Except for the die-hard supporters of the left, the writing on the wall in West Bengal was loud and clear for several years. The left had been warned massively and repeatedly over the last three years through panchayat, parliamentary and civic elections. The fact that the left was unable to change course and win back the support of the people despite these warnings goes to show the depth of the rot that has set in after three decades of uninterrupted power. It was clearly beyond the left to enforce drastic organizational restructuring, alter the character of governance, and win elections at the same time. The election apparatus—consisting of expert commissars, corrupt cadres, gangsters, feudal apparatchiks, and promoters—was inconsistent with any attempt at basic reforms (my 'Requiem for the left’, Revolutionary Democracy, Vol. XV, No. 1-2, April-September, 2009). The only way for the left to redeem itself is to face near-extinction. The people of West Bengal have made sure that is the case. If the left, especially the big brother CPM, attempts to hide behind conspiracy theories to explain the debacle, the extinction will be complete.
The vote in West Begal is an impressive affirmation of the essential salience of and people’s faith in electoral politics. With over 300 crorepatis in the Indian parliament, forced voting orchestrated by criminal politicians, massive flow of money, liquor, and other ‘goodies’, and the alarming phenomenon of ‘paid news’, there are reasons to feel frustrated with electoral politics. As the neoliberal order unleashed vast sums of tainted money in the system, it is natural that the dismantling of a fair electoral system is one of its prime targets; the other is to directly intervene in the parliamentary system by installing its own representatives.
Extremists, elites and big business, with considerable overlap between them, are historically uncomfortable with universal franchise in any case. Harnessing the beast is a messy enterprise, and it eats into direct control and profits. But after six decades of operation, the Indian electoral process has deteriorated to the point that even otherwise democratic individuals and groups have started to blink and advocate ‘direct democracy’ outside the parliamentary system.
The great mass of people seem to think otherwise. The vote in West Bengal demonstrated once again that the neoliberal agenda to which the left had drifted in the past decade (Prabhat Patnaik, In the aftermath of Nandigram, Economic and Political Weekly, March 26, 2007) can be successfully resisted. As Noam Chomsky puts it,