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Vol:23 Iss:10 URL: http://www.flonnet.com/fl2310/stories/20060602002702300.htm

COVER STORY

Left in government

PRABHAT PATNAIK

The Left is now placed in a happy transitional period when it can get the support of
rural toilers and urban middle classes.

MINATI CHOWDHURY

June 21, 1977: Jyoti Basu takes oath as Chief Minister.

THE victory of the Left Front in West Bengal for a record seventh time should come as no
surprise. It is based on solid and historic achievements. Before the Left Front came to power in
1977, West Bengal presented the picture of a State in prolonged decline. Once the centre of
British power east of Suez, it had witnessed, over the half century before Independence, an
absolute decline in agricultural production per capita, and an even steeper absolute decline in
foodgrain production per capita. The demands of war finance superimposed on this had
produced one of the worst famines in recorded history by 1943-44. Partition had only added to
the burdens of a State whose peasantry's plight at Independence inspired the haunting short
stories of Manik Bandyopadhyay.

Though the post-Independence years had witnessed some improvement to the situation, it was
far from adequate. The deep-rooted and long-standing agrarian crisis continued. The State's
traditional industries, tea and jute, originally owned by British managing agencies and
subsequently taken over by mainly Marwari businessmen, faced inelastic world demand and
bleak prospects overall. The engineering industry, which had come up mainly during the war
years, received a jolt from the mid-1960s recession, from which it never really recovered. The
freight equalisation scheme had hurt the State badly. The social crisis created by pervasive

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unemployment among the youth, refracted inter alia through the naxalite movement, was
captured chillingly in artistic creations of the time, such as, for instance, Mrinal Sen's film
Chorus. While a social revolution remained a distant dream, the way forward short of it was
not clear. It appeared to be a society incapable as yet of making a leap, but lost without such a
leap. And this turbulent stasis came increasingly to be sustained through the use of semi-fascist
terror by the state machinery.

The remarkable turnaround in this situation which the Left Front achieved within a few years
of assuming office in 1977 would appear unbelievable to anyone who had witnessed the earlier
situation. Indeed the dynamics of that turnaround are still not very clear and require a
substantial theoretical endeavour. There is only one thing, however, that can be said about it
with certainty, namely, that at the core of it was the overcoming of the agrarian crisis.

Lord Cornwallis' Permanent Settlement had left two important legacies in Bengal's economy.
First, since the revenue accruing to the colonial government was fixed, the rate of return to the
government from any investment in irrigation was nil, or at any rate way below the minimum
rate of return which the colonial government insisted on earning on all its investments. Hence
Bengal saw very little irrigation investment in the colonial period. There was an additional
reason for this: following the report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture (1926) a view
had gained currency that the problem of Bengal agriculture arose from too much, rather than
too little, water. This neglect of irrigation from the colonial period, though slightly reversed
after Independence, continued to haunt West Bengal's agriculture.

Secondly, as is well known, the Permanent Settlement had spawned a large parasitic class of
rent receivers living off a pauperised peasantry. At the very top were the zamindars; but
between them and the cultivators were several layers of parasites, up to 27 in some places,
which obviously discouraged any productive investment on land. Post-Independence land
reforms had removed the top layer of zamindars but already by the time of Independence, as
the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha had pointed out in its memorandum to the Floud
Commission, a new and powerful class of intermediaries, the jotedars, had emerged, so that
zamindari abolition, far from freeing the peasantry from the stranglehold of these parasites,
had the paradoxical effect of strengthening the latter. The disincentives to productive
investment on land therefore continued, as did the abysmal state of the cultivators.

Agrarian change

The Left Front confronted both these constraints head on. Land reform measures, initiated by
the short-lived United Front governments earlier, were carried forward, through the recording
of sharecroppers under Operation Barga, through the conferring on them of rights to land, and
through the distribution of ceiling-surplus land. This was followed by the setting up of an
alternative institutional mechanism in the countryside, the panchayats, which not only entailed
decentralisation of power and decision-making, but also provided an alternative to the
traditional power-structure dominated by the jotedars. The balance of class forces was altered
in the countryside in favour of the oppressed peasantry and against the jotedars, which, apart
from strengthening democracy, also encouraged productive investment by the peasantry, and
hence the development of the productive forces. At the same time there was a substantial step-
up in public expenditure on rural development in general and on irrigation in particular. A sea
change occurred in the cropping intensity and in the cropping pattern. Areas which for
centuries had witnessed single cropping now started growing three crops. Local level plans
began to be drawn up with the help of the democratically-elected representatives of the people
serving on the panchayats.

Agricultural growth in West Bengal began to pick up. To some extent, even before the Left
Front came to power, the potentials of, and the scope for, multiple cropping had become

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evident in small pockets in districts like Bardhaman and Birbhum, where potato and boro rice
had been cultivated as a third crop, in addition to the aman and the aus. But what had remained
confined to small pockets now became the common practice over large tracts of the State, so
much so that in the decade of the 1980s West Bengal witnessed the highest rate of growth in
agricultural production among all the States in the country. In the 1990s, the growth rate came
down everywhere, a result inter alia of the neoliberal policies adopted by the Centre which
squeezed the peasantry even as they forced a curtailment of public investment in rural
development. Even so, among the States, West Bengal continues to be a high performer.

Rapid agricultural growth, together with increased government expenditure in the countryside,
enlarged the rural market in the State, both for foodgrains and for a variety of simple industrial
goods. It is interesting that among all the States in India, West Bengal and Kerala were the
only two that witnessed a steady increase in the per capita cereal consumption by the rural
population in the 1980s and the 1990s (It is not yet clear if, in the first five years of this
century, as the effects of the neoliberal policies of the Central government have begun to make
themselves felt, and the public distribution system has begun to be whittled down, these two
States have succeeded in sustaining their remarkable record).

The increased demand for simple industrial goods in the countryside brought about a
remarkable "industrialisation from below" in West Bengal, with substantial employment
effects, whose reach and significance have been inadequately appreciated till now. And with
rising incomes, the State government's revenues also rose, making possible enhanced social
sector expenditures, and a general improvement in the quality of life of the people, at least
until the Centre's neoliberal policies started hurting the State.

The peasantry and agricultural labourers have long memories, and they constitute the solid
rural base of the Left which has remained consistently loyal. In addition, an urban middle class
support base for the Left has developed of late. There is a certain tension between these two
support bases which the Left will have to face in the coming years, but the results of the
present elections are so overwhelmingly favourable to the Left because it is placed in that
happy transitional period when it can get the support of both these segments.

Emerging contradictions

This is precisely the time to anticipate some of the emerging contradictions. The urban middle
class in West Bengal, like elsewhere in the country, has come off rather better than other strata
from the neoliberal era, and would assertively demand the fulfillment of its aspirations.

Such fulfilment, however, is likely to impinge adversely on the peasantry, the petty
bourgeoisie, and the rural poor. Its demand for shopping malls could ruin petty traders. Its
demand for infrastructure like roads and bypasses, necessary in view of the growing number of
cars, could entail encroachment on agricultural land. And its demand for housing complexes
and amusement parks could lead to dispossession of the peasantry. In densely populated West
Bengal, "land-for-land" compensation would be difficult to organise, and "cash-for-land" is a
poor substitute, apart from its adverse effect on agricultural production and employment.

But, in addition to these obvious conflicts, some of which are already visible, there is a more
potent contradiction which acquires sharpness precisely because of the neoliberal dispensation.

As the tax-gross domestic product ratio of the Centre declined over the 1990s (the States did
much better in this regard), the Centre not only cut back its own expenditure, especially rural
development expenditure, but passed on the burden of its fiscal crisis to the shoulders of the
State governments, through reduced transfers to the States and exorbitant interest rates (even
exceeding the rate of growth of Net State Domestic Products) on its loans to the States. The

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States thus became the victims of this fiscal squeeze, and West Bengal was no exception. The
Centre used this fiscal squeeze in turn to force the States to fall in line behind its pursuit of a
neoliberal agenda.

While the West Bengal government resisted this coercion and was much more judicious in its
policies in this new environment, it still bears the scar of that fiscal squeeze. In this context, if
it is to maintain some decent level of social expenditure, it will have two obvious courses to
choose from: one is to turn to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the DFID, or such like
agencies, which in the long run (though perhaps not immediately) would entail compromising
its basic principled positions; the other is to use the available fiscal space for raising more
revenue which would have to come from the urban middle classes. The overall neoliberal
dispensation in the country thus forces a sharpening of the contradiction between the urban
middle classes and the basic classes of the Left (peasants and workers).

Challenges in Kerala

The Left in Kerala is also likely to face this same contradiction, if it is to eschew the
temptation of following the short-term "soft" option, which the United Democratic Front had
followed, of an ADB bailout. To be sure, the context in Kerala is different from West Bengal,
as are the factors underlying the Left victory. Kerala has for long experienced slow growth in
its material commodity producing sectors, but this has been counterbalanced by the massive
inflows of remittances from the Gulf which have not only boosted incomes but provided
whatever stimulus for growth there has been.

E.M.S. Namboodiripad had been much concerned about this: even as the world was
celebrating the "Kerala model", he had been exercised over the State's low growth, as was
evident at the first International Conference of Kerala Studies. It was in an effort to break this
deadlock, to lift the constraint on the development of productive forces in Kerala, that he had
launched the Peoples' Plan Campaign, which led to an unprecedented devolution of Plan funds
to local bodies.

In fact, the growth rate of the Kerala economy did look up during the previous Left
Democratic Front (LDF) government's tenure. In the late 1990s it was estimated to be the
highest among the southern States. But the collapse of world agricultural prices, which started
from 1996, hit Kerala hard, especially in a context where the Central government had
withdrawn protection of the peasantry and gave up monopoly purchase of crops to allow
private foreign companies.

Even though there has been an upturn in primary commodity prices of late, though not to the
level prevailing earlier, Kerala's export crops continue to suffer. The collapse of incomes
because of this, and because of its impact on the government's fisc, contrasts with certain
islands of affluence sustained by the Gulf connection, and the sleaze that goes with such
affluence. The Left's victory in Kerala can be attributed to the anger at this contrast and this
sleaze. It is inter alia a response to the agrarian crisis.

It follows that the new LDF government, while providing succour to the peasantry, protecting
traditional industries and sustaining the public distribution system, will have to mobilise
resources for keeping up social sector expenditure and undertaking investment for enlarging
the productive base, all of which may mean treading on the toes of the urban middle class.
Euphoria over the Left's victory must not obscure the fact that whether in West Bengal or in
Kerala, it has some very stiff tasks ahead of it, in the context of the current neoliberal
dispensation, which it still does not have the political strength to roll back.

A possible way out

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There is, however, one way in which the Left can keep faith with its basic classes without
alienating the urban middle class that after all is a potential ally in the struggle against
neoliberalism (when it gets hurt as it inevitably does, by such policies). In any system,
especially in a neoliberal one, there is always a certain "slack", in the form of unutilised
industrial capacity, unsold foodgrain stocks, unadopted innovations, and possible
organisational changes with significant impact on potential output. This "slack" can be used to
keep under control the contradictions that may emerge between the urban middle class and the
basic classes of the Left. In other words, the problem mentioned above, where the Left is faced
with a choice between ADB-World Bank style "reforms" (together with funding from these
institutions) on the one hand, and having to squeeze the urban middle class on the other, may
itself be kept in abeyance, without compromising the agenda of the Left, if the "slack" in the
economy is used up (and ideological influence is used to keep the demands of the urban
middle class in check).

Of course, the "slack" may not be existent to an adequate extent in the Left-ruled States
themselves, but as long as it exists elsewhere the States can still benefit from it. For instance,
the Employment Guarantee Scheme, for which the resources would come largely from the
Centre, if implemented vigorously and scrupulously in the Left-ruled States, would provide
succour to the rural poor, enlarge the rural market for simple goods and services, and hence
carry forward the Left agenda.

In fact the Left presence in Parliament can be used to pressurise the Central government to
enact legislation for relief to the poor. And the scrupulous implementation of such legislation
in the Left-ruled States would enable the Left to keep faith with the people without
exacerbating the contradictions between the different segments of its actual or potential
support base. The Left, though faced with stiff tasks, can overcome them through imaginative
handling of the contradictions, by searching out the "slack" in our economy, which can play
the same role that oil prices have played in sustaining the Venezuelan revolution, and, through
it, the other Latin American Left experiments.

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