Political refit in Buddha land

The pragmatism of West Bengal’s new Marxist leaders is radically different from the pragmatism of the old guard. The perception is that adding to its national tally of 33 will not give the CPM a more decisive say in the framing of policy at the Centre. Whereas the old guard of the CPM, like Harkishen Singh Surjeet and Jyoti Basu, believed that the CPM’s relevance was its “principled politics” and the moral authority of its socialist ideology , Bhattacharjee and his generation of West Bengal leaders see things differently.

They have a quiet acceptance of the limitations of a federal structure of sharing power, resources and responsibilities. In using words like, ‘systemic’, to describe the relationship between a state run by the CPM-led Left Front vis-a-vis the Centre, controlled by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, Bhattacharjee is no longer chafing to change the rules as an earlier generation had sought to do. Critics could argue that in adapting to the system, the CPM has lost its ideological edge and moral authority. However, by foregrounding the campaign against secularism and economic policy (India Shining/Feel Good), Bhattacharjee and his colleagues have renegotiated the terms on which governance and politics is henceforward likely to proceed.

The unbundling of governance and politics is an adjustment to the limitations of a concrete reality that the new generation of West Bengal leaders acknowledges about the future of the CPM. The process of accommodation, however irksome, began a long time ago; by participating in the elections in 1952, the undivided communist movement set in train a process that has shaped its responses and ways of participating in national politics. By contesting in that first election, the communist movement signalled the end of its dreams about organising revolutions. Since then, it has been a slow and jerky response to the concrete necessity of winning votes, gaining control over state governments and issues of governance within the framework of divided powers, resources and responsibilities. Whereas earlier generations of state government leaders framed the relationship between the Centre and the state in terms of a confrontation , the new generation is clearly focused on managing through cooperation.

The ideological confrontations over secularism, globalisation, poverty and politics remain, but the effort has been to establish new equations that allow for a dialogue. Some MPs work at spending the local area development funds; some work at dovetailing their programmes with schemes run by the Centre and the state government and, when necessary, use persuasion in New Delhi to push through decisions that benefit the state. Others, however, are happier indulging in old style war games, which serves a useful purpose, that of maintaining the ideological difference in good working order, so that the CPM can retreat to its moral high ground whenever it feels unsafe within the arena of practicalities of governance.

In searching for a new equilibrium, the CPM in West Bengal is having to negotiate with attitudes such as those that were part of its legacy of treating every other political party as the enemy. The transition from the politics of opposition to a partner within the framework of rules has happened piquantly enough at a time when the possibility of political confrontation was at its highest with a BJP-led government at the Centre. The complex ways in which the balance has been struck is a pointer to the changes in perception about the federal character of the Indian state.