Opinion Breaking out of the red cocoon
Kolkata holds its breath,momentarily unsure of what comes after a 34-year-old regime.
There have been Communists in Writers Buildings longer than I have lived,as for most of Bengal. We grew up in a one-party state; the CPM yearly seemed to intensify its hold over every aspect of civic life: promotions,licences,permits,syllabi in universities. We had a glorious past to clutch,and so unchanging Left Front rule seemed to,at least in others eyes,say something essential about our refusal to accept change.
And now that the Left has been swept away,and the rest of the country is hesitantly trying to pronounce poriborton,what happens? Will a new Bengal emerge from the cocoon of red flags and red tape the government had built for us?
Outside neighbourhood Trinamool headquarters,in Kalighat,in trucks trailing Trinamool tricolours,you will see rejoicing of the sort one sees after victory,the air thick with abir. The cameras are there,understandably,and so is the worlds attention. But,given Mamatas extraordinary mandate,the great citys narrow streets seem oddly quiet. The conversations you hear are,if anything,less political than youd expect in a town famous for loud and pointless polemic. Even after the results,the city is holding its breath.
It is not that there is disbelief the Left is gone. This isnt the death of a tyrant,you know,when people weep in the streets,unsure if it is relief or grief. This is a democracy,and after the panchayat polls,after the general elections,everyone accepted that the long sunset of the Stalinists was occurring even the CPM. The city did not turn green on Friday morning,it has been so for months now,the red flags tattered,half-visible,Mamatas Maa mati manush carved into every street-corner bust of Indira Gandhi.
What you hear depends on who you talk to,of course. Kolkatas intellectual elite Kolkata has no other elite turned on the Left years ago. In their suspension of disbelief you glimpse what made them a bulwark of the Left for so long before that. The urban poor was always hers,abandoned long ago by Marxists unable to cultivate what should have been their staunchest supporters blinded by theory that kept them in servitude to a trade unionism of insiders,at the expense of those on the outside who desperately needed a foot in the door. But elsewhere,things are not so simple. In a strange inversion,parties imagined as an alliance between the intelligentsia and the workers have become instead,parties of the middle class,with bhadra Buddha clones in shabby-genteel drawing rooms across Bengal pursing their lips,wondering what will come.
And let us too ask: what happens now? The broken Left has few answers. Will they,as outgoing minister Gautam Deb threatened,show the Trinamool that when it comes to agitation-politics,they still have a few lessons to teach Mamata? Will their anger turn to the South Delhi seminar-room Marxists that have crushed the state units aspirations ever since the historic blunder that denied Jyoti Basu the premiership,exactly 15 years ago today? Will the actually-existing socialism of Buddhadeb and Co win that fight,pushing the CPM towards being a radical social-democratic party as CPs everywhere else have become,instead of the terrifying theorist-and-goonda coalition that it became in India?
The Left may have lost,but so has Bengals Congress. It lost in allowing the Trinamool enough safe seats that it can govern on its own. It lost in not seizing the moment to deploy a few newer faces,the way Mamata did; its local units gripe endlessly about insider candidates that feel they have a straight line to New Delhi. It lost over a decade,unable to perform as a functional opposition,too subservient to what New Delhi declared were the compulsions of national party. No amount of Youth Congress gimmickry will change that.
And for Mamata? In the conch-blowing and cheers of Kalighat,it was difficult to hear her speak. But after she shushed her supporters,it was vintage Didi: Tagore,shout-outs to every disadvantaged section imaginable,an admonition to go home and bathe. Nobody knows how she intends to satisfy the aspirations that brought her to power. Nobody knows what her instincts for governance are,unless they were revealed in her stint as railway minister,in which case there isnt enough money in the Consolidated Fund of India for the state-funded populism she will want to unleash. We can just hope that the relentless negativity that fuelled her long stubborn struggle against the Left has place in it,too,for a little poriborton.
In the end,thats why Kolkata is still holding its breath. So much of what Bengal has become rested upon the assumption that change happened to other people. Today,all its parties,all its people,will have to change.
Now,if we do not become what we always said we would become once we were a normal state,we will have nobody else to blame.
mihir.sharma@expressindia.com
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