> June 28 2001
>
> Red Star over West Bengal
>
> By Vijay Prashad
>
> A few years ago I traveled around rural West Bengal to
> study the gains made by the Left Front government,
> notably as a result of the experiments in the devolution
> of power. By then I knew the statistical advances almost

figures:

> by heart. West Bengal has the highest agricultural
> growth rate in India, but this growth did not come at
> the cost of rural wages (whose considerable rise since
> the 1970s continues). About 2.5 million households
> gained land from the reforms, half a million households
> won title to their home-sites, and close to half a
> million women earned title deeds to agricultural
> land. The number of people under the poverty line,
> particularly in rural areas, has dropped precipitously
> (now at 26.9%, while it was 56.3% in 1977), just as the
> annual intake of calories has increased
> substantially. The data could envelop this column. But
> the numbers have human faces, and I was interested in
> the social forces unleashed by the Communist experiments
> in the state.

...

a anecdote about an incident of non-hierarchy:

> We got to the district headquarters and settled
> ourselves at the panchayat office. The head of the
> panchayat, a local school master, began to tell me about
> the different policies enacted by his administration:
> irrigation, electricity, better creches, control over
> the commons, etc. Suddenly a woman burst in and demanded
> that he inform her about a loan application for land
> improvements. Without apology or the deference that so
> often characterizes the relationship of the rural poor
> with authority, she told him that she had waited long
> enough. Besides, what was he doing wasting his time
> talking to people like me when he could be taking care
> of her loan application. The panchayat head apologized
> to her and to me, then he went to a cabinet, withdrew
> some papers, and spent some time talking to her. I left
> the room.
>
> I remembered these incidents when I got the news that
> the Left Front government in West Bengal secured its
> sixth consecutive victory in the West Bengal elections
> last month. Since 1977 the Left Front has dominated the
> electoral arena, a record for any party, anywhere.
...

> The Left will continue to win in West Bengal in the near
> future for at least three reasons. First, it has been
> the agent of land reforms and the total reconstruction
> of agrarian relations in the state (with 200 seats of
> the 294 in rural Bengal, it is no surprise that the Left
> dominates the state). Second, even though the Communist
> Party of India (Marxist) has enough seats to form a
> government on its own, it treats the Left Front
> coalition as sacrosanct. The coalition is not formed to
> win elections alone, but it is held together by a
> principled program of action, itself mindful of the
> limited sphere of action left to regional governments
> around the world. Third, the opposition to the Left is
> enfeebled by infighting and the predatory urge for
> corruption, something that is unknown from the Left
> government (in 24 years the government has not been
> charged with any scandal, another record in these
> voracious days).

...
> With trade unions and mass organizations on alert, and
> with an energized Left Front, the ministries cannot
> afford to tarry. In good faith they must once again
> produce results against the tide of a historical dynamic
> dominated by mobile finance capital.
...