The political battle over Nandigram has also unleashed an irony. Ranged against the CPM-led Left Front government in West Bengal is a bizarre coalition made up of not just its political opposition but also, and increasingly, its friends. Left intellectuals, fellow travellers of the party for long decades, are taking an uncompromising stand on ‘red terror’. But it goes further than that. These individuals and groups are quick to use Nandigram as an opportunity to reiterate their much-rehearsed opposition to government efforts to hasten the state’s industrialisation. It is not clear why Nandigram should still remain the apt symbol and locale for the latter kind of protest. After all, while the March 14 police firing at Nandigram had catapulted issues of land acquisition and compensation into the public debate, the situation on the ground has changed since then. More specifically, the chemical hub originally envisaged for Nandigram has now been relocated to an alternative site that does not pose the same questions of rehabilitation and diversion of fertile farmland. But then, much of the escalating rhetoric in West Bengal is unconcerned with facts as the anti-CPM coalition pursues its common lowest programme. It is, quite simply, to stall the industrial project, any industrial project.The irony is this: the CPM has been here before. The only difference is that it is at the receiving end this time. At the Centre, vis-a-vis the Congress-led government, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s party colleagues have been practising a brand of political obstructionism startlingly similar to the sort that he now faces in West Bengal. At the Centre, of course, the subject is the nuclear deal. The CPM’s determined opposition to the deal is also not overly concerned with what the deal actually says, or its technical aspects. It flows from its rhetorical war against America’s grand ‘imperial design’. In other words, Left politics on the nuclear deal at the Centre now finds an echo in the politics of its opposition in West Bengal.It is disturbingly easy to stall a sound policy by using blunt ideological instruments or by simply shouting it down. The real challenge for any serious political opposition is to articulate its reasons. More than that, to think through the benefits and costs of the policy and its alternatives. Both the CPM and its opposition are on test.
