The CPM’s 34 year rule in West Bengal (Part 1) | Kobad Ghandy with Ghosh and Hazra

by Kobad Ghandy with inputs by Raktim Ghosh and Bonhihotri Hazra

This article will be divided into two parts. The first will deal with the CPM led West Bengal government’s approach to globalisation/SEZs, development with focus on Singur and Nandigram, Industry and labour, education and health......and its resultant actions on the people and their movements. The next will deal with the nature of its rule in the state.

People may ask as to what is the point now in writing on the CPM when all progressive forces need to be supported against fascist rule/administration. The point however is that unless the anti-fascist forces are genuine and also effective on the ground, fascism can never be defeated. This history has taught us. For example, the major role played by the social-democrats in the rise of Hitler is well known. The social democrat’s fixation on parliamentarian and legality hindered an effective struggle against the Nazis, who did not respect the trappings of bourgeois democracy in their own quest for power. In addition, the SPD equated the communists and the Nazis thereby splitting the anti-fascist forces and facilitating the rise of Hitler.

The CPM can be compared to those days’ social democrats at best as proto-fascist at worst. The socialists in India already have a dubious history. Lohia, in 1963, was the chief campaigner for Deen Dayal Uppadhya, the president of the Jan Sangh and a top RSS functionary. Lohia went so far as to attend an RSS camp in Kanpur when invited by Nanaji Deshmukh. The communists turned a blind eye to the semantics of Lohia and the CPM went so far as to encourage the affiliation of the RSS with the JP movement. This RSS-link continued with the massive movement against corruption led by Kejriwal and Anna Hazare, which was defacto instrumental in bringing Modi to power.

Today in West Bengal the CPM’s main enemy is the Trinamul and not the BJP which is a rising force in the state. From 2019 to 2021 at the ground level the CPM gave the slogan ‘agey ram pore bam’ (i.e first bring BJP to power then the left). At the ground level the CPM in West Bengal is not playing any role against Hindutva fascism yet it is considered by many as a progressive force. In fact the main CPM support base amongst the Bengali middle class (upper caste) are those who are the main local (besides the marwaris, jains and Gujratis who dominte most business and trade in West Bengal) support base of Hindutva.

Not only the CPM many a radical and revolutionary forces have meeting after meeting on some general agenda of exploitation and oppression. These resolutions are for their hall meetings, at the ground level many support CPM alliances rather than targeting Brahminical Hindu fascism. Such forums are meaningless unless they have a focussed agenda like the Bharat Bachao programmes taken in Hyderabad and Delhi, whose National Conference was held in Delhi on March 11, 12 2023. These correctly spoke of defeating ‘BrahminicalHindufascism’ and uniting all anti-fascist forces.

Unfortunately the other M-L groupings had no such focus.

For example, that held in Mumbai at the Lal Nishan office in 21/5/2023 (attended by a spectrum of radical left groups and parties). At this meeting they gave a call for a “Peoples’ Manifesto” entailing 24 points which enveloped issues of labour, peasantry, tribals, Dalits and against unemployment, environment destruction, privatisation, etc etc and all issues under the sun. There is no focus and no concrete call to action except a vague statement to defeat the BJP in the 2024 polls. Similarly, some local radical groups have been taking meetings in Kolkata like the one entitled “Stop War on People” and others such: with the demands against corporate loot of jal, jungle zamin, against the policies of LPG, and all possible issues ranging from health, education and women children dalit, adivasis and minorities. But these do not even raise the issue of Hindutva fascism or even caste oppression/brahminism.

All such meetings and forums are meaningless unless they have a focus — particularly of patriotism (against the neo-liberal policies with a call for swadeshi) and/or democracy (in all spheres — political, social, educational, economic, etc, which includes Brahminical Hindu fascism). One just has to see the resolutions of such gatherings which display the impotency of the so-called radical forces in the country. All lefts talk of building a patriotic and democratic front, but no concrete step are to be seen in that direction — whether by opposing neo-liberalism and promoting swadeshi or fighting for democracy the essence of which is countering Brahminism in all its manifestations.

The Left Front ruled West Bengal for seven consecutive terms from 1977-2011, five with Jyoti Basu as CM and two with Buddhadev Bhatttacharya as CM. It came to power in the wave against Emergency rule and the wave of terror it faced by previous Congress governments. It was dominated by the CPM and had as allies small left parties but it was the CPM that called the shots, the others merely followed. Besides the CPI the other parties were the Forward Bloc, the RSP, the RCPI and some other smaller groupings. All faced a reign of terror in earlier Congress rule.

This article will be divided into two parts the first will deal with the issue of CPM’S Agrarian and Urban Policy and Part II will deal with its Party Machinery and Control on the People.

PARTI CPM’S Agrarian and Urban Policy in WB

In West Bengal we will examine the Left Fronts policies after coming to power. While at first some steps were taken in the interests of the rural and urban poor these soon turned into their opposite, not only depressing wage rates but openly pushing the interests of the big bourgeoisie, just like any other political party. Here we will look at the CPM-established Panchayat Raj System, the attitude to the hawkers’ movement, Rajarhat, Singur and CPM’s Panchayat Raj SystemNandigram as also its links with the CPM’s policy to LPG, NEP and globalisation in general. Its attitude to people’s movement cannot be seen in isolation but as an extension of its policies on globalisation.

CPM’s Panchayat Raj System

The CPM established a so-called Panchayat Raj system and built a huge cadre force to virtually bring every family under the control of the local CPM office. The office and these ‘cadres’ had a vice like grip over every aspect of the life of the local people and even a small task could not be done without paying one’s respects to the local office. This cadre force was built off peoples’ money by the CPM government establishing a massive network of schools with the entire teaching population comprising CPM cadres. It was this network that soon grew to become the terror force of the CPM throughout the state.

By establishing Panchayat Raj the CPIM created a new power base in rural areas. Their new base was not the lower level of peasantry, but school teachers. Kanti Biswas was the minister of education of the LF government.
He had reported that since 1977 to 1989 the West Bengal government had ‘opened 12,000 schools and appointed 46,000 teachers’ (Basu 1989, 220). Those newly appointed teachers in most of the cases were CPI (M) party members or sympathizers (Echeverri-Gent 1992). Different surveys had been conducted by different scholars on this issue. During 1992 Echeverri-Gent conducted a survey of Midnapore district in West Bengal. According to this survey among the 36 gram panchayat pradhans, 57 percent of them were school teachers. Another survey conducted by Kohli during 1987 shows in Burdawan and Midnapore districts, that among the 60-gram panchayat members, one-third of them were school teachers. During 1980 a similar survey had been conducted by the Government of West Bengal. That survey shows 29 percent school teachers of West Bengal as occupying the post of panchayat pradhan. So, they were the new power barons of rural Bengal.1 [1] During the year 2006-07, almost 78 per cent of the state’s 155,000 primary teachers were members of the pro-CPI(M) All Bengal Primary Teachers’ Association (ABPTA). 2 [2] Some of those terrorizing names during the CPIM rule in WB for violence, like Tapan Ghosh, Sukur Ali, Majid Master, were all school teachers.

Dalit and Adivasis were used by the CPIM as their foot soldiers. In all seven Left Front ministries, SC ministers were 8.75 percent only. And ST’s were only 1.02 percent. But at the lower level, in Panchayat functionaries, SC’s and ST’s got more positions. Apart from the reserved seats, in order to control SC and ST sentiments, they give them such opportunities. In Panchayat Functionaries SCs constituted 40.56% and STs constituted 10.01%.3 [3]

Agro-Economic Research Centre had conducted a survey in 1986, which shows, “the landowner’s share uniformly rose for both kharif (monsoon) andthebororice crop (sown in winter and harvested in summer, also called the rabi crop) as they were more active in the peasant union than the share cropper. On the other hand, cost sharing did not respond to levels of activism either of the sharecropper or the landowner in any significant manner. However, when the sharecropper indulged in a higher level of activism than the landowner his income increased by 25.9 percent, he managed to retain a greater share in the boro crop, but was met, more often, with the landowner’s reluctance for cost sharing arrangements”.4 [4]

Let us look at some examples of the party machinery rule of the CPM. From a 2009 issue of the Tehelka magazine we got to know an affected farmer’s statement. He was one Sheikh Sukur of Birbhum district. He shared his experience: “‘the party started imposing illegal taxes. We had to pay a tax before growing and harvesting’. Even a social occasion, like a wedding in the villages, was not free from CPI(M) control. Sukur further comments that ‘during my daughter’s wedding three years ago,Ipaid Rs750 to the CPM for permission to throw a feast’.”5 [5] Another farmer’s statement we could get from that issue of Tehelka, named Jamal, ‘two years ago, when I wanted to repair the leaking thatched roof of my small mud hut, the party demanded `500saying that if I had money to repair the roof, I had had money to pay them as well. When I refused, their cadres beat me up and I had to ultimately pay Rs300’.6 [6]

This was in the villages, where the CPM ran a veritable reign of terror through their teacher network of party cadres. Now let us turn to the hawkers in the cities.

Hawkers Control and destabilisation

On 31st January 2009, The Indian Express published a report after surveying some railway stations of Kolkata of the actual situation of hawkers there. They mainly focused on Dumdum railway station. There they found a person named Amit Santra. He was a shop owner with a shop of 4 feet by 6 feet area. He got the shop after giving 15,000 rupees to the local CITU leader. And he had to pay 200 rupees every month to CITU as ‘rent’ for his shop. The report said, ’CITU controls (according to its own estimates) 18,000 stalls onplatforms and 42,000 railway hawkers.’ The report further observed, ’Each stall and each vendor have to pay a certain amount to CITU for the smooth running of his or her business. Every station has a CITU union office with a local strongman acting as the dealer.’7 [7]

In 1996, Operation Sunshine was conducted in WB by the CPIM led state governments and different municipalities. Its motto was simple: to remove hawkers from the pavements forcefully. They justified this activity in the name of beautification of the cities, long before the concept of smart cities was introduced. Thousands of hawkers were evicted from different localities of Kolkata. But the government had to face strong resistance from the hawkers - From this hawker’s movement, the Hawker Sangram Samiti (HSC) was formed. 32 street-based hawker unions were part of this platform. Even the Left Front partner’s party’s trade unions were part of that platform. Except CITU (official trade union of CPIM) all major street vendors’ trade unions were present there. But far before the Operation Sunshine, when the CPIM came to power during 1977, they declared, no hawkers will occupy the pavement, and those that exist after 1977 would not be given a vending license. According to a report of The Statesman, on 8th July 1983, the then Chief Minister Jyoti Basu ordered the police officials to take necessary actions to identify and evict the post-1977 entrants on the pavement. And a year after operation sunshine the state legislature brought about an amendment to the Kolkata Municipal Act that declared any form of unauthorised occupation of streets and pavements by hawkers was a cognisable and non-bailable offence. This news was published in The Calcutta Gazette on 19 November 1997. And from 23rd January Anandabazar Patrika we get to know that, “Operation Sunshine was followed by selective rehabilitation of the evicted hawkers. This rehabilitation process was thoroughly controlled by the CPI(M) leaders and marked by personalised calculations of local power by regime functionaries.”8 [8]

CPM & Land Grab — Rajarhat, Singur and Nadigram

Before Singur and Nandigram the CPIM did a successful land acquisition in Rajarhat. During 1995, the Jyoti Basu government notified that they will acquire land there including fisheries. They actually wanted to grab the land to promote real estate business. In an article published in www.sanhati.com, on 29 August 2008, entitled ’A history of the brutal Rajarhat Land Acquisition, Bengal’s new IT hub’, written by Shantanu Sengupta, he wrote ’Rajarhat is one of the most fertile areas of West Bengal and perhaps India. Leaving aside some regions used for habitation, most, if not all, of the land had been producing three to four crops a year’.9 [9] He further added that: ‘According to the documents of the land revenue department, the number of recorded landowners was over 30,000 while 5,000 were recorded bargadars (sharecroppers.) The number of unrecorded bargadars was double that number. Long before the government notification and land acquisition process had started, the land mafia started buying up the land from the poor farmers’.10 [10] The land-grabbing process at Rajarhat was different as it was done in secret.

“From beginning till end, Rajarhat was a covert operation. A slew of undercover terror strategies were set in motion. Farmers disappeared; bodies were found hanging from trees. Threats and intimidations (the CPIM’s usual tactics)succeeded in scuttling protests. A section of farmers accepted the compensation money”.11 [11] Witness the nature of the land loot: Santanu Sengupta wrote, ’The sad irony of it all is the fact that while the farmers were paid only Rs 5000 to 6000, the same land was being sold by the government to the businessmen at around Rs600,000a katha, while the promoters and developers in turn were making a profit of around Rs 1,50,00,000 to Rs 2,00,00,000’.12 [12] So the massive real estate values were the main aim for land grabbing there.
But another game was going on there. The main opposition TMC was in partnership with the CPIM in this land-grabbing project. “Rajarhat came full circle nearly a decade later in 2009, with its explosive revelations of the murky alliances of both the CPIM and Trinamool Congress with the real estate and underworld mafia, a collusion going back to the years of forcible land acquisition and displacement.”13 [13] So although the government changed during 2011, the truth of Rajarhat, still remains in the dark.

The CPIM’s behaviour was no less than that of the colonial collaborators during that period. Singur’s land was being acquired by a colonial law - Land Acquisition Act of 1894.

In the case of Singur the CPIM even hadn’t signed an MOU with the TATA’s just to help them. What kind of help? By not doing so TATA’s had been rescued from lots of financial obligations. Even according to news reports, the government had provided 140 crores to the TATA’s to ‘help’ their industrialization. More or less 15,000 families were dependent on the Singur farmland. From 11 different villages there were 5000 peasant families. Others who were dependent on this farmland were agricultural workers, unregistered sharecroppers, cottage industry workers, local people engaged in small business. How many jobs could the TATA industry generate there? Even according to CPIM leaders’ claims - not more than 12,000 employment opportunities would be there. And again, the maximum of these would not go to the local people.14 [14]

According to some allegation the price of the land in Singur had been given at much lower than the market price. For single-cropped land, the compensation offered to the land owners was 8.7 lakhs per acre and for double-cropped land 12.8 lakhs per acre. For the registered bargadars the rate offered was only 25 percent of this value. And for unregistered bargadars there was no compensation.15 [15] The state government’s Statistical Handbook prior to the acquisition indicated that Singur was a block with a thriving agri-business where 83 per cent of the land was irrigated with a whopping 220 percent crop density. Paddy and potato were the main crops in the region, jute and several vegetables were also grown.16 [16]

According to Kunal Chattopadhyay, who was a member of Radical Socialist India and Professor of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, “Media reports indicate that the land is being taken over by the West BengalIndustrial Development Corporation at a cost of Rs 140 crores. The Tatas have informed the West Bengal Government that they will compensate the government to the tune of Rs 20 crores after five years with a 0.01 percent interest. The discounted value of the money in today’s terms will be about Rs12 crores. So the West Bengal Government is giving to Tatas the sum of Rs 128 crores (28,749,185 US dollars). This money will come either from taxes or from loans contracted by the WBIDC, which again must be repaid through taxes or through cutting costs in social sectors like health and education.”

So according to the CPIM’s development model people will pay for TATA’s industrialization. During September 2006 many protestors were brutally assaulted and arrested by the WB police from Singur. Among those arrested there was a two-and-half-year child, named Payel Bag. Another two pre-teen boys were arrested during that time by the CPIM government. The first martyr of Singur was a 26-year-old protestor Rajkumar Bhul. He died due to an internal hemorrhage from police beating. Tapasi Malik was the frontline face of the Singur movement. She was the daughter of Manoranjan Malik, a sharecropper of Singur. On December 18, 2006, when she went to the field to answer the call of nature, she was abducted and taken to the barbed wire fenced area of Singur where she was brutally gang-raped and killed.
Her body was burned, especially the lower body, to remove the evidence of rape. Seeing the fire and smoke, the villagers came running at around 6 am. The miscreants fled.

Allegations were against local CPM leaders Suhrid Dutta and Debu Malik. However, the CPM consistently tried to pass off the incident as suicide. But after this incident, the common people of West Bengal burst into hatred towards CPM. Meetings, marches and protest meetings continued all over Bengal.

With its back to the wall, the CPM came up with a conspiracy theory that the opposition parties were involved in the whole incident to defend itself. Even CPIM’s nationally and internationally known intellectuals started maligning Tapasi Malik’s family.

In a widely circulated article which appeared in the prestigious American leftist newsletter Counterpunch on May 23, 2007, Sudhanva Deshpande and Vijay Prashad wrote the following about the death of Tapasi Malik:

“Stories were blown out of context, and allegations flew around (sexual assaults, murders) that have since been shown to be false. The most sensational was the murder of a young woman, Tapasi Malik, who had been a leader in the Singur struggle against land acquisition. The blogs and the capitalist media blamed this death on the CPM. The Central Bureau of Investigation is now of the view that she was killed by her father and brother.” However, in June 2007, the CBI arrested CPM’s Hooghly district committee member Suhrid Dutta and his associate Debu Malik under sections 302, 120 (B), 376 and 201 of the IPC on charges of rape and murder. The Additional Chief Sessions Judicial Magistrate, Amar Kanti Acharya convicted these two accused in November 2008. Meanwhile, on 21 June 2007, Debu Malik was subjected to a polygraphy test. He confessed all the incidents before the Judicial Magistrate of Patiala House Court on June 24. However, in February 2009, the accused got bail from the Calcutta High Court. While the verdict of the trial was muted, Tapasi’s murder exposed the civil image of the CPM in the public eye.17 [17]

During that time Activist Medha Patkar said that the Left Front is worse than the Gujarat Government of Narendra Modi. According to her, during the time of Narmada Bachao Movement Modi’s government restricted her movements there; but during the time of Singur, the CPIM-led government restricted her movement much more than that. And interestingly Modi was in support of WB CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. According to a news report of Ananda Bazar Patrika, on December 5, 2006, “Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had told his party that it is opportunistic to try to exploit Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’srecentdifficulties, and they should support him over the issue of land acquisition.”18 [18]

On 29th January 2007 several left-oriented intellectuals lead by Professor Sumit Sarkar published an Interim Report of the Citizens’ Committee on Singur and Nandigram. There they took the opinion of 50 to 60 villagers of Singur. The villagers stated to them that most of the acquired land was multi-crop. By their ground survey and after getting the public opinion of Singur, Professor Sumit Sarkar was convinced that the land was multi-cropped and fertile. In a reply WB CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee replied, ‘I know these farmers better than them particularly, and my colleagues are working there, my party, my peasants organization, they know better than these people’.19 [19] Arrogance was reflected in every word. But according to statistical information collected from the Statistical Handbook of West Bengal, 2004 (Govt. of West Bengal, 2004a), and the District Statistical Handbook of Hugli, 2004 (Govt. of West Bengal, 2004b) the land of these acquired villages were very fertile. So, the WB government data supports Sumit Sarkar’s claim. 20 [20] To destroy every protest in Singur, police manhandled women on many occasions. According to the Interim Report of the Citizens’ Committee on Singur and Nandigram on 29 January 2007, women ‘...were beaten up by male policemen, filthy language was used....’ And The National Confederation of Human Rights Organizations (NCHRO 2006) mentions that on 5 December 2006 during the Singur protest, ‘The female arrestees at Chandannagar police station alleged that they were manhandled, beaten, molested and sexually abused by the male policemen at the time of arrest and while being transported to the police station.’21 [21] Sumit Sarkar and the Citizens’ Committee found many more interesting things there in Singur. They found that on the nights of 25 September and 2 December 2006 villagers were beaten up severely by CPIM cadres. Although the police was present at the spot, according to their findings, it was the CPI (M) cadres who ‘did the major part of the beating up’.22 [22]

The CPIM leaders were hiding the contract between TATA and the state government. Even they were trying to bypass an RTI. Finally, they could not do so and in March 2007 the WB government’s industrial minister Nirupam Sen told the West Bengal Assembly legislators of his government’s decision to give the Tatas a soft loan of Rs 200 crore together with concessions on lease rent and value-added tax (VAT). According to him, ’Unless we give these concessions to the Tatas, other states will win them away and that would be a big jolt to ou refforts to affect a turnaround for Bengal. Two years hence, every MLA sitting in this House will be able to watch how the state’s economy would change withtheadventoftheTatas.’ What confidence on the Tatas.23 [23]

Not wanting to giving his land in Singur a farmer named Haradhan Bag committed suicide on 12th March 2007.24 [24]

And then came Nandgram: The Salim group (Indonesia ’s biggest conglomerate), who were invited by the CPIM to invest in Nandigram had a horrific history. They are charged in the killing of more than 5,00,000 communists in Indonesia.25 [25]

Ever since the land acquisition notice was read out in Nandigram, the common people got scared and angry and started protesting. On January 2, 2007 CPM cadre forcibly attacked Nandigram to break the villagers’ resistance. 6 villagers including Bharat Mandal, Sheikh Salim were killed in the incident that day. Then the people of Nandigram blocked entire Nandigram by cutting the road. It was their desperate move to stop the armed CPM cadres and save their land. On March 14, the Left Front government launched a private campaign to recapture Nandigram. At least 2,500 policemen took part in the operation. According to different sources, 4 to 5 thousand policemen, Rapid Action Force and commandos took part in this operation. It is suspected that at least 400 CPM cadres were involved. The campaign started at 10 am. Villagers were sitting at demonstrations at Garchakraberia and Gokulnagar in Sonachura. They knew of no other means of saving the land and of averting the impending terror known from past experience. The police asked them to leave.

But without even giving the required time, within 5 to 15 minutes (various sources say the same range of time) police started firing - first tear gas, then rubber bullets and finally real bullets. The police and the CPM later said the villagers had pelted stones, but the force did not have the legal authority to open fire.

They attacked without any papers signed by the magistrate. Witnesses said the villagers fled after the first round of firing. The police started chasing them. Eyewitness accounts also reveal a child being beheaded. Observers who were first able to enter Nandigram on March 17, experienced human blood trails extending at least two kilometres from the site towards the village.

Official figures say 14 villagers died in police firing. However, speaking to villagers it was found that, at least 100 villagers have gone ’missing’ since the incident. Apart from official accounts, various private sources say that at least 20 people died and at least 60 people, including 14 policemen, were injured in the incident that day.

“Finding the villages deserted the CPI-M supporters allegedly looted houses and shops. Villagers alleged that at least five women protestors were raped by CPI-M goons. BUPC members complained a few bodies were dragged towards Khejuri and somewere thrown into the Hooghly river by CPI-M cadres.”

What did the CPM’s front partners in the Left-front government say after the Nandigram massacre? The RSP leader and minister, Kshiti Goswami, said,

“The manner police raided the villages its seems that a civil war is on. The way the CPI(M) cadres and the police were used is condemnable.