Calcutta Corner

After The Electoral Cyclone
"Severe cyclone expected to hit Kolkata this afternoon. Please remainalert and indoors. Contact KP for any help." This short text messagefrom Kolkata Police arrived in my inbox late in the evening on MondayMay 25, hours after Cyclone Aila tore through Calcutta and WestBengal, wreaking havoc -- uprooting trees, snapping overhead electricalwires, damaging houses and shops, taking lives (23 at last count). 

I’mnot sure who is responsible for the tardiness. But whether it was mymobile service provider or the KP, which true to its reputation seemedin this case also to have arrived at the scene just a little after itwas all over, there was still something endearing, if I may, aboutthe KP’s attempt to appear efficient and, at the same time, concerned. 

Then again, maybe, it was the communist government’s last ditch effortto try and win back the confidence of the people of Bengal? 

Or was itan attempt to be one up on Mamata Banerjee, who had earlier pre-empted disaster management bycancelling her trip to Delhi and calling up thePrime Minister, the defence minister and the finance minister (four timesby her own account) to apprise them of the devastation and ask forcentral assistance?

Who knows?

All I know is that Cyclone Aila arrived at my door way back -- late in the morning in fact-- knocking incessantly. It moved to thewindows, rattling the hinges, shaking the glass panes, through which Icould see trees twisting, turning and bending low in the wind, blowingat some 95 kilometres an hour. It swept across the surface of thelake below, whipping up ripples as large as ocean waves, as the rainlashed out against it.

The grey horizon grew darker with every passing minute as Aila danced its tandavover the city and the rest of the state.As evening descended the meteorological office announced, andtelevision and online news channels corroborated, reports that Aila hadchanged its course and the worst was over for Calcutta. 

But as late asmidnight on May 25, you could still hear the wind swishing past yourhouse, the rain lashing against your door and the storm still rippingthrough the city. Many parts of the city were submerged in darknesswith intermittent power cuts. No TV. No Internet. Poor mobile phonereception.

If you were among the lucky, you lit a candle, cozying up with asteaming cup of coffee in a corner with a collection of short stories.But many were not. 

In the rural areas, poor villagers’ houses were blown away by the storm. 

In the city, daily office goers foundthemselves stranded in the streets when they couldn’t find conveyanceto go back home because buses, taxis and autos stayed off the road. 

Car drivers, trying to rush back home through waterlogged streets,found their paths obstructed by fallen trees. 

Others found their carssmashed in because trees fell on them. 

Flights couldn’t take off orland. Passenger and tourists were stranded. 

The list goes on. 

And athalf past midnight, Cyclone Aila seemed finally to be moving on. 

Asilent, midnight prayer for those who lost their lives. In the candlelight.

Left Out 
But a totally different cyclone seemed to have swept through the electoralfortunes of the state. In the days leading up to the final phase of the parliamentary elections in West Bengal, which were held on May 13, it was hard tofind a single taxi or auto driver in the streets of Calcutta who, if randomly asked about politics, didn’t express support for MamataBanerjee. In the villages, there was a lot of resentment over Nandigramand Singur and farmers talked about feeling betrayed by the governmentthey had voted to power year after year.

"The poor stick together no matter where they are," said a domesticservant in Calcutta, "and this ‘sarkar’ will pay for snatching poorpeople’s lands by force." Inthe districts and suburbs, in cafes and nightclubs, the buzzword was"change". But, evidently, the Left government was not listening. Justdays before the polling, a smug leadership sniggered at suggestionsthat the Left would lose, anywhere from 10 to 12 seats, as a number ofexit polls conducted by various agencies predicted. They lost nearlytwice that number. Of the 42 parliamentary seats from West Bengal, theLeft partners had held 35. This tally was slashed to 15 when theresults were finally declared on May 16.

And most of the seats that the Left lost were lost to TrinamoolCongress. In 2004, the TMC had only one member in Parliament: MamataBanerjee. They now have 19, not counting its seat-sharing alliesCongress (which has won 7) and and SUCI (which has won one). Aspromised, TMC stormed one communist bastion after another, sweepingthe polls in West Bengal.

Mamata was pleased, not ecstatic. She believes that the well-oiledrigging machinery was fully operational in many areas and it preventedTMC from gaining even more parliamentary seats. Apparently, gainingpower hasn’t quite tamed Didi’s fight-the-power instincts.

The buzz in Bengal right now is that the windsof change blowing across the state is not just a mild breeze,but a raging storm. And tobe sure, Banerjee Didi is bent on making full use of that storm’smomentum. For the Left, things look more ominous than just losing achunk of their parliamentary seats to TMC. It’s more about losingcontrol of the stateitself after 32 long years. It can’t even take comfort in theknowledge that there might be time to recover lost ground between nowand the 2011 Assembly elections because Mamata is pushing for earlyelections. Although she has gone to Delhi and accepted the Railwaysposition, she has made it clear that her priority is the state of WestBengal. (Read: the Chief Minister’s job)

Nandigram, Singur 
Political analysts in the state have come up with variousexplanations for the Left’s defeat. Topping the list were Nandigramand Singur. There was strong disapproval among voters for thegovernment’s attempt to acquire fertile farmland for industrial use byforce, especially when plenty of barren, unused land was available inother parts of the state. Allowing police to open fire on protestorswho were just trying to protect their land and their livelihood didn‘t endear the government to votersfor which it is now paying dearly.

It was symbolically significant that the first winner to be announcedwas from Tamluk (of which Nandigram is a part). TMC’s Suvendu Adhikariousted Laksman Seth, the incumbent CPIM MP. Nandigram and Singur comes up again and again, not just in result daydiscussions and debates, but as part of an ongoing struggle to makesense of what exactly happened. And Left political leaders are stillbeing questioned about it.

A Party Divided 
Another rationalisation for why the CPIM failed is said to be lack of party cohesion.It is said that there is too much internal squabbling within theparty. And much of it occurs out in public instead of being containedwithin party ranks,exposing the many chinks in the 32-year-old armour of the CPIM and LeftFront. More than a few unfortunate comments -- blurted out ordeliberately delivered -- by different Left leaders exposed deepdivisions in the Front over many issues ranging from labour strikes in the state to thenational government’s nuclear deal with the United States. 

Not long ago the Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had said in apress conference that he personally didn’t support strikes but -- "unfortunately"-- he belonged to a party that did. The party’s centralleadership, namely general secretary, PrakashKarat, got a lot of flak for his role in bringing down the previousgovernment over the nuclear deals issue.

There is also wide disapproval in Bengal (cutting across ideological lines)of the way veteran CPIM leader Somnath Chatterjee was ousted from theparty. This was attributed to the "arrogance" of the party’s centralleadership as well as to the Bengal CPIM’s impotence and/orunquestioning compliance with that leadership.

Chatterjee, who was expelled from the party in 2008 for not resigningfrom the parliamentary Speaker’s post after the CPIM withdrew supportto the UPA government, took a shot at Karat after the CPIM’s crushingdefeat in West Bengal, its traditional stronghold. "If he has anyconscience," Chatterjee said, "Prakash Karat would resign."

The CPIM’s Left partners in West Bengal -- CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc -- always sin the shadows of big brother CPIM also criticized the partyfor its complacence.

Mamata Banerjee had an interesting observation to make about why CPIMstalwart and former chief minister Jyoti Basu did not vote thiselection. While the ailing, octogenarian himself cited ill health asthe reason he failed to exercise the franchise for the first time inhis adult life, Banerjee speculated that the real reason was that hewas unhappy with his party. Though Basu refused to comment onBanerjee’s remarks and said that he would have liked to see the CPIMwin, some say that there may be a grain of truth in Banerjee’scontention.

Um, Anti-incumbency? 
As far as the CPIM is concerned, their initial response to thehumiliating defeat was to pitch the least embarrassing explanation:the supposed Anti-incumbency and pro-Congress waves sweeping thecountry. The tacit message is that TMC’s victory resulted from havingteamed up with the Congress, rather than from wide support for itspositions on the issues, or its successful mobilization of activists,such as in Singur and Nandigram.

This "explanation" is generally met with sneers, and not only from TMCsupporters. The overwhelming number of seats won by TMC alone suggestthe CPIM is dealing with a formidable adversary and not just a minorparty that got a fluke electoral win by riding the Congress’scoattails.

According to sources in the party, part of the CPIM strategy right nowis to "introspect" and try and come out of the crisis.