The Guardian 26 April, 2006
India: West Bengal elections
Implications beyond state frontiers
Nilotpal Basu
The elections to West Bengal state assembly are receiving an unprecedented level of attention, not only inside the country, but also internationally. That a Communist Party-led government can successfully seek re-election six times in a multi-party election in a bourgeois landlord State is a unique enough event. So, the eventuality of a seventh successful re-election of the Left Front Government is indeed an event with unparalleled political significance.
Our Constitution empowers the state governments in a very limited way to carry out developmental and welfare programmes. In the present context of globalisation and the policies pursued by the central government, even this limited empowerment faces an unprecedented challenge.
The last one and a half decades have accentuated disparities between the rich and the poor in the country. Recent studies have shown that unprecedented level of growth in the number of billionaires is accompanied by the fall in the real income and the purchasing power of 80 per cent of the people. This has also been accompanied with rapid growth of unemployment and industrial sickness and is also resulting in organised sector being shifted away to the unorganised sector: currently 92 per cent of workforce is in the unorganised sector.
The other primary sector, agriculture, is witnessing unprecedented crisis. A sharp reduction in public investment in agriculture is leading to the contraction of infrastructure like irrigation and power availability. This is resulting in agriculture itself becoming unviable.
The credit flow to the small and marginal farmers is a casualty. This manifests in the phenomenon of farmer suicides. Peasants are forced to sell their children and kidney sale centres are being opened up in villages. The gravity of the crisis has been brought out by the National Commission of Farmers chaired by Professor M S Swaminathan.
The other crucial aspect is the increasing withdrawal of the State from the social sector which is affecting public health, education etc. The overall phenomenon of a miniscule number in Indian society thriving at the cost of the vast majority is starkly evident. And far from being apologetic, the previous [central] NDA Government had coined the perverted slogan of "Shining India" to glorify this reality. The people rejected this perversity with the contempt it deserved in the last elections.
An alternative picture
West Bengal presents an alternative picture. Ownership of land is the most crucial question. In the whole of the country, 60 per cent of agricultural land is owned by 15 per cent. In West Bengal 78 per cent of the land is owned by small and marginal peasants. West Bengal has three per cent of total land in the country but accounts for 22 per cent of the total redistributed land.
A large majority of these beneficiaries belong to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the minorities. More than agricultural workers have gained homestead land. The state government has embarked on a new program of purchasing land and covering all agricultural worker families in providing homestead land. In other states, agricultural land is shrinking while more uncultivated land is coming under cultivation in Bengal.
The state government’s effort is focused on putting almost the entire land available in the state under cultivation to further enhance agricultural production. With an active program for enhancing productivity, the emphasis is on reinforcing food security. However, enhanced productivity alone cannot ensure increased levels of income in a market-driven economy. So there is a repositioning of the agricultural strategy with a focus on crop diversification, soil testing, expansion of minor irrigation and extension of newer technology and implements. This is leading to enhancement of agricultural incomes.
But this is not to say that the situation is without challenges. Markets tend to drive down prices of primary agricultural commodities in an increasingly globalised market economy. Therefore, to sustain and enhance incomes new initiatives for agri-exports and agri-processing have been embarked upon.
The Left Front Government cannot relent on its achievements. A government with commitment to the people cannot relax. It is true that farmers do not commit suicide, the people in the villages do not go hungry. But, of course, there are pockets where improvement has not taken place as rapidly as it should have. There is, in some areas, the problem of malnutrition despite growth and rapid reduction in poverty levels.
Industrial turnaround
The overwhelming predominance of the central government had led to skewed central-state economic and financial relations, apart from the basic gaps in the capitalist path of development. This had, in the past, led to ruination of industries in Bengal. The need for major public investment for the development of industry made West Bengal vulnerable to political discrimination.
With the coming of de-licensing policy at the beginning of the 1990s, new opportunities had opened up which allowed the Left Front (LF) Government to seek alternatives in a context of general decline due to the disastrous policy towards public sector, which successive central governments pursued and which included selling of profit-making public services and assets and closing down others.
The present process of industrial turnaround in the state has taken place due to the pragmatic policy pursued by the LF Government which, while trying to strengthen profit-making services, adopted a course of reviving those in economic trouble through joint ventures and a new infusion of private investment.
The Kolkata-centric industrial scenario has now been substituted by a wider geographically dispersed industrial growth, with industrial growth centres located in far-flung districts also throbbing with activity. Sector-specific industrial parks are being established in leather, foundry, rubber, apparel, chemicals and jute.
In the power sector, West Bengal has come to occupy a front ranking position. The present installed capacity is 7,600 megawatts. In the next three years another 2,400 megawatts will be added. There has been major enhancement in the transmission and distribution of the power sector and by 2007 the state will become fully electrified.
There is a definitive push towards strengthening the port sector. The Kolkata Port, with its two terminals at Kolkata and Haldia, became the second largest cargo handling port in the country. The state government is actively pursuing the setting up of a new deep sea port.
In the road sector, new backbone roads under the NHDP program and ADB funded programs are being laid. There has been truly phenomenal growth in the expansion and augmentation of the capacities of highways, and districts and village roads connecting remotest the parts of the state. West Bengal is truly showing signs of many sided and widely dispersed economic resurgence.
The Left Front Government is also pursuing the setting up of a new airport along with articulating the need for modernising the present Kolkata airport. There is a spurt in the aviation activity with airports being restored in Cooch Behar and Malda. Bagdogra airport is also seeing a growth in activity in terms of both passenger and traffic movements. This growth momentum can also provide a big boost not only to passenger movement but also to agri-exports, which is a new thrust area.
Overall, with the growth of economic activity in all sectors — agriculture, industry and services — the growth in state GDP is clocking 7.06 percent as against the national average of 5.66 percent.
Employment the focus
Growth is an objective, which is not an end in itself. The Left Front Government is trying to ensure employment-led growth, not a jobless growth. The agriculture scenario in the state poses a refreshing contrast to what is happing in the rest of the country and the emergence of new sectors of the rural economy in fishery, animal husbandry and agri-processing industry has ensured major enhancement in the process of employment generation.
Human development
The Left Front Government’s approach is to make the development all embracing and inclusive. The expansion of literacy in the state has been more than 10 percent in the past decade between 1991 and 2001, which is the highest in the last 100 years.
Nearly 70 percent of the population are covered by government health services.
With new private investment supplementing the government efforts, there is an unprecedented growth in the number of engineering colleges, medical colleges and other avenues of higher learning. Universities are increasingly involving themselves with community development and technology programs.
As distinct from all other states, 70 per cent of the state’s people are accessing government-run health services from rural primary health centres to sub-divisional and district hospitals and medical college-run hospitals. In all social indicators, like the infant mortality rate, school enrolments, coverage of mid-day meal scheme in schools, gender equality, West Bengal has joined the top bracket of the country.
The way ahead
The ideological, political, socio-economic and administrative measures initiated by the Left Front Government are helping the sustenance of the unity of the people. The traditional political adversaries as represented by the opposition parties appear to be in disarray and stand completely bereft of political credibility. More isolated, they are betraying a desperate and unprincipled rush to come together to oppose the Left Front by hook or crook; perhaps more by crook than hook.
With the overall global context of encouragement to anti-Left forces, they are trying to adopt newer forms and methods to dislodge the LF Government. The Left Front Government of West Bengal and its record of achievement are not only a product of people’s struggle within the state alone but also an expression of the aspirations of the entire democratic and patriotic people of the whole country.
Ganashakti Newspaper, paper of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (abridged)