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One of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s most famous quotes read as “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.” Mao Tse Tung’s definition of state power too had two specific elements: the barrel of the gun meaning military might and electricity.

The recent Assembly election results have made everyone take note of women power in India after the landslide victory won by the AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa and Trinamool Congress president Mamata Banerjee. Both leaders have defeated their opponents with a massive majority.

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) choosing to suddenly convene a meeting of the central trade union organisations (CTUOs) on May 20, took by surprise not only observers of the Indian labour scene but all the CTUOs as well.

The rise and fall of the CPM in West Bengal is a multi-layered phenomenon. Dissecting it needs wading through the changing scenario of three decades. But the core of the West Bengal story is clearly visible. A revolution was unleashed in West Bengal in 1977 – a land reforms revolution ‘’Operation Barga” – which gave land, rice and hope to millions of share croppers and poor peasants. This, the most progressive land reforms revolution of post-Independence India, was stultified and not allowed to reach its logical conclusion. Stultified politics rather than continuing progressive economic development brought about the fall of the CPM in West Bengal.

The rout of the left front by Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress and Congress combine at once liberates West Bengal politically and socially. One has now to see whether the new political dispensation will also liberate Bengal’s economy.

When the Leftists formed their first government in West Bengal in 1967, albeit under a Bangla Congress leader, Ajoy Mukherji, the CPI(M), then no more than three years old, interpreted the success as the beginning of the long-cherished revolution. So, the more militant among the Marxists began the Naxalbari uprising.

KOLKATA: As the big blame game began within the Bengal CPI(M) after the shocking defeat of the Left Front, it was clear that some heads at the top would roll soon.

Punjab BJP continues to dominate media headlines. In the previous week it was the party’s Chief Parliamentary Secretary Raj Khurana’s arrest by the CBI in the Rs.1.5 crore land scam case which was in the news. Last week, it was the resignations of all the BJP ministers and Chief Parliamentary Secretaries which made screaming headlines.

The electorate in Assam proved wiser than the combined wisdom of the psephologists and pollsters. The latter had predicted a hung House. The exciting possibility stimulated the adrenalin flow in the Opposition parties who immediately engaged in feverish pre-poll negotiations to form a post-poll alliance government. In the event, the Congress secured absolute majority on its own by winning 78 seats in a House of 126. Its ally, the Bodo People’s Front (BPF) increased its tally from ten to twelve. A potential ally, the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), emerged the second largest party by winning eighteen seats. Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi humbled his AGP rival by over fifty thousand votes.

The electoral revolution in Tamil Nadu, unprecedented in several respects, has put the AIADMK leader, Ms. Jayalalithaa, again at the helm of power, for the third time, but more formidably to assert herself on the national stage. Overnight, DMK has been diminished to rank third in the new Assembly with less than 25 seats behind DMDK (33), the major ally of the Jayalalithaa-led Front. The arithmetic speaks of the 'anger' of the people against DMK family rule, as Ms. Jayalalithaa puts it, not attributable to simple anti-incumbency factor.