01-14-2007, 03:35 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Revolution devours its own</b>
Pioneer.com
Swapan Dasgupta
The agitations in Singur and Nandigram have revived interest in what Communist theoreticians for over a century have pompously called the "agrarian question". Conceived as a movement of the working classes for emancipation, <b>Communist parties have traditionally never been at ease with a peasantry that combines a deep attachment to the land with a pre-capitalist mindset. Karl Marx, for example, had contempt both for the "idiocy of rural life" and the peasantry - which he equated with "sacks of potatoes". </b>The forcible collectivisation of agriculture brought about by Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong in China proved disastrous because they violated human nature.Â
Indian Communists were pragmatic enough to realise that rural support in a democracy would prove elusive unless the party pandered to the land hunger of the rural poor. In trying to out-radicalise the Congress, <b>the Communists launched militant movements against "landlordism" and their State Governments in Kerala and West Bengal granted proprietary and quasi-proprietary rights to tenants, share-croppers and the local busybody</b>.
In electoral terms, this was smart and has contributed to West Bengal at least becoming a near-invincible red fortress. However, the quest for rural equity has had baneful side-effects. First, the unending agitations for rights, both real and imaginary, destroyed the traditional - you may call it feudal - harmony of rural communities based on both rights and obligations. <b>The paternalism of landlords was no doubt destroyed but replaced by the dictatorship of local party units. </b>A culture of deference, bordering on exaggerated fatalism, was replaced by cussed aggression.
<b>Second, land re-distribution led to a mushrooming of unviable holdings which contributed to the larger crisis of agriculture facing the country. The opportunity costs of land fragmentation were deeply damaging for West Bengal.</b>
<b>Finally, the sanctity of property, already compromised by decades of wanton nationalisation and social engineering, was further eroded by the Left's populist high-handedness. When "surplus" land proved difficult to redistribute through legal means, Left cadre merely appropriated what was convenient - Government property, temple land and holdings of political opponents</b>. It is, for example, striking that though much of the land proposed for acquisition in Nandigram belongs to the Government, the CPI(M) cannot make an issue of encroachments since Left control is dependant on the wanton violation of property laws.
The mounting problems in rural Bengal would not have escalated had the growth of manufacturing and services provided income alternatives for both the rural poor and those who struggled to maintain the pretensions of bhadralok existence. Unfortunately, three decades of Left Front rule did little to stem an industrial decline that began with the labour militancy of the late-1960s and was exacerbated by the infrastructure collapse in the 1980s. Worst of all, unending Marxist rule created a new ugly Bengali who combined nihilism with insolence. Amartya Sen's "argumentative Indian" is actually a label best suited to fellow Bengalis who are insufferable in Bengal but remarkably dynamic when taken out of the Left environment.
In the early-1960s, West Bengal was India's second-most industrialised State after Maharashtra. Today, it is merely the elector of Left MPs. By pandering to the basest of human instincts, <b>the Left created an environment of bloody-mindedness and reduced West Bengal to a near wasteland and a nursery of counter-enlightenment</b>. So deep was the impact of Marxist perversity on the popular imagination that opposition parties replicated that self-destructive mentality. The difference between the CPI(M) and the Congress (and its splinter wings) is that while one is a semi-disciplined mob, the other is a rabble.
It is brave of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to try to arrest the decline and decay. He wants a West Bengal that is economically vibrant - a convenient euphemism for energetic capitalism. To make up for lost time he has cut a few corners and offered sops and incentives to those willing to invest. His real opposition is neither Mamata Bannerjee nor the Muslim clergy which organised the Nandigram resistance. The stumbling block is a mindset.
Revolution, they say, devours its own parents.
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Pioneer.com
Swapan Dasgupta
The agitations in Singur and Nandigram have revived interest in what Communist theoreticians for over a century have pompously called the "agrarian question". Conceived as a movement of the working classes for emancipation, <b>Communist parties have traditionally never been at ease with a peasantry that combines a deep attachment to the land with a pre-capitalist mindset. Karl Marx, for example, had contempt both for the "idiocy of rural life" and the peasantry - which he equated with "sacks of potatoes". </b>The forcible collectivisation of agriculture brought about by Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong in China proved disastrous because they violated human nature.Â
Indian Communists were pragmatic enough to realise that rural support in a democracy would prove elusive unless the party pandered to the land hunger of the rural poor. In trying to out-radicalise the Congress, <b>the Communists launched militant movements against "landlordism" and their State Governments in Kerala and West Bengal granted proprietary and quasi-proprietary rights to tenants, share-croppers and the local busybody</b>.
In electoral terms, this was smart and has contributed to West Bengal at least becoming a near-invincible red fortress. However, the quest for rural equity has had baneful side-effects. First, the unending agitations for rights, both real and imaginary, destroyed the traditional - you may call it feudal - harmony of rural communities based on both rights and obligations. <b>The paternalism of landlords was no doubt destroyed but replaced by the dictatorship of local party units. </b>A culture of deference, bordering on exaggerated fatalism, was replaced by cussed aggression.
<b>Second, land re-distribution led to a mushrooming of unviable holdings which contributed to the larger crisis of agriculture facing the country. The opportunity costs of land fragmentation were deeply damaging for West Bengal.</b>
<b>Finally, the sanctity of property, already compromised by decades of wanton nationalisation and social engineering, was further eroded by the Left's populist high-handedness. When "surplus" land proved difficult to redistribute through legal means, Left cadre merely appropriated what was convenient - Government property, temple land and holdings of political opponents</b>. It is, for example, striking that though much of the land proposed for acquisition in Nandigram belongs to the Government, the CPI(M) cannot make an issue of encroachments since Left control is dependant on the wanton violation of property laws.
The mounting problems in rural Bengal would not have escalated had the growth of manufacturing and services provided income alternatives for both the rural poor and those who struggled to maintain the pretensions of bhadralok existence. Unfortunately, three decades of Left Front rule did little to stem an industrial decline that began with the labour militancy of the late-1960s and was exacerbated by the infrastructure collapse in the 1980s. Worst of all, unending Marxist rule created a new ugly Bengali who combined nihilism with insolence. Amartya Sen's "argumentative Indian" is actually a label best suited to fellow Bengalis who are insufferable in Bengal but remarkably dynamic when taken out of the Left environment.
In the early-1960s, West Bengal was India's second-most industrialised State after Maharashtra. Today, it is merely the elector of Left MPs. By pandering to the basest of human instincts, <b>the Left created an environment of bloody-mindedness and reduced West Bengal to a near wasteland and a nursery of counter-enlightenment</b>. So deep was the impact of Marxist perversity on the popular imagination that opposition parties replicated that self-destructive mentality. The difference between the CPI(M) and the Congress (and its splinter wings) is that while one is a semi-disciplined mob, the other is a rabble.
It is brave of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to try to arrest the decline and decay. He wants a West Bengal that is economically vibrant - a convenient euphemism for energetic capitalism. To make up for lost time he has cut a few corners and offered sops and incentives to those willing to invest. His real opposition is neither Mamata Bannerjee nor the Muslim clergy which organised the Nandigram resistance. The stumbling block is a mindset.
Revolution, they say, devours its own parents.
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