A TALE OF TWO CMS - Bengalis have become adept in making the wrong choice

Swapan Dasgupta (The Telegraph)

The analogy may be somewhat over-stretched but, from a distance, the Tata decision to pull out from Singur seems akin to a later-day replay of the shifting of the capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi some 97 years ago. The King-Emperor’s Durbar announcement which, incidentally, also drew flak in the Bengal Club and the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, was perceived and rationalized by Bengalis as spiteful imperial retribution for free-spiritedness. Yet, far from having a sobering effect, the relegation to the provinces merely galvanized further rebelliousness and a lot of silly bravado that led to Bengal’s progressive marginalization from the nationalist mainstream. An unintended consequence of this drift into political irrelevance and the trauma of Partition was the erosion and eventual disappearance of what may be called the Bengal Renaissance tradition.
Likewise, the large-scale labour unrest, closure of factories and flight of capital, which followed the post-1967 Left triumphalism, didn’t prompt the much-needed self-atonement in Bengalis. It merely gave a fillip to feelings of anger, self-pity and self-destruction — a perverse combination that ensured that the path of West Bengal’s downward journey was relatively uncluttered. Satyajit Ray captured the Bengali penchant for romantic rebelliousness quite vividly in his 1970 film, Pratidwandi. It told the story of a bright college drop-out who ruined his job prospects by being wilfully contrarian — insisting that the war in Vietnam was more momentous than the landing on the moon — and disrupting a job interview in protest against the inadequate facilities for the long line of short-listed candidates.
What prompted the Tatas to cut their losses and leave Singur was not merely the cussedness of one Mamata Banerjee. If the Trinamul Congress leader was the only problem, she, her Naxalite friends and other unknown patrons could have been isolated and even neutralized by police action. That the organized might of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the West Bengal government failed to protect the symbolic showpiece of the state’s recovery points to the magnitude of the problem. In the various post-mortems of the Nano fiasco, the CPI(M) has rightly been blamed for perverting the state with a culture of mindless protests and bandhs and its militant espousal of entitlements (what is quaintly called “democratic rights”) over civic obligations and responsibilities. Taking a more long-term view, however, the CPI(M) and the Left parties can at best be blamed for grafting their political culture on a pre-existing culture of nihilism. The CPI(M) certainly aggravated the problem, made it unmanageable and is on the verge of being devoured by the monster it created, but it wasn’t responsible for the original sin. The inspiration for the corruption of Bengal came from many of those whose statues replaced the imposing bronzes of colonial stalwarts in Calcutta’s Maidan. It was also bolstered and intellectually nourished by those who chose to equate the CPI(M)’s high-handedness in Nandigram last year with the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
At a time when the sleepy backwaters of yesteryear in Karnataka, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and even Uttaranchal and Orissa are contributing more and more to India’s growth engine, West Bengal’s dogged determination to be the standard-bearer of the rust belt is perplexing. Offered a choice between stagnation (leading invariably to decline) and self-improvement, the Bengalis remain in a state of utter confusion. Their pocket and a concern for the future generation demand the latter but their heart remains anchored in a pre-modern arcadia.
A momentous event like the Nano debacle must inevitably lead to convulsions in Bengali society. The Tata walk-out, after all, is more than one industrial project getting unstuck. It symbolizes modern India’s larger expression of no-confidence in West Bengal’s ability to pull its weight. Something, it is clear, has got to give way.
For over 100 years, Bengalis have become adept in making the wrong choice. The fear that the understandable mood of depression this Durga Puja may translate into something quite wild and unpalatable remains a nagging fear. Yet, there may be small signs of creeping realism. Last Sunday’s open letter in Anandabazar Patrika by the Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, to his counterpart in Writers’ Buildings and to Mamata was departure from conventional political niceties. In penning his innermost thoughts on why Gujarat succeeded where West Bengal faltered, Modi risked being accused of gratuitous triumphalism and gloating over the discomfiture of fellow Indians. That may well be the feelings of a fringe that persists in seeing Modi as nothing more than a communal monster with Muslim blood on his hands — the rhetoric of the inflammatory videos that ensured a complete “minority” consolidation against the National Democratic Alliance in 2004, not least in West Bengal.
It is a sign of utmost reassurance that middle-class Bengalis didn’t react to Modi in the same way as they did to another Gujarati stalwart after the Congress presidency was snatched out of the hands of an ailing Subhas Chandra Bose in 1939. There was a lot that Modi said that struck at the nerve-centre of the Bengali belief system — his disavowal of the anti-business mentality, his repudiation of street protests, his faith in bipartisan consensus and his unapologetic espousal of rightwing economics. His celebration of Gujarat’s civic culture was by implication a repudiation of West Bengal’s dysfunctional democracy. Modi’s central message was courteously blunt and unapologetic — West Bengal lost Nano because of its own shortcomings; and Gujarat could step into the void because it offered a more wholesome civic culture and model of governance.
It is reassuring that Modi’s diagnosis has been greeted with a measure of reflection by Bengalis on all sides of the political divide. Modi has tacitly endorsed the sincere move by the West Bengal government to persuade Bengalis to overcome their flawed inheritance. In his own way, the Gujarat stalwart has attempted the same within his own parivar with an astonishing measure of success. With a great deal of steadfastness, Modi has challenged the prevailing consensus that socialist populism centred on big government intervention is imperative for electoral success. In positing the alternative of minimum, but targeted and efficient government, Modi has put into practice the role of the State as a dynamic facilitator. In the Gujarat model, the State has assumed second place to society. Creativity and dynamism are vested in the people; it is the job of the State to merely create a wholesome environment for its full expression. In Gujarat, state subsidies have come down dramatically, the public sector is managerially-driven and profitable and there is remarkable transparency in the transfers and postings of school-teachers. Modi hasn’t changed the system; he has worked to motivate and energize the same system that was considered a drag on development.
There are many who attribute Gujarat’s resurgence to the personality of Modi. His frenzied pace of work, his attention to detail, his impatience with power-brokers, his fanatical sense of personal integrity and his intellectual openness have built him a large fan club throughout. Barring the unforeseen, he is on course to be a future prime minister of India. Those who denounced Buddhadeb last year as “another Modi” must be ruing the bitter irony. If only the chief minister was another Modi, West Bengal would have redeemed itself. Yet, leadership is just one critical input. Modi’s success in Gujarat owes everything to Gujarati society’s desire to move ahead relentlessly. It is this motivation that has to become the new consensus in Bengal.