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STATES:
WEST BENGAL
Wasteland
Jyoti
Basu leaves behind a state that is politically marginalised, economically
denuded. His legacy: masterful non-performance.
By
Sumit Mitra and Labonita
Ghosh
Writers'
Buildings, the red-brick colonial structure in Calcutta which houses the
West Bengal secretariat, is home to 12,000 employees with a reputation
for getting exercised on everything except their official work. Last week,
there was a special reason for excitement. Everyone in that citadel of
babudom was proudly waving an invitation card from the West Bengal
State Employees' Coordination Committee, with 24 red stars emblazoned
on it. The number stood for the years Jyoti Basu had spent in that building
as the state's longest serving chief minister.
 |
| Basu's
exit leaves Bengal with another dream |
The employees'
farewell, held at the central gate of the building, was of a piece with
a general eruption of nostalgia in the ruling Left Front and the Government.
At the last cabinet meeting presided over by Basu, members had moist eyes.
The big debate was whether the outgoing chief minister's high back chair
should be preserved as a museum piece. An embarrassed Basu said no, but
he was outvoted by his colleagues.
The Cabinet
decided to take up in its next meeting on November 7 — the first
to be chaired by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, Basu's successor — the issue
of allowing the 86-year-old leader to stay on at his impressive official
residence in the Salt Lake suburb. And of course his party, the CPI(M),
will not only put him on a pedestal for the rest of his life but will
take care of his material needs. Like keeping a fleet of cars at his disposal
and chartering a special helicopter for his campaign prior to the assembly
election next year. On November 10, he will inaugurate the Calcutta Film
Festival, this time not as chief minister but as a "distinguished
political leader".
Among the
litany of tributes paid to the octogenarian leader, one was from Congress
President Sonia Gandhi, the lady who dashed his prime ministerial hopes
in 1999. In a personal letter, she described his retirement as "the
end of an era — both for the CPI(M) and for Bengal". An era
it surely was, considering its length. However, beyond the expected public
adulation, the question that sits on the minds of many is: what did he
achieve?
The question
is important for the CPI(M), which has never been sure what exactly caused
its five successive victories in the state-organisational skill, performance
or Basu's charisma. It is even more important for the state's electorate
to evaluate Basu's legacy. It could be the main issue in the 2001 elections.
These thoughts
were expectedly muted in the last week of Basu's chief ministership. But
outside the circle of devotees in the party and the Government, there
wasn't much evidence of spontaneous public wailing. In the local media,
match-fixing was a bigger story. In the Calcutta Metro, conversations
centred on irreverent asides on who would now send Basu to London for
his annual investment-seeking visits and how much hold he would have on
his successor.
The lf partners
were gushing in their eulogy of Basu. In private conversation, though,
a senior Front leader worried about "real issues" coming to
the fore in the post-Basu days. "Real issues" is the shorthand
for the state's free fall into irrelevance in the 23 and a half wasted
years, with a state-sponsored regime of mediocrity that stifled opportunity
in every sphere of life. They were brushed under the carpet because Basu
never faced a serious political challenge since 1977. Much like the late
B.C. Roy who ruled imperiously for 14 years after 1948. But Roy left a
rich legacy of far-sighted development projects — such as Durgapur
as the state's industrial hub, or Salt Lake as an answer to Calcutta's
congestion problem. Other than the chair, a cinema hall screening subtitled
films and a football stadium, is there much for which Basu will be remembered?
Not quite.
The lf Government put most of its resources to pamper its bloated retinue
of employees, schoolteachers and rural supporters and was left, as a result,
with very little cash for capital investment. The state's finances have
now come to a breaking point, with the fiscal deficit increasing between
1994 and 1999 from Rs 1,965 crore to Rs 7,109 crore. The overmanned and
poorly managed state government companies gave, in 1999, a measly return
of 0.04 per cent on equity.
Pg.2
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How
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you can, writes INDIA TODAY Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar in
