The violence witnessed over the last few days in Nandigram is bad news for the CPM, for West Bengal, and for India. Images of Marxist thugs who have regrouped and attacked villagers protesting the takeover of their land underline the fact that in today?s West Bengal, space for the rule of law has shrunk to a mere speck. While the sui generis nature of the particular case is clear, it is also a worry that containing the repercussions to West Bengal will be hard. For a federal state to abandon its legitimate monopoly on the use of force and let party goons run amok, regardless of any other consideration, speaks of a framework of governance so rotten that it gives instant ammunition to analysts itching to flag emerging India with a permanent tag of ?civil strife? risk. Such an upward revision in risk profile eventually translates into higher cost of capital available to the country. This would make it that much more difficult for the poor to break out of their poverty, defeating the very aims that parties such as the CPM claim to uphold. What explains such self-defeating behaviour? Does the party have a political stake in keeping West Bengal under-industrialised and its rural populace in poverty? Are party cadres out of control? Whatever the story, the party has much explaining to do.
As a consequence of the CPM?s self-engineered mess in Nandigram, what ought to have been a routine business transaction has taken on such political hues that the very process of land acquisition for industrial use has taken fright all across India. This is a profound disservice done to the cause of poverty alleviation. Perspectives, Marxists contend, are shaped by the material circumstances that prevail. At this point, perspectives are being shaped plainly by the thuggery on display, even as material circumstances elsewhere are on the mend even for the worst-off, given an economic boom that could raise millions out of misery and the clutches of an ideology that has failed to reshape itself to an economic landscape that incentivises the interaction of information and ideas over the hardened old standoffs of labour and capital. As for land, a consultant appointed by the state government has pointed out that 41,000 acres of industrial land remains locked up with sick firms in West Bengal. Some reallocation is in order.
