Mark this Antony

There should be nothing in common between a card-carrying Communist like Buddhadev Bhattacharya and a card-carrying anti-communist like A.K....

There should be nothing in common between a card-carrying Communist like Buddhadev Bhattacharya and a card-carrying anti-communist like A.K. Antony. But there is. Both preside over states ruined by empty ideology. Now both want to end the decay 8212; but can8217;t.

Actually, the way West Bengal and Kerala lost out to other states in the progress stakes is a damning commentary on the agitational politics that rule them. Industry fled both states. Unemployment rose as unionism became an end in itself. Towards the closing years of his long reign, Jyoti Basu realised that this fossilised approach to working class glory was bringing about working class corrosion. The philosophy of All-Rights-No-Responsibilities was destructive as much to the working class as to the rest of society. Russia, China and other communist states changed in time. Basu was too much of a slave to the Indian communist mindset to move with the times, like the rest of the comrades.

Compared to Kerala, Bengal has a more propitious intellectual environment in which change can occur. Bhattacharya is a creative writer and translator of Kafka among other things. Finance Minister Ashim Dasgupta, a student of Amartya Sen and a graduate of the Massachusets Institute of Technology, is more at home with economic visionaries than among the ideologues of his party. For that reason he is unpopular among the diehard comrades.

Though intellectually well-equipped, leaders like the CM and Finance Minister will need to be harbingers of a different kind of revolution if they are to save Bengal from the morass in which it has got stuck. Among the political types who rule Kerala, those who read books 8212; let alone understand Kafka 8212; can be counted on fingers . In fact, the state Culture Minister8217;s notion of culture is to get into street fights with the respected writers and film-makers of Kerala; he apparently finds power to be an aphrodisiac in the field of culture as well.

In this dismal landscape a miracle sprout has lately appeared: The Chief Minister has become astonishingly determined to bring about change. In a state crippled by unions that invented notions like 8216;8216;wages for looking on8217;8217;, A.K. Antony has dared to pass new laws that put citizens8217; rights on par with labour rights and to create a new environment where minds can grasp the imperatives of progress. The Global Investors Meet in Kochi last week certainly succeeded to his lasting credit. Suddenly Reliance and Infosys, Koreans and Arabs are finding Kerala an 8216;8216;ideal destination.8217;8217;

Is it really? Much will depend upon the way the politics of agitation is played. The Congress itself has been a culprit in this; Antony first came to prominence by leading a life-stopping 8216;8216;one-anna agitation8217;8217; against passenger fare rise in the late 1950s. What a great gesture it will be if he now publicly regrets his role in disruptions of that kind. He must also recognise that when million-dollar investments come in, there will always be scope for corruption. Antony is famously clean. But just as famously, he is surrounded by unclean men.

Lobbies that promote environmentally damaging projects can also be agents of subversion. The idea, for example, of mining the coastal seabed for sand is evidently fraught with unspeakable dangers. If he shows equal determination in separating good from evil, Antony may yet overtake the Basus and the Bhattacharyas 8212; and the Karunakarans and Achutanandans 8212; and become a maker of history.