Oh for a friend in Delhi

Mondal was the officer investigating the personal ledger account (PLA) scam in West Bengal. He was to Jyoti Basu what the CBI’s U.N. Biswas is to Laloo Prasad Yadav. There are, however, two differences.

First, the West Bengal scam was even bigger than the fodder scam — Rs 1,000 crore as opposed to Rs 950 crore. (Out of Rs 1,833 crore of central Plan funds received by West Bengal between 1991 and 1996, only Rs 800 crore has been accounted for. Mondal wanted to know where the rest disappeared. Second, while Biswas is still on the job, one of Gujral’s last acts in officewas to transfer him from Calcutta. So much for a caretaker’s powers!

I don’t know how Gujral explains this. Was he “fighting communalism”? Or putting an end to “witch-hunts”? Whichever it was, in its dying hours the Gujral ministry didn’t stop at transferring Mondal in such unseemly hurry. It also summoned 21 audit officials probing the PLA case to Delhi.

Interestingly, the Jyoti Basu regime is still sitting on the relevant audit report. I remember the howls of outrage when it was rumoured, but only rumoured, that the Maharashtra government wouldn’t make the Srikrishna Committee report public. But when it comes to uncovering the misdeeds of the “secular” left, the mockingbirds change tune!

Mondal’s transfer is one indication of the Left Front’s plight. Another comes from Kerala, where Marxist cadres are being educated on the virtues of allying with the Congress. And yet a third is the wild array of charges being bellowed by Somnath Chatterjee. (How can he describe sending MPs to cyclone-devastatedOrissa and West Bengal as “dirty politics”?)

All these point to one inescapable fact: there is an updated version of the `Calcutta Thesis’. For the foreseeable future, the Communists will do anything to woo Sonia Gandhi. And if she doesn’t oblige the Marxists will find it increasingly difficult to retain power. They have seen the storm clouds on the horizon. When Mamata Banerjee walked out of the Congress, Leftist elders predicted a clean sweep in West Bengal. The Trinamul Congress, they said, would simply split the traditional Congress vote bank, ensuring victories almost by default. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

The Left Front couldn’t increase its 1996 tally of 33 by a single additional victory. In terms of vote percentage the Marxist share has fallen considerably. Its performance was poor even in the Satgachia Assembly segment, represented by no less an MLA than Chief Minister Jyoti Basu.

The rough and ready seat arrangement between the Trinamul Congress and the BJP managed to win overone-third of the votes in West Bengal. If you add the votes given to the Congress, the total amounts to 48 per cent. That, for the record, is considerably more than the Marxist share.

Part of the reason for this amazing success was that Mamata Banerjee was able to articulate the growing public disgust with the Left-Front regime. It isn’t just the PLA scam that disturbed voters. There are other unexplained mysteries, such as the sudden prosperity of VIP offspring.

How did they win exclusive distribution rights for products from private companies (a practice denounced by the Left in Narasimha Rao’s clan)? Is it true that nationalised banks had their arms twisted to write off loans to influential parties? Are these lucky children becoming real-estate magnates with interests stretching all the way to Haryana?

None of these questions worried the Left Front up to the point that the Vajpayee ministry took office. Narasimha Rao wasn’t the man to send the CBI scurrying to investigate corruption charges. (The Rs1,000 crore that went astray did so in Rao’s tenure in Delhi.) And having the UF in power was better still. But a BJP-led government will unshackle the investigators. There is no question of vendetta, only of letting the law take its course.

Caught between Mamata Banerjee and the courts, the CPI(M) is being forced to look beyond its UF partners. Mulayam Singh couldn’t stop the BJP surge in UP. Alienating Laloo Yadav proved fatal in Bihar. And the Communists can now write off Andhra Pradesh as well. Much to the horror of the Communist Big Brother, even the junior partners in the Left Front are getting just a bit restive. For the first time in years, the RSP and the Forward Bloc openly declared they wouldn’t follow a CPI(M) directive — Harkishen Singh Surjeet’s nutty proposal to support a Congress ministry. Mamata Banerjee’s defiance seems to have convinced the Left Front Cinderellas that there is life beyond the CPI(M).

Nobody realises better than Jyoti Basu how things have changed. During the campaign,the octogenarian was almost embarrassing in repeatedly declaring that he was ready for the top job. Once the results came out, Basu hurriedly said his health wasn’t good enough. Was it his ailments that kept him from paying his last respects to EMS Namboodaripad? And what, by the way, kept Sonia Gandhi from expressing even cursory regrets?

To tell the truth, the new Congress president has no love lost for the Marxists. Surjeet, for instance, is yet to get an audience. Sonia Gandhi feels the General-Secretary of the CPI(M) rates nothing better than an appointment with her private secretary Vincent George!

But Surjeet must swallow the snub for his party’s sake. The Left Front needs a friendly government in Delhi. But does the Congress need the Communists? Not really. Such an alliance would simply drive home Mamata Banerjee’s famous jibe that the Congress is little more than “the CPI(M) B-Team in Bengal”. Which explains why Somen Mitra is imploring the Congress high command to take a tough line with theMarxists.

That doesn’t mean the Left Front will stop trying. Two years ago, Indrajit Gupta said the Congress had no option but to support the UF. (True enough, especially since the first Vajpayee ministry managed to order an inquiry into the urea scam.) Well, today the tables are turned. It is the CPI(M) that has skeletons bursting out of its cupboard. If it wants to keep the BJP-led government from opening the doors the Left must grovel before Sonia Gandhi. That ploy may not work, but what other straw is there to clutch at?