Don'stifle Buddhadeb

It’s no longer fashionable to spout proverbs, but there’s a lot to be said in their favour. “Practice what you preach” is one that comes to mind in the context of recent political developments. Why is it that every political party in the country swears by democracy but chooses to stifle it at inner-party forums? The CPI(M) politburo recently censured West Bengal Chief Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee for speaking out openly against the culture of bandhs and strikes that has paralysed economic life in that state. Worse, the highest body of the party spoke up for the right of its cadre to disrupt life, damage public and private property and cause heavy financial losses to society at large.

This is nothing short of a tragedy. Bhattacharjee’s rationale is beyond dispute, so we will not even enter into a debate on the issue. Business Today is questioning the procedure followed by his party to muzzle him.

Let us look at the facts: on the one hand, we have a popularly elected Chief Minister, respected far beyond the borders of his state for his integrity and dynamism, who is trying to break the fetters that hold back progress. Ranged against him is a cabal of ideologicallyblinkered apparatchiks—a majority of whom have never faced the electorate—who, overriding the popular sentiment that Bhattacharjee was espousing, underlined the primacy of a failed and tired ideology.

The correct course of action for the party would have been to refer the matter to its legislative wing in the West Bengal Assembly, for it is its MLAs who are ultimately answerable to the people. But that is obviously not palatable to the members of its politburo who are used to ruling by diktat.

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And this top-down approach is probably one of the reasons why the CPI(M), and, by extension, the Left Front, is losing ground in rural Bengal, for long its impregnable bastion. There can be no other explanation for the way it misread the popular mood in and around Singur and, earlier, in Nandigram.

The impasse at the former location and the bloodbath at the latter must be particularly galling for a party that prides itself on the fact that its reach extends to almost all individual households in non-urban Bengal.

At a time when the state is careening at the inflexion point between death and rejuvenation, the CPI(M) will do well to pay heed to the voice of its people’s representatives and their leader. And therein lies a lesson for all political parties in India.