Good bye, Lenin!

A scepter is haunting Bengal - the scepter of Anti-Communism.

From Karl Marx Sarani (street) to Lenin Sarani, from Ho Chi Min Sarani to Gorky Sadan, the entire city of Calcutta now stands united in turning its back on the Communists who have ruled this land for 32 years. Their arrogance and hubris have led them to their defeat in the 15th Lok Sabha elections.

The pictures attached here remind me of those scenes that I have so often witnessed in the past. I wonder if these regular scenes from Kolkata streets will soon become only distant memories.

The Left Front has taken the support of Bengalis for granted for far too long. Calcuttans did not welcome Prakash Karat's narcissistic traits, his decision to pull out of UPA Government, his staunch opposition to the nuclear deal with US.

Left lost in all core Calcutta constituencies as well as the adjoining districts even as they tried to appeal to the urban voters by painting Mamata Banerjee as "anti-industrialization". However, the voters were more concerned with ensuring a 'stable, secular' Government at the center. They did not buy into Prakash Karat's wild daydreams about a Third front. Moreover, they did not take the unfair expulsion of a respected party veteran like Somnath Chatterjee very kindly.

There was clear anger against the Left party's stand at the center. For a state like Bengal that desperately seeks foreign investment found the Party's diatribe against capitalism quite hypocritical. They blame the CPM for ruining the industrial infrastructure of Bengal during their three decades of misrule as much more damaging than Mamata Banerjee's recent opposition to Tata Nano factory at Singur. As the scenes of violence in Nandigram and Singur flashed across the television screens, the socialism loving Bengalis could hardly believe what they saw and they never condoned the CPM for its brutal acts. These incidents of land-acquisition for industrialization also made the Left quite unpopular among the farmers and rural voters who have traditionally supported the Left. The farmer's fear of losing his land to the Government was turned into a frenzy by Trinamool and Congress, and thus they finally managed to snatch the rural voters away from the Left.

The Left also lost the support of another traditional vote-bank in their state- the Muslim voters. The corruption in Bengal police and mishandling of Rizwanur Rahman murder case, followed by the Sachar Report that mentioned that the Left had not done anything for the Muslims angered this vote-bank in Bengal. The Left leaning Bengali intelligentsia distanced themselves from CPM, and some even turned against them in fury. The combined effect was a resounding defeat for the CPM in Calcutta.

Moreover, Congress' Manmohan Singh was the perfect prime ministerial candidate - educated, honest and sophisticated, isn't that what the Bengalis had always sought for even in their homegrown apparatchiks? How could they turn down the appeal from this level-headed reformist to allow him attain a stable Government? Quite contrary to public opinion among non-Bengali Indians, CPM is not ruling the state merely by force, for three decades the Bengalis had voted them to power with full political awareness, and when the time came to teach the Communists a tough lesson, they didn't dither either.

Although the Bengalis have sent out an echoing threat to the Left parties in this election, they will still observe the leadership's response before deciding on their fate at the state level in 2011 Assembly elections.

The following paragraph from a newsource (dnaindia.com) summarizes some points aptly:

"In Orissa, the CPM rushed to join forces with the Biju Janata Dal the moment it snapped ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party. In Tamil Nadu it made common cause with Jayalalitha abandoning its 2004 partner the DMK without a clearly identifiable reason. In befriending Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh having attacked her over the years, the CPM converted itself into a party without either the squeamishness that bestowed some sort of distinction on it in the past or the scruples that underpinned its claims to be principled in politics. An electorate that is famously politically conscious viewed it all and has now delivered the thumbs down. But it is a clever verdict, because the change that Mamata Banerjee demands can only happen when the next state assembly elections are due in 2011."

But if the trend continues till 2011, it is almost certain that Bengal will soon cease to be the Leftist bastion and Calcutta will be able to rename its Lenin Sarani and Karl Marx Sarani to something that doesn't remind us of Moscow. It will then be the time to say "Good bye, Lenin!"