Though no one can accuse the 34-year rule of the Left for any scam, it is a fact that it failed to handle the challenge of land acquisition properly
Soroor Ahmed | Clarion India
There is a section of political commentators who argue that many educated Bengalis want to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) this time in the assembly elections in West Bengal due in April-May next year simply because the eastern state has suffered a lot because of different governments at the Centre and in the state since 1977.
They are of the view that the state has lagged behind in different sectors after the Siddhartha Shankar Ray-led Congress government was voted out of office after the post-Emergency assembly polls held in the summer of 1977.
Senior journalists like Subir Bhaumik pointed this out in a recent panel discussion. However, the counter-argument is that this is just an excuse to vote for the saffron party.
But an objective view of West Bengal reveals the other side of the story. The hard fact is that in 2018-19, West Bengal registered the highest growth rate (12.58 per cent) in the country—the truth which many media houses ignored. What’s more, between 2016-17 and 2019-20, it has been among the top-performing states of India.
Even the achievements of the 34 years of the Left Front government, at least in the initial couple of decades, was not as bad as it was being made out. The Operation Barga launched to empower the sharecroppers gave a boost to the farm sector.
Kolkata, which was notorious for power crisis in those early days of the Left rule, overcame this challenge. It is true that the Left Front government acquired notoriety for political violence and arm-twisting.
In spite of that, Jyoti Basu was considered as a respectable leader and his name was even floated for the Prime Minister during the United Front government between 1996 and 1998, never mind that his own party, CPM, blocked it.
The 34-year Left Front rule at least provided political stability in the state which in 1960s and 1970s witnessed a lot of upheaval. There was no communal violence in West Bengal then. though political clashes were quite common.
Basu, during his 24-year reign, may have failed to bring in more investment. But the irony is that when his successor Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, also of the same party, tried to bring in the Nano car project and set up a Special Economic Zone, he ran into trouble and his government was finally voted out of power in 2011.
Though no one can accuse the 34-year rule of the Left for any scam, it is a fact that it failed to handle the challenge of land acquisition properly. What the people often fail to appreciate is that the land in a much fertile region like Bengal is more a priced asset than in the semi-arid region of say, Gujarat.
Besides, it would not be appropriate to say that West Bengal remained backward all these years simply because of unfriendly government at the Centre. It needs to be understood that the geographical positioning of Gujarat and Maharashtra—the states much closer to the Middle East and markets in the West—helped these two states grow faster.
The truth is that Bihar and Uttar Pradesh remained the most backward states of the country in the first four decades after Independence though they had the same-party rule both at the Centre and in the states for almost the entire period.
Regional parties have been ruling Tamil Nadu for over 50 years. Ironically, most of the time, the DMK or AIADMK openly opposed the government at the Centre. On the issue of Sri Lankan Tamils, these parties differed with the Centre’s stand, too.
In fact, in April 1999, the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee government lost trust vote in the Lok Sabha by just one vote because AIADMK, which had been backing it, withdrew support to it.
Similarly, Kerala has always been voting either for the Left or the Congress almost on a rotational basis; yet, it is among the most developed states.
Punjab’s case is no different though the state had passed through terrorism for more than 12 years.
Post-2005, Bihar is another case in point. The Nitish Kumar government got generous help from the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre than during the post-2014 years. The so-called double-engine government in the state has failed to deliver as much. This is simply because Narendra Modi wants to keep Nitish on a tight leash.
In contrast, due to competitive politics, Union ministers from Bihar in UPA-I like Lalu Prasad, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, Ram Vilas Paswan, etc. brought projects worth thousands of crores to Bihar, thus helping it to become the state with the highest growth rate during those years.
It is a different matter that Nitish Kumar, with the help of friendly media, took all the credit for this high growth rate. Now he is unable to boast any such claim though the government is friendly at the Centre.
It has been observed that, in many cases, states having opposition governments have managed to get their share from the Centre. This has often happened when the Union government is not very strong. So the argument that, for better development, the Centre and state should have the same party government is not very sound.
