Shrinking Buddha

Each day,Bhattacharjee witnesses the edifice of a three-decade-old regime crumbling,collapsing. His pet projects continue to suffer. It started with Tata pulling out from Singur last year,followed by the exit of DLF. The door was shut on Indonesias Salim Group next. Then the Jindals JSW,facing a global slowdown,put their project in Bengal on hold. Meanwhile,the Maoists declared they wouldnt let the Jindal project take off anyway. And finally,the Vedic Village controversy broke out and following allegations of land fraud and forced land acquisition in Vedic Village,the West Bengal government scrapped its proposed IT Park at Rajarhat.

For a man who hoped to take West Bengal out of a morass of depression and redefine communism in Bengal,the events have been devastating,pushing him deeper into his isolation. There have been rumours of him stepping down from office,though they havent amounted to much and people close to him say he may be disillusioned with the chief ministers office but he remains committed to the party. His message,they say,is clear: I am ready to quit the CMs office,but I have my commitment to the party.

So,when he retreated into solitude to the foothills of the Himalayas this week,at a forest bungalow in Mong Pong,near Siliguri,not many were surprised. Bhattacharjees close confidants say he hasnt been keeping well and needed rest. The party advised him to go to Kashmir but he chose North Bengal instead, says CPIM central committee member Md Salim. Soon,we have the Siliguri municipal corporation elections. Buddhada wanted to campaign for it too while resting at Mong Pong.

That both the CM and his wife will travel all the way to Siliguri to campaign shows just how important it is for the CM and the party to win these municipal polls,especially with every Left bastion in the state being breached.

But comrades say Bhattacharjee chose Mong Pong over Kashmir for personal reasons as well. Barely 25 km from Mong Pong is Mongpu,a place close to Kalimpong,where Rabindranath Tagore made several visits between 1938 and 1940 to recuperate. In his letters to friends and relatives from Mongpu,Tagore described it as a heaven on earth. Its like my pilgrimage.

Those close to Bhattacharjee say he draws much inspiration from the poet and spent a lot of time in Mong Pong listening to Tagore songs.

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THERE are very few within the CPIM who took the mandate of the May 2009 Lok Sabha polls as seriously as Bhattacharjee did. Party insiders say the chief minister wanted to quit,taking moral responsibility for the defeat,but the top leadership convinced him to stay on. Party sources say what also forced him to continue was the spiralling violence in the state. Providing protection to party cadres in East and West Midnapore,North and South 24 Parganas,Nadia and Murshidabad,was a pressing concern. The party claims to have lost over 270 cadres since the Nandigram-Singur agitation and many in the party wanted to use the government machinery to clamp down on political opponents but Bhattacharjee did not approve.

The results of the Lok Sabha polls brought their own share of problems. Initially,the state CPIM leadership attributed the reasons for the humiliating defeat to the Lefts decision to withdraw support from the UPA government and its shaky attempts to cobble up a Third Front with Mayawati. But later,the central leadership called state-specific factors responsible for the poll debacle in Kerala and West Bengal. This hurt Bhattacharjee as did the hardline stance of CPIM general secretary Prakash Karat in refusing to reinstate party veteran and former Speaker Somnath Chatterjee. Last week,Bhattacharjee,sharing a party forum with Chatterjee,sent a clear signal to the politburo. A day later,he skipped the politburo meeting.

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Meanwhile,the CMs baiters have seized the state specific factors-line and trained their guns on the chief minister,blaming his industrial policy for the poll debacle. Every other reason,like rampant corruption in the party,arrogance,nexus between partymen and criminals,the affluent lifestyles of party cadres,nepotism and disconnect with the masses that equally contributed to the partys defeat,were swept under the carpet.

Some of the Left Front constituents used this rift within the CPIM to further checkmate the chief minister and his individualistic ways. They asked Biman Bose,CPIM state secretary and also chairman of the LF committee,to ensure that the CM consults a cabinet core committee before deciding on any crucial step. A blanket ban was imposed on land acquisition and a furore was raised over Bhattacharjee agreeing to implement the amended Unlawful Activities Prevention Act to deal with Maoists. Besides,many questioned his visits to the districts to analyse the reasons behind the poll defeat and enhance contact with people.

Battling continuing crises,Bhattacharjee has become increasingly withdrawn. This has become a lame duck government with no agenda, says a senior bureaucrat. After the Lok Sabha debacle and the Tata pullout,hardly any business delegation has come to meet him. His core bureaucratic team has split up with over 15 trusted bureaucrats having sought transfers outside the state. More are in queue. No one likes to squander his future sticking to a sinking ship. Many are secretly approaching Didi for greener pastures, one of them said.

The chief minister is now seldom seen in public,his speeches have become fewer too. And when he does speak,his speeches are shorter,not lasting more than eight to 10 minutes. His tone lacks the usual aggression and he no longer speaks passionately of a roadmap for the state. In fact,he avoids any reference to issues of development or investments. Instead,his speeches warn people against allowing an unruly political adversary to come to power in Bengal. It will destroy everything. Dont let the anarchy of the 70s revisit you, he warns. He does refer to a need for the party to turn around and fight back. But his words appear to lack conviction. Unfortunately for Bhattacharjee,the one person who could have arbitrated in such a crisis no longer can. Confined to his bed,Jyoti Basu cant do much but he senses trouble at the top. So,when two new ministers went to seek his blessings after induction into the Left Front cabinet after the death of senior CPIM leader and West Bengal minister Subhas Chakraborty last month,Basu asked anxiously: Is the unity at the top of the party okay?

Only time can answer his question.