Sheela Bhatt's piece, Jyoti Basu's life was a tragedy (IA,29/1) should
have been titled, Jyoti Basu is the author of the West Bengal's
tragedy. Even the Times of India, Mumbai, had published a couple of
articles under the headline, Waste Bengal, almost a year ago
(Nov.4,2009) wherein Saugata Roy had pointed out : " A section of the
ruling CPM, which had won the hearts through land reforms in the late
seventies tuned into tormentors as in Geroge Orwell's Animal Farm.
Slowly, sons of the soil – Mandis, Murmus, Sorens, and Tudus – lost
out to dikkus ( foreigners) like Sarkars and Pandeys in the party
hierarchy. Many in the new breed turned into 'party managers',
traveling in air-conditioned cars and running the party from the
headquarters". It is indeed a new class highlighted by Milovan Djilas
in his famous book of the same name years ago. The people's anger
erupted when the government and the party tried to take over their
land in Nandigram which was distributed to them earlier by the party
government.
The Party is to go on strike and bandh (close ) at the drop of a hat
in the 'fifties and 'sixties – increase in bus fare, tram fare, wages,
trade union rivalry. Calcutta ( now called Kolkata ), which boasted of
many engineering industries was the industrial capital of India with
proximity to areas with iron, steel and coal when India became free
and the communist trade unions made it the strike capital of India. A
new form of strike called 'gherao' ( surround) till the management
agrees to the demand of the workers became the favorite weapon. This
made the industry to migrate to Western India – Maharashtra and
Gujarat.
Marx had predicted communism after the demise of capitalism. Indian
communists never allowed capitalism to produce goods at least in their
pocket boroughs – Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura. They killed
industries in the private sector with increasing demands by the
workers and made public sector enterprises inefficient.. The communist
dilemma was real. If capitalism succeeds in producing goods for the
masses, workers may not heed to their call for strike, bandh and
gherao. An American labor leader had remarked in Mumbai in the late
'fifties that the Russian workers may own the car factory, but the
American workers own cars. Does it matter to the worker who owns
factory if he is given a fair deal ? Mass production and mass
consumption go together.
The tragedy of Indian communists was its colonial mindset as Ashis
Nandy has explained in his comments. They were text book communists
unlike the Chinese, who are pragmatists, especially Deng Xiaoping who
had famously declared that it did not matter whether the color of the
cat was white or black as long as it could catch the mice and went on
with his industrialization promoting capitalism both native and
foreign. Of course, it is easy to change policies in a totalitarian
polity. Indian communists had no clue as to how to go about it in a
democratic polity. Democracy believes in debate, discussion, and
consensus. Indian communists' allergy for private enterprise and
private initiative made West Bengal an industrial desert. They
literally made West Bengal into a Waste Bengal !
( The above comments were sent India Abroad,New York, in response to
an article with the above title by Sheela Bhatt).
February 11,2010.
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