T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: How to defeat the Left in Bengal

LINE & LENGTH

You insult a Bengali at his own peril because he or she responds by voting the Communists back.

For those who studied at the Delhi School of Economics at the end of the 1960s, coping with the Bengali mind was a daily challenge. Not only were there lots of students from there, there was also a huge complement of young Bengali staff""Amartya Sen, Sukhomoy Chakravarti, Mrinal Datta-Chaudhuri""to mention just three of the better-known ones, and a platoon of lesser-known ones. During tutorials one of them once had to be reminded that it would be more helpful to speak in English. "Keno," he asked in genuine surprise. "Bangla boojhtay paro na?"

But even that training has quite not prepared us non-Bongs to understand how exactly the collective Bengali mind works. (To avoid offence, please note that I am not using the term 'Bong' to describe Bengalis but its negation, ~Bengalis, if you want to use set-theoretic notation to describe us).

Thus, the Bengali students didn't just adore their Bengali tormentors, they actually loved them. So the worse things got""for example when economics soared off into the calculus of variations and Riemann integrals""the more sentimental the Bengali students became.

I recount this because when every other explanation fails as to why the state has voted back the CPM for the seventh time, by a process of elimination I think this is the only plausible one""somehow around half the voters in West Bengal love their tormentors. There is a sort of Stockholm Syndrome at work there, I suspect.

It is boring to recount all those dreary statistics of the previous 25 years of non-performance and decline in the state. But there has been a mild turnaround in the last four years""seeming or real we don't quite know yet. Kolkata looks nice now and even offers some jobs. But the countryside is as it was. Still they vote for the CPM. Why?

Is it because the alternative is so appalling""Mamata Bannerji? Or is it because if there is one thing you don't do before an election, it is to insult the Bengalis?

Well, that is exactly what Ashok Mitra, the former finance minister of the state, says in yesterday's Telegraph.

Dr Mitra is a wonderfully acerbic writer, a man who I think is truly worthy of respect for his intellect and compassion. But winning handsomely tends to cloud everyone's judgement, with the result that even a man such as he could not avoid gloating.

So this is what he writes: "The size of the Left Front victory would conceivably not have inched towards the 1987 proportions if the Election Commission, by its discriminatory over-zealousness in conducting the elections in West Bengal, did not raise the hackles of the electorate."

The entire electorate, Sir, or just under half? And discriminatory, Sir? Over-zealousness?

He then talks of how in 1987 Rajiv Gandhi, by suggesting that Jyoti Basu should retire, had offended all Bengalis, who voted back the CPM with an even greater majority than in 1982. He doesn't mention that the Left Front's vote share was around 45 per cent then, which means around 55 per cent were not offended enough to vote for it.

Nor is there any pretence of "forces of history" here or class struggles. It is just plain old personalities and Bengali sensitivity, the sort of thing you would expect to find in despised Andhra or Tamil Nadu.

Dr Mitra goes on: "This year, the manner the EC has gone about had created an impression that it considered the people of West Bengal to be a suspect species." The people, Sir, or just the CPM cadre?

So, he says, the Left Front workers pulled out all the stops. To do what he does not say but could enhanced intimidation""ki ray shala, boojhtay paro na? kaun party ke vote debe?""have been a part of it? "They voted with their feet against the innuendoes dropped by the Commission," says Dr Mitra.

So whom should the Opposition blame? The EC of course. The crowning crow is: "Some years ago, a letter to the editor on the pages of the Economic and Political Weekly did not mince words: to ensure free and fair elections in West Bengal, it was not enough to import poll personnel, poll observers and paramilitary security guards from elsewhere, one must also import voters from other states." Not other countries, Sir?

My colleague A K Bhattacharya, who is as much of an expat Bengali as I am an expat Tamil, and therefore not given to the histrionics that the natives of the two states are prone to, says Dr Mitra is not wrong because the Election Commission did become a factor. And his clincher: West Bengal is the only state where the Opposition, even after 30 long years, has not produced an effective leader.

My solution: keep praising the Bengalis for voting the CPM back seven times. That should ensure its defeat the next time.