Buddhadeb's bourgeoisie infatuation

By Udayan Namboodiri

Organiser Home > 2005 Issues > November 20, 2005

Buddhadeb has had one significant success. He has outclassed all politicians of the country in the game of deception. He is the darling of the industrial lobby, which in Bengal comprises mostly of land sharks and crony capitalists. All kinds of fly-by-night operators who masquerade as “industrialists” issue admiring statements to encourage him into giving them lucrative monopolies. The same bourgeoisie media that Buddhadeb battled in his DYFI days, is now his greatest friend. There was a time when Marxists made a hate object out of the Kolkata-based Press. Today, it is to this institution that Buddhadeb looks for small mercies like articles and editorials in support of his bogus industrialisation plans.

Yet, to millions of people who live by the state’s single-biggest employer, agriculture, Buddhadeb is an object of hate today. He has sold out their interests by encouraging anybody who promises to bring “investment” to grab their lands. That’s after he’d ruined their prospects of a better life by promoting a party-backed class of agricultural middlemen who kept them mired in poverty and debt for three decades. The workers, whether in the huge industrial wasteland that is Communist Bengal or in the hundreds of sweatshops thriving on the unholy nexus between the CPI(M) and rogue businessmen, have been thoroughly betrayed. Their “progressive” Chief Minister is now striking militant postures against their interest by wooing international operators to come to West Bengal and strip them of the last vestiges of their dignity.

On November 6, Buddhadeb completed five years in office. Many of his admirers liken Buddhadeb’s predicament to that of Mikhail Gorbachev who was hated by his own comrades but feted outside the Soviet Union for carrying out glasnost and perestroika. The Bengali Communist survives in power by playing comrade against comrade. The CPI(M) today is a snake pit of petty conspiracy which results in open display of factionalism. He is mortally afraid of losing elections which explains the brazen rigging resorted to by the CPI(M) to keep itself in power since 2000.

Obviously, multinational companies have seen through this gimmick. But, while most shun Buddhadeb’s overtures, a select group of dubious companies rush to exploit the situation. The latest on the scene is the Indonesian conglomerate, Salim Group. This is a notorious house which attracted international infamy during the Suharto era and figured prominently in Time magazine’s cover story, “Crony Capitalism” in February 1997. In fact, Buddhadeb has also conveniently forgotten that the same company had bankrolled Suharto’s bloody persecution of Indonesian communists through the 1970s. The extent to which Buddhadeb could go to grovel before this discredited group was best illustrated when he openly declared, in an interview with Jakarta Post in August 2005 that he had “discarded communist dogma”. (The author is Senior Editor, The Pioneer.)