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At 95, Jyoti Basu is the sagacious counsellor

Special Correspondent

KOLKATA: The body might have become frail. But the spirit has not. The doyen of Left politics, Jyoti Basu was almost patriarchal in his assurance to a group of admirers who called on him at his residence on his 95th birthday on Wednesday that he is with those who want development in West Bengal.

Bouquets and good wishes continued to reach him a day later, on Thursday.

His birthday remark carried with it the unmistakable message of hope — coming from one who has been stoic in the face of reversals suffered by the Left Front in the State in the April-May Lok Sabha elections, a front that he was largely instrumental in creating and which only last month entered its 33rd year in power.

It was because of its policies aimed at “development and progress” in the State that the people had stood by the Left Front over the past decades, the veteran Marxist had said in a statement read out at a rally organised by the front to kick-start its Lok Sabha election campaign earlier this year in the city.

Mr. Basu’s absence on the podium was certainly felt that Sunday afternoon in February.

Ups and downs are but natural for one whose political career spans seven decades; the Left Front’s debacle in the Lok Sabha elections and in the elections to certain civic bodies last month are the more recent downs.

But Mr. Basu has never been one to despair, confides one of his closest aides who spends hours with him every day.

Mr. Basu’s advice to his associates in the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has been simple: take corrective measures to win back the confidence of the people. It finds an echo in the statements by the party’s various bodies — from the Polit Bureau to the West Bengal State Committee — as the CPI(M) leadership introspects on the causes of the setbacks it suffered in the recent elections.

“We were not able to get the people to understand the stand we took in the elections,” he conceded in an interview to Ganashakti, the CPI(M)’s Bengali mouthpiece, on the occasion of the Left Front stepping into yet another year in power last month.

Mr. Basu might not — for health reasons — be seen at party meetings and Left Front rallies. But his words of advice have had key players in the country’s political landscape visiting him at his Salt Lake residence time and again.

Among them, in recent times, was Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, after her party’s resounding success in the Lok Sabha polls. While congratulating her, Mr. Basu expressed his hope that she would ensure “development in West Bengal.”

To both ally and adversary, he remains the sagacious counsellor; to the people he is a living legend.

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