Scowling Buddha
Issues that have shown the West Bengal chief minister in poor light
- Nandigram Nightmare Land acquisition here for SEZ led to clashes this January. The dent in Buddha's image became deeper post the police firing in March, in which 24 people were killed. Things got infinitely worse in November, after the "recapture" of Nandigram by armed CPI(M) cadres.
- Singur Setback Singur was the first big centre of farmer resistance to Buddhadeb's rampant industrialisation and land acquisition drive. Though land here was acquired for the Tatas' small car project, the 'landgrabber' tag attached itself to the CM and his party.
- Rizwanur Recoil Buddha's handling of the case alienated civil society. While police claim Rizwanur Rehman, who married a rich businessman's daughter, committed suicide, indications were he was bumped off. Buddha's defence of the cops only made him an object of ridicule.
- Ration Riots Protests in eight districts last month over people being denied food supplies through the public distribution system did little credit to a Left government.
- Starvation Spiral Nor did the starvation deaths in West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura districts last year. Efforts to pass off the deaths as disease-related only invited more ridicule and scepticism.
- Just Not Cricket Buddhadeb's sponsorship of then Calcutta police commissioner Prasun Mukherjee for the Bengal Cricket Association presidency came in for severe criticism. The CM's statement that the "forces of evil have won" after Mukherjee lost to Jagmohan Dalmiya was deemed churlish.
- Book (UN)Fair Buddha fought only a losing battle for retaining Calcutta's lungs-the Maidan-as the venue for the annual book fair. The high court stepped in to call a halt to the fair which leaves the grounds denuded of grass. The organisers, friends of the CM, are most upset.
- Turning Friends Into Foes His insensitive statements and defending the indefensible has made intellectuals and friends turn against Buddha. Not only did the Calcutta film festival this year see protests, several stage personalities too announced a boycott of the state-sponsored theatre festival.
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Riot Acts: A car is set afire in Calcutta to protest Nandigram and Taslima
That thumping endorsement, curiously, catalysed events in such a way that the faultlines began to show. The first point of discord was Singur: his popularity recently confirmed, Buddhadeb was emboldened to push a contentious acquisition of prime farmland for a Tata project. Things came to a head by December, and a motley array of opposition forces began coalescing—Trinamul, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (JUH), unattached dissenters like Medha Patkar and Mahasweta Devi. Even as Singur simmered, January saw the next explosion: Nandigram, an idyllic pocket of east Midnapur, a five-and-a-half hour drive from Calcutta. The issue was the same: land, that scarce resource, this time to be acquired from farmers for a chemical hub to be developed by an Indonesian firm. The opposition this time was concerted: the nascent coalition of Singur bloomed into a full-fledged phalanx, the Bhoomi Uchhed Protirodh Committee. Sundry forces—Maoist groups, Trinamul, JUH—physically took over the entire block, evicting CPI(M) supporters. The first big blot on Buddhadeb's tactics came as cadres attempted a re-entry in March on the back of a police action that left 24 killed.
Brute Force: CPI(M) victory procession after Nandigram recapture
The charge of using state machinery in partisan ways was to stick to him more tenaciously: in November, two months after the bad press had goaded him into shifting the project, armed CPI(M) men "recaptured" Nandigram.
The spiral of violence led to CRPF deployment, the governor talking upbraiding language (allegedly out of turn) , and the final shame: the spectre of Calcutta's citizenry, students and intellectuals taking to the streets.
For the CPI(M), with its invincible election machine, violence is part of a day's work—after all, it matured in the crucible of the bloodiest of decades, the 1970s, when Congress governments eliminated thousands of young Naxals. Hanan Mollah, eight-term Lok Sabha MP, told Outlook candidly, "Look, we never claimed to be Gandhians. When people attack us, we resist. Over 3,000 of our workers were living in refugee camps and were desperate to return to their homes and a normal life. When they met with armed resistance, what did you expect them to do? Toss rosogullas at their opponents?"
The elusive peace: An Indian army soldier on patrol outside the Missionaris of Charity HQ on A.J.C Bose Road in Calcutta
Violence may not bother the CPI(M) much But the gradual alienation of the Muslims does—they account for 27 per cent across the state. The LF polled a little over 50 per cent in '06, and a united opposition can theoretically, tilt the balance by snaffling a bit of the minority vote. The fact that 60 per cent of Nandigram's residents are Muslim enabled the JUH and Trinamul to interpret the issue in loaded terms. What helped build the case was the usual tale of deprivation. The Sachar Report of 2006 did not just conclusively prove the abysmally low socio-economic status of Muslims across India but, embarrassingly for the LF, put West Bengal's Muslims at the bottom of the pile. If all the statistics lacked symbolism, the gap was filled this autumn by the Rizwanur Rehman case, a story that captured the public imagination, and highlighted the dubious role of the state police.
That logic came to bizarre fruition last week as Calcutta erupted: Taslima Nasreen was the immediate excuse. Local Muslims clashed with the police amid rioting and arson in the heart of the city on November 21. The army was deployed in the city for the first time after the Babri episode. Poor intelligence saw the administration caught unawares; the CPI(M) had the disquieting experience of seeing angry Muslim youth direct their anger at the party, even ransacking a party office at Beniapukur.
Shame!: Says a Youth Congress banner, during their two day strike in Calcutta
Worse, the violence appears to have been pre-planned. In its run-up, the All India Minority Forum (a minor, Congress-backed body) and a much larger Muslim body called the Furfura Sharif Muzadeedia Anath Foundation had been organising roadblocks across Bengal to protest against the "recapture" of Nandigram. Till then, these protests had been free of violence. On November 21, however, things took an ugly turn after police clashed with those who had blocked Ripon Street to allow an ambulance carrying a critically ill woman to pass through.
"The way the violence spread after one mild baton charge shows that the news of this police action was conveyed promptly to waiting mobs of young men in Muslim-dominated areas, who then emerged to launch concerted and vicious attacks in at least seven places," says a senior police officer. The Minority Forum and the Anath Foundation were at the forefront of the rioting, but the JUH and its state unit secretary Siddiqullah Chowdhury were said to have masterminded it. A senior home department official told Outlook that no one else had the means to organise such an attack. "This is the JUH's handiwork," he says. "It has been looking for an opportunity to avenge Nandigram, and these protests came in handy. With the government on the backfoot, the JUH knew the police would be very restrained even in the face of extreme provocation," he said.
The turn of events was sufficient for the CPI(M) to realise that Muslim alienation could, in the long run, be dangerous for it. Samik Lahiri, CPI(M) MP from Diamond Harbour, whose constituency is across the river from Nandigram, admits as much. "Muslim and Hindu fundamentalists are working in concert," he says. "I've seen identical communal leaflets with just names being substituted. This is a JUH plot to separate us from our base among the Muslims." He says the CPI(M) is carrying out an "intensive" campaign in all districts to "counter the disinformation"—to be sure, the JUH has been going to town about how it has finally broken the CPI(M)'s hold on the Muslims.
Conversations with a cross-section of state CPI(M) MPs are revealing. They all admit there was a "communication gap" which led to a "misunderstanding" with the people of Nandigram and agree the party had not worked sufficiently to "educate" the people on the need to industrialise Bengal. But the attack on Fortress CPI(M), plus the criticism by allies in the LF, Left intellectuals, Governor Gopal Gandhi, the courts and the media has ensured a closing of ranks in the party.
Mamata, en route to Nandigram
So much so, party leaders are reluctant to lay the entire blame at Buddhadeb's door, though they feel Jyoti Basu would have handled the situation better. "Jyoti babu is the oldest man in our party with the youngest mind, and it is a modern mind," a party senior told Outlook. "He is an embodiment of democratic values. Don't forget, he came through the struggle—he was not just India's longest-serving CM, but probably also the longest-serving opposition leader in a state legislature." Of Buddhadeb, he merely says, "The results of the 2006 assembly elections turned his head and made him arrogant."
It's a view endorsed by civil servants who have observed both men closely. Basu is considered a far superior crisis manager. As an ias officer put it, "In some ways, he may be more ruthless, but he is also cool-headed." Comparing him with Buddhadeb, he goes on to say, "Basu is like a reservoir accepting all the information and advice given and then taking the tough decisions. Buddhadeb, on the other hand, has very poor judgement and has surrounded himself with poor advisors and sycophants. He is a bad political manager and doesn't even have the late Anil Biswas—who did the political management—to help him."
Birbhum MP Ramachandra Dome, however, says it is unfair to compare Basu and Buddhadeb. "After the 2006 elections," he says, "our government's priorities and thrust areas changed. The purchasing capacity of rural Bengal, thanks to our reforms in that sector, has grown to Rs 21,000 crore, but with agriculture nationally in distress and employment in decline in these parts, we needed to create alternate job avenues in industry. This is a transition phase and Buddhadeb babu is the CM now. It is naturally a difficult phase. We all have to collectively work to change the mindset of the people. It is wrong to pin the blame on Buddhadeb—ours is a collective leadership."
Brave words, but can they counter those of Alexander Pope, whom a civil servant quotes: "Of all the causes that conspire to blind/Man's erring judgement and misguide the mind/What the weak head with strongest bias rules/Is Pride the never failing vice of fools." Will that be Buddhadeb's political epitaph?
