Fading red

Author: Editorial
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: February 23, 2001
 
 Saifuddin Chowdhury's Party for Democratic Socialism (PDS) is unlikely to set the Hooghly on fire. But to dismiss it as the 44th political party - as a senior Marxist leader tried to do on Wednesday - is an attempt at covering up the CPM's embarrassment. The truth lies somewhere between these two positions. The PDS has attracted attention, not because a small number of CPM legislators have gravitated towards it, but because it indicates serious disquiet over the CPM's 24 years of uninterrupted rule in the state which has led to the establishment of one of the most ruthless political set-ups in the country. In fact, there is a body of public opinion which believes that the Left Front would not have won the last Assembly elections but for the systematic manner in which the CPM cadres rigged the polling. Given the fact that spots in a cadre-based party like the CPM are not common and that breakaway leaders earn the wrath of party hoodlums, Chowdhury has shown immense courage. That he has been able to attract two legislators and a leader of the stature of Samir Putatunda, former South 24 Pargana district secretary, is what should worry the CPM leadership. Even if the CPM's enfant terrible and transport minister Subhas Chakraborty does not join hands with him, as speculated, Chowdhurys performance is certainly more commendable than the revolts of M.V Raghavan and K.R. Gowri in Kerala, which were basically one-person shows.

However, by stating that the PDS's natural ally is the Congress and it will have no truck with the Trinamool Congress as long as it is a part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, Chowdhury has scotched the possibility of his party joining the much-trumpeted Mahajot in West Bengal. His ideal is a Congress-Trinamool-PDS combine to take on both the CPM and the BJP. But such a combine is unlikely to take shape for reasons as simple as Mamata Banerjee's unwillingness to leave the NDA and the Congress's hesitation to have any truck with the BJP Thus, for all practical purposes, there will be two main fronts to fight the Left Front in the next elections - something that should bring cheer to CPM, since a three-cornered contest is what it wants to re-establish itself once more in Writer's Building. The recent by-elections have shown that the Left Front is hardly m a position to face a one-to-one contest.

The CPM knows only too well that the next elections will be an opportunity for the people to take stock of the situation after two decades of Marxist rule. And it is this stocktaking that worries the party more than anything else. Apart from strengthening grassroots democracy by going in for land reforms, panchayati raj and decentralization of power, the CPM has miserably failed to put the state on the development track- The stark truth is that whatever be the indices of development, West Bengal's position has fallen from what it was when Jyoti Basu first became chief minister in the seventies. In fact, the mindless violence the CPM cadres resort to at the slightest provocation is a measure of the desperation that prevails in the party. This is bound to be exacerbated if more partymen follow in the footsteps of Saifuddin Chowdhury in the belief that voters have already become weary of the CPM.
 

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