ABSTRACT
The continuity of the Left Front government in power in West Bengal for the last thirty years is a record not only in India but also in the context of electoral politics anywhere in the world. The reasons are not difficult to seek. Besides augmenting steady agricultural growth with effective land reforms, the left coalition maintained its strong presence in the state through a carefully managed organizational spread of disciplined left parties and their increasing mass base across the state. West Bengal is thus a unique example of democratic governance where political stability has not been the result of low levels of political mobilization,1 but an outcome of sustained organizational efforts involving stakeholders in both urban and rural areas. Parallel to the prevalent bureaucratic structure of the government, these organizations became facilitators for almost all public provisions, from admission to hospitals to selection of beneficiaries in targeted government schemes. People, too, approached these organizations to settle private, even familial, disputes. It is therefore impossible to understand the durability of the government without appreciating the spread of the Left organizations in the arteries of West Bengal’s social sphere. While it gave society a sense of coherence, it also made the Left – in its anxiety to be acceptable – socially conservative.2 Nonetheless, the Left Front had won all the state assembly elections in a row from 1977 to 2006, which itself is an exception in India’s contemporary political landscape. The juggernaut of the Left Front seems to be unstoppable and the 2006 poll outcome is a continuation of the trend that began in 1977 when it captured power in the state for the first time. Besides almost completely eliminating the opposition in the state, the Left Front constituents, especially its leading partner, CPI(M), have made significant inroads in Calcutta and other peripheral towns across various age groups. This election is a watershed in West Bengal politics with far-reaching political consequences not only for the Left Front leadership but also for the state, which seems to have eschewed the orthodox Marxist state-directed development paradigm. In theoretical terms, the Left Front is closer to the West European social-democratic path as some major policy decisions regarding industrial revival in the state by the newly elected government clearly indicate. This has not, by any chance, happened overnight. The aim of this chapter is to dwell on the changing nature of the Left Front leadership and its ideology, which is not exactly classical Marxism but its reinvented form.
