The Demise of the World’s Longest-Running Elected Marxist Government: What Awaits the Future of Bengal?

The people of West Bengal took their wrath to the ballot box as the historic verdict ousted the incumbent Left Front government after running the office for 34 years (since 1977) in the eastern state of India. After three decades of communist rule a majority of the people wanted a change as the common perception goes.

Where did the Left Front government go wrong? Uniformly likely in all possible directions - health, education, industry, employment or human development - progress over the past three decades has been negligible. However the Left Front’s political myopia in recent years was in some ways the catalyst that prompted the political debacle. None can deny the slackening pace of industrialization in West Bengal over the past three decades. After its landslide victory in 2006, the Left Front government vowed to go for an industrialization-drive, which was seemingly a contradiction to the agrarian development policy that has been witnessed since the early eighties. Despite embarking on a carefully considered path of industrialization, the ruling Left took a hasty move that only helped the opposition cement its foot in the Writer’s Building (the Secretariat building of the State Government of West Bengal).
As is evident, it requires more thoughts on

·     How would voters cope with the left Front’s changing image from “an architect of lend reforms” to “a promoter of industrialization” and reflect it in the ballot box?

·     Designing a thoughtful land acquisition framework so that it provides an adequate compensation package for the poor peasants.  

·     How could West Begal possibly fit into the Chinese model of Special Economic Zones (SEZs)? Severe violations of human rights in places like Nandigram or Singur did not go unnoticed.

·     How to battle against the opposition alliance which, for a change, was more united, especially with the Congress party in power at Center?

The process of industrialization often involves a trade-off. The big multinational companies would always pick locations for large industrial projects which are attractive from all points of view (proximity to a dock, connectivity with improved roads, etc). On that scale, the state of West Bengal has limited choices to offer because the convenient spots are most fertile lands (like Singur or Nandigram). It is a serious bottleneck for growth, which the Left Front government failed to overcome and it won’t be an easy task for the newly elected Trinamool Congress (TMC)-Congress alliance government too. What works best? An attractive compensation package (with future returns) for land acquisition (short-run) or improved infrastructure that lowers the distance to remote areas (long run) - it is time for novel ideas (from economists / policymakers)! 

A change in power is a good thing that shakes off the status-quo. West Bengal has been mired in backlash for decades, but by no stretch of the imagination, the TMC party- the flag bearer of the newly elected coalition, can be thought as a panacea. The most often cited criticisms of the TMC party are that it lacks a clear ideology, its party structure is weak and it has limited success in cohesive political movement and agenda based politics. As it turns out, its raison detre (reason for existence) has just been ‘the removal of the ruling Left’. The new government needs to run a show that is truly unprecedented. We wish that the new Chief Minister of West Bengal would live up to people’s very high expectation. Let’s just hope for the best!