Tucked away on a busy and rundown stretch of Alimuddin Street in the heart of Kolkata stands the Communist Party of India (Marxist) headquarters, its shabby, dusty interiors giving no indication of the power its occupants have wielded in West Bengal for 34 long years.
Today, that supremacy is being seriously challenged. The unspoken question that hangs in the air at Muzaffar Ahmed Bhawan is: can the CPI(M)-led Left Front stem the relentless tide of the Mamata Banerjee-led Opposition that threatens to sweep it away?
The string of electoral reverses — in the panchayat polls of 2008, the general elections of 2009, and finally, in the municipal polls of 2010 — have proved that the Left citadel can be breached. The CPI(M) has gone from anger to disbelief, but with the Assembly election just days away, it is fighting with its back to the wall.
Central to the party's campaign is a plea for forgiveness for past mistakes; the Opposition's battle-cry is poriborton (change). For the party's old guard — such as senior central committee member Benoy Konar, whose intemperate remarks, post-Nandigram, shocked people — it is proving much harder to ask for forgiveness. For those with a future, such as State housing member Gautam Deb, widely seen as a possible alternate to Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the words come more easily.
But regardless of how hard or easy it has been for individuals to admit the party went wrong, CPI(M) leaders, for the first time, are publicly talking of the party's ongoing rectification programme, the action taken against errant comrades (expulsions, suspension of membership, divesting of authority), and the repeated instructions to the cadres to “reconnect” with the people. Party leaders are openly admitting they erred in Nandigram, and acknowledging their failures in government and in the party.
There is a subtle shift from the manush aamader bojheni (the people didn't understand us) rhetoric to aamader manusher shathe jogajog aabar korte hobe (we need to reconnect with the people again).
It is the CPI(M)'s mea culpa moment.
But the party is not just asking for forgiveness. If the Opposition is hoping a wave will sweep away its internal contradictions, the Left is relying on its time-tested micromanagement.
Telling surveys
The party, senior CPI(M) sources say, had asked the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) to conduct three surveys — in October 2010, January 2011, and in March 2011. The first two were State-wide surveys; the most recent one took samples only from the districts of North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Bardhaman and Kolkata, which together account for 100 Assembly seats.
The results: while the non-Left Opposition is still ahead of the Left Front, the gap has been narrowing over the months. The surveys, interestingly, also show that the ranks of those “not sure” and with “no opinion” have been swelling.
The Left interprets this as a sign that many people who had decided to vote for the Opposition are now uncertain, because of the State government's recent pro-poor measures, combined with poor performance by the Trinamool Congress-held panchayats since 2008.
“In October 2010, the people's psyche had accepted that poriborton is inevitable. But now we are regaining the people's confidence,” a senior CPI(M) leader told TheHindu .
The party has therefore decided, he says, to “identify unwilling traditional Left voters and convince them to cast their votes.”
The CPI(M)'s assessment is that margins in 170 to 190 seats will be so narrow that every vote will count. Finally, the party has decided to concentrate its energies in the last stretch to the four south Bengal districts.
Internally, the CPI(M) no longer believes it can win these elections. Its efforts are now to retain 100 plus seats, so that it can make a comeback in 2016, or hopefully, earlier.
