Change : yet again

I spent the early years of my childhood in salt lake (out skirts of Kolkata) and there are these vivid mental pictures I still retain that expressed Kolkata as the flagship city of the left. The walls painted with CPI(M) symbols with writings in bold Bengali, the gol chowks tied around with “lal” flags that were never taken down after the last rally and those three wheeler pickup trucks (have only seen them in Kolkata) mounted with a loud speaker driving slowly through the residential streets on a Sunday morning were things out of the mundane. Then around the 1998 elections the walls of Kolkata featured a new mural, that of a three petalled flower bearing the tricolour marking the arrival of Trinamool Congress into the Bengal politics. It belonged to Mamata Banerjee who I knew too well as the woman who always seemed really pissed at something or the other every time she was on local news and on national television her strong Bengali accent was borderline hilarious. Even if this was 12 years ago not many could have predicted the scene to change so drastically in a relatively short span of time.

The Marxists rose to power owing to the “poribartan hawa” (air of change) of the 70’s and managed to retain their position long after the wind had changed its course. They survived the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union; however the green fields of Singur and the bloodied villages of Nandigram overwhelmed them ending a 34 year long reign in Bengal. It has been a historic win NOT because it brought about a change in the political party after such a long time (That has been done on several occasions), or because who brought about a change was a woman whose win couldn’t have been predicted a decade ago; but because it marks the end of a system that exercised power over the state for such a long time and raises serious questions on its return to power (the party might but the system would not).The left came into power with promises of land reforms and redistribution of zameen to the common peasants and implemented this policy with marked stubbornness and ineptitude. Foreign investment and industries of the state suffered in the sidelines as the government turned their head away from the cries of a small educated bunch from the urban parts demanding for better jobs and scope for higher education who moved out to other parts of the country in the lookout for greener patches. Not until recently while looking to find a balance between industries and agriculture that would provide the state with the much necessary boost in development the government gave Mamata Banerjee the very platform to make her election campaign from by allocating land for setting up the factory for Tata, losing their support base from both ends.

Mamata Banerjee, riding on the farmland acquisition issue by the Tata Motors factory in the Singur project and- ironically -yet again on the promise of “change”. Over the last few years politicians have ruined the word “change” and probably altered what it means slightly. There emerges a cyclic pattern in its usage over the years and has often proved to be a powerful tool to remove a party in power for a prolonged period of time. And longer is the time in power more is the number scandals, use of ugly politics and short comings in the time of crisis which makes the task of the opposition that much easier, that much irrelevant and more inevitable than historic.

The real tedious work lies ahead. Lets hope the change is for the better, even if relatively.