Buddhadeb steps into tenth year in office amid difficulties

By Kushal Dasgupta, Kolkata, Nov 6 : With the industrialisation drive coming to a cropper and his 'poster boy' tag no more in sight, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee stepped into the tenth year in office today amid a wave of Maoist violence and political opposition, leading a Government in the most tumultuous times in three decades.

Away from the days when he enjoyed wide adulation after taking over from Mr Jyoti Basu on November six, 2000 and steered the CPI(M)-led ruling Left Front to successive Assembly polls victories in 2001 and 2006 - the last time with the help of a landslide mandate - history seemed to have taken too short a time apparently to come to a full circle, posing to him the challenge of retaining Bengal's red citadel in the 2011 Assembly elections.

After the storms of Singur and Nandigram flashed ominous signs, the ruling Front lost half of its rural strongholds in the 2008 Panchayat elections and the Trinamool Congress-led Opposition went on pulling off dramatic victories in successive polls, including that for the Lok Sabha.

This had triggered a widespread speculation over the fate of the Marxist Government in the next Assembly elections.

Crestfallen and shaken, the Bhattacharjee Government is now often accused of shying away from taking hard decisions and wobbling its way to 2011.

The situation was aggravated by a bloody turf war that erupted between the CPI(M) and Trinamool Congress and claimed more than 100 lives over the past six months.

While both sides blamed each other for the blood bath, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has already demanded imposition of President's rule in West Bengal for the alleged 'CPI(M) atrocities' and 'lawlessness' in the state.

Even though the Front Government also complained with the Centre against the Trinamool Congress, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram asked the Chief Minister to maintain law and order 'whatever be the provocation'.

The problem was compounded by the Maoist insurgency which took a heavy toll in certain districts and also had a cascading impact on the state's polity. Setting up bases in difficult terrain, the ultras were already on rampage in at least 18 tribal-dominated police station areas of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura districts and carrying out frequent guerrilla attacks on police and the local leaders and supporters of the CPI(M).

The ultras also turned the Lalgarh region of West Midnapore into a liberated zone by killing CPI(M) men, setting afire party offices and driving out police from the area.

Though joint forces from both state and the Centre launched a flush out campaign in the area to reclaim much of Lalgarh, the Maoists continued killing and abduction of police and CPI(M) workers.

Last month Maoist-backed tribals also detained the Bhubaneswar-New Delhi Rajdhani Express, carrying nearly 500 passengers, near Jhargram for five hours in support of their demand of releasing Chhatradhar Mahato, leader of the People's Committee against Police Atrocities.

In the north, the Darjeeling hills were in fire with the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) intensifying the agitation for a separate Gorkhaland carved out of West Bengal. Besides crippling life by calling frequent shutdowns, the GJM had also been trying to run a parallel administration in the hills.

Ironically, a major section of the peasantry, which had been the mainstay of the CPI(M) as well as the Left Front vote bank for long, was believed to have turned against the Marxists on the issue of land acquisition for industry.

As a result, the Trinamool Congress, taking rebirth from the ashes of its electoral decimation in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections respectively in 2004 and 2006, has become stronger taking along divergent sections of opposition force under its umbrella.

Carrying out a fierce campaign and cashing in on certain social and administrative issues, the Opposition had also been apparently successful in stoking the anti-incumbency feeling among different sections of people.

Industrialisation received a jolt with the exit of Nano from Singur and remains virtually stalled. With many of the ambitious projects being put on the backburner, no longer the administration seem to be willing to go in for fresh acquisition of land for industry, fearing a backlash.

Apart from entrepreneurial ventures, even infrastructure projects like the construction of highways and power plants have been stalled on the land issue.

Mr Bhattacharjee, once compared to Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping for his reformist economic policies and 'Do it now' slogan, had now been constrained to arrest the political downturn by identifying the lacunae in his administration and hasten implementation of development programmes.

It remained to be seen whether his efforts auger well for his Government and turn the most difficult time in favour of the Left Front.

--UNI

(c) 2009 Published with permission from United News of India.
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