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STATES:
WEST BENGAL
Shattered
Confidence
After
adopting a palpably hostile stance towards private business in its first
17 years, the Basu administration began wooing investors with a new industrial
policy in 1994. But business confidence had been shattered by then and
no worthwhile private sector investment was forthcoming. The great Bengal
hope, the joint sector Haldia Petrochemicals Limited, crumbled under a
loan burden of Rs 4,000 crore even before it could cross its first quarter
of operation. Yet another fresh idea — the sale of the grand but
decaying Great Eastern Hotel to a French hospitality chain — may
get stuck amid strong opposition from the unions, including the Marxist-controlled
CITU.
As Nazeeb
Arif, secretary-general of the Indian Chamber of Commerce, says, "The
Left has always concentrated on promoting agriculture and decentralisation
of resources. The idea that industry should also be a priority happened
only post-1994."
For Bengali
Marxists, bliss lay in the countryside overwhelming the towns. So they
concentrated on land reforms — a euphemism for continuous modification
of land ceiling rules. West Bengal tops the list of states in declaration
of surplus land, with 5,14,400 hectares redistributed among two million
families. Redistribution created a new class of stakeholders in agriculture
who improved production of foodgrains by over 60 per cent between 1980
and 1998. But the growth has peaked, family sizes have enlarged, with
consequent rise in the hunger for more land, and people are restive in
rural Bengal. It explains why Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress gathered
considerable support in the rice-bowl district of Midnapore.
The other
painful legacy of the Basu regime is, as former Calcutta University vice-chancellor
Santosh Bhattacharya calls it, the "mediocritisation" of the
education system. The Marxists promoted the rule of the mediocre as early
as the United Front rule in the late 1960s, when they began packing the
University Senate with fellow travellers. The Marxist argument was that
it disliked elitism. "In reality, they confused meritocracy with
elitism," says Bhattacharya.
Post-1977,
attempts began to bring a premier institution like Presidency College
several notches down the academic ladder. When the University Grants Commission
offered a special grant to the reputed economics department of Presidency
College, but made it conditional upon non-transferability of certain teachers,
the state government just stopped its collateral allocation. Except a
few, the best teachers have left the college. Says Rajat Kanta Roy, head
of the department of history: "The Left Front's coming to power was
the triumph of a clerical culture that is against any kind of mobility."
Macaulay draped in the red flag.
If higher
education suffered due to the CPI(M)'s obsession against elitism, primary
education began limping with the abolition of English up to Class V. Familiarity
with the English language was Bengal's historical advantage. Basu's government
nullified it. Now the Pabitra Sarkar Commission has brought English back
to Class III, but an entire generation was sacrificed in the cause of
Basu's great dumbing down.
The man
behind this allegedly proletarian agenda spent his term living a positively
patrician personal life. Born into a zamindari family, Basu, the "revolutionary"
who presided over Bengal's great irrelevance, remains an intensely private
individual, unmoved by the state's internal decay. Despite his party's
ideological fetishes and parochial outlook, Basu has never let it interfere
with his choice of friends. In the turbulent UF days, when he was the
deputy chief minister and the CPI(M) was almost nihilistic in its approach,
Basu used to meet the then Governor Dharma Vira and the then chief secretary
Ranjit Gupta, brother of CPI leader Indrajit Gupta, regularly for a drink
and a convivial evening.
The friendship
frayed when Vira dismissed the UF Government. Basu and Gupta resumed their
friendship though. It has been two decades since Gupta's death but Basu
still visits his widow's house in Alipore — one of the few private
residences he goes to — for Scotch and company. Jahar Sengupta, former
chairman of ICI, is another close friend and lives on Calcutta's Ballygunge
Circular Road. Yet Basu prefers to meet him in London.
Basu has
played a long innings with quite a low score. If posterity remembers him
with some fondness it will be for the line he drew between public behaviour
and private conduct. Unlike fellow Marxists who distinguished between
ideological faith and gentlemanly demeanour, Basu was more at home with
the latter but succumbed to the former as a matter of habit.
Politicians
are measured by elections but a great leader can only be judged by history.
The people elected and re-elected Basu with monotonous regularity. Future
generations may not be that charitable. He will honoured as the titan.
Bengal is his Titanic.
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