The seriousness of a political crisis can often be measured by the extent to which it can be prolonged well beyond the original causes that precipitated it. When Nandigram first became a burning issue, there were some straightforward questions at stake. Does West Bengal need an industrialisation strategy to get people off agriculture? Is significant land acquisition a necessary component of that strategy? If so, what mechanisms can be devised to ensure that the sites chosen minimise the human costs involved? What compensation and rehabilitation packages can be devised that are just and fair? And how can the state overcome the trust deficit on which all rehabilitation in India flounders? But at this juncture, these questions that should be at the heart of the debate over Bengal’s development seem like an abstract and distant set of concerns. Even though the government had halted the Nandigram project, violence has continued, hundreds still remain refugees, and the state continues its unconscionable dithering. Instead of presaging a debate about West Bengal’s future, Nandigram is a reminder of the extent to which the CPM’s accumulated misdeeds and style of politics are now coming back to haunt it, threatening to undo whatever meagre gains the government had made over the past few years.It is part of the character of the conflict at Nandigram that its causes are now over-determined. Part land dispute, part political show, part civil war, part Mafiosi politics, part criminality, part insurgency, the politics of Nandigram has been made more volatile by one central fact. For years the CPM continually blurred the line between the party and the state to the point where the party at the local level would tolerate no opposition and would go to any lengths to establish itself as the sole centre of power. In this quest for local dominance, any and all means were permissible, including violence and intimidation. In some ways, the party got carried away by its own success: wherever there was conflict, it felt entitled to handle it on its own terms. In Nandigram its initial mistake was a double overconfidence: first, in not anticipating opposition to plans for an SEZ; second, in assuming that local party cadres would, on their own, be able to prevent an odd assortment of armed groups from carrying out evictions. When the state finally called the police in, the manner in which the police tried to restore order provoked a backlash. The state was then put in the awkward situation of being damned if it used force and damned if it did not. The government’s response was to sit on the problem, hoping it would go away, but it did little to facilitate the return of refugees or restore property. Since politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, party cadres came marching in, re-igniting a conflict that the CM wished would have remained dormant. But its sins of omission and commission stem from the fact that having operated on the assumption that the state belongs to the party, it is now finding it difficult to turn the state against the party.Reform in Bengal therefore requires two different things. First is an ideological reorientation away from old socialism to a politics of reform. This was a relatively easy process. But the second, and considerably harder challenge, requires convincing the party that it would have to forgo the stranglehold on all walks of life that it has so assiduously exercised: from appointment of school teachers to awarding contracts. The local CPM has reacted so violently in the case of Nandigram in large measure because it wants to signal: how dare anyone challenge us at our own game? The institutionalised extra-legal apparatus through which the CPM had secured its power has now become a fetter on the state. This is a challenge Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will find harder to take on.The second consequence of blurring the line between party and state was that the CPM simply forgot how a state should behave when confronted with potential law-breakers. The bottom line is that if innocent people die, if districts remain cut off for days, if property is routinely set ablaze, and peaceful protesters are targeted, the state bears responsibility. But it has been characteristic of CPM’s responses that rather than use the state machinery to protect lives, secure property and bring peace, it has engaged in partisan rancour of the worst sort, blaming the crisis on everyone from the Maoists to the West Bengal governor. The CPM’s present strategy seems to be to attack those who have not allegedly condemned attacks on the CPM! The good sign is that many Left intellectuals and members of the Bengali intelligentsia are waking up to the realities of CPM rule. But it would be more productive if this debate, rather than treating Nandigram as an exception, also led to more critical reflection on the party’s wider role.The third worrying feature of the present crisis is that despite CPM’s astonishing dominance of the countryside, the rural order still remains extremely fragile. The CPM used to claim credit for bringing rural Bengal into a stable equilibrium. But the fact that this order has crumbled so fast, under the first signs of social stress, makes you wonder just what the basis of that order is, and how much longer it will endure without generating more violence. There is some truth to the CPM’s concern that all kinds of forces are fishing in troubled waters. But surely it is also an indictment of its policies and the kinds of discontent they are generating that these forces are getting a toehold in the first place. Nandigram has now become a political opportunity for everyone: it has given Mamata Banerjee new life; the Congress is now smiling, not the least because it gives it some leverage to needle the Left; anti-leftists like the crisis because it confirms their prejudices about the Left; radical groups see this as an opportunity to make the point that the CPM no longer stands for radical aspirations; those interested in violence like this crisis, because the state is giving them an opportunity to perpetuate more violence; assorted NGOs see in this crisis another opportunity to indict global capital.The danger is that almost everyone, having acquired a vested interest in keeping this crisis going, will do their best to let it be. For the first time in Bengal it is CPM versus everyone else, including itself.The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research
