerjee — does not seem to have mastered the art of running a government.

As a result, it sees every failure of the administration as a conspiracy — whether it is the death of children in hospitals or cases of rape. Having lost its ministries at the centre and broken with the Congress in the state, Trinamool is now on autopilot in West Bengal. But, it may have realised that it doesn’t have the skills to navigate in the turbulent world of politics.

Within a few weeks of Mamata Banerjee becoming the chief minister, it had become obvious that she hadn’t graduated from being a street fighter to an administrator. But, her bigger failing is that she doesn’t have an ideological mooring. Having been a part of the Congress in its socialistic days, she has been unable to make the transition to a neo-liberal ambience.

So, she says “no” to all of the centre’s proposals — FDI in retail, hikes in petroleum prices and railway fares, banking, insurance and pension fund reforms, and so on. But, the difficulty of being a socialist in post-liberalization India is that she cannot attract any investments to a near-bankrupt state. In addition, the incidents of violence and the reported extortions carried out by the Trinamool supporters from the few remaining industrialists are further disincentives.

To make matters worse for Trinamool, the CPI(M) may have sensed that its prospects have become brighter. But, the only style of politics it knows is that of the pipe-gun and homemade bombs. There is every likelihood, therefore, of an increase in violence in the state. A return to the days of tandav or a violent upsurge, to quote what Gopal Krishna Gandhi said about West Bengal in 2009, means that the state will continue to decline and fall. (IPA Service)