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Journalism of Courage
WEST Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee8217;s recent trip to Singapore and Indonesia to woo foreign investment to Bengal has added to the vocabulary of communist circles in Kolkata. The most significant addition is a synonym for the chief minister8217;s reformist agenda. Those approving of his aggressive reforms have come to be known as 8216;8216;Buddhists8217;8217;. Those opposing him are 8216;8216;Marxists8217;8217;!
If one has access to the party8217;s inner circles, one might find comrades at the lower levels, from local committee to zonal committee, busy working out who is in the majority within8212;the Buddhists or Marxists.
PARTY insiders say that Bhattacharjee has been consciously positioning himself and his party for the 2006 assembly polls8212;the second for him as the chief minister. If the first in 2001 was won with the slogan of 8216;8216;a better Left, an improved Left8217;8217; then the battle for 2006 is going to be a referendum on his agenda for development and change. With the rural vote bank remaining largely intact, his new target is the urban and semi-urban population8212;a constituency that so far had largely been exploited by the principal political adversary, Mamata Banerjee8217;s Trinamool Congress.
Those watching Bhattacharjee closely are at times simply awed by the quick change in his personality profile particularly after he became the chief minister in November 2000. Earlier, many would consider him an ivory tower Marxist, somewhat aloof, even arrogant.
His resignation from Jyoti Basu8217;s cabinet in August 1993 was an early controversy. He vehemently denies that he had described Basu8217;s cabinet as a 8216;8216;cabinet of thieves8217;8217; before resigning. 8216;8216;The reasons for resignation were personal which I can not disclose,8217;8217; he is quoted as saying.
This was also the year when he scripted his first Bengali drama8212; Dushomoy Bad times. Detractors describe his exit from Jyoti Basu cabinet as the 8216;8216;bad times8217;8217; that prompted him to write the play. But Bhattacharjee holds that the theme was based on the Babri demolition and dealt with the trauma of two families.
In fact, Bhattacharjee has been a chief minister with a difference. A person with an acute literary bias, Kafka was his addiction in his younger days. As he matured, Gabriel Garcia Marquez has held him in thrall. In fact, he is said to be busy translating Marquez8217;s One Hundred Years of Solitude. His other addictions in life are coffee, tea and cigarettes8212;he smokes as many as 30 to 40 a day. Yet, another area of his new found interest is wildlife, something he has acquired from his daughter Suchetana, member of a NGO.
Inducted into the communist party on May Day in 1966, Bhattacharjee became the founder secretary of the Democratic Youth Federation, the youth wing of the CPIM. His first victory in an assembly poll was in 1977 from Cossipore in North Kolkata. He lost in 1982, following which he shifted to the Jadavpur constituency in South Kolkata.
One of Bengal8217;s acclaimed writers, Sunil Ganguly, once described Bhattacharjee as a 8216;8216;socialist with a human face.8217;8217; The man who first used that expression, Alexander Dubcek, was reduced to a gardener by the Czech Communist Party. Bhattacharya has no such worries.
