People's Democracy

THE victory rally organized by the Kolkata unit of the Left Front on May 26 began with the strains of the raga Yaman-kalyan on the shehnai amidst the pleasant ambience of a balmy afternoon as a cool breeze blew across the packed Shahid Minar maidan. And when the rally ended, the sun had just dipped below the crimson horizon, and the entire grounds had started to erupt with the myriad flashing lights of colourful firecrackers as the flickering illumination of thousands of lit torches reflected the play of emotions on the faces of men and women in the joyous assemblage.

Former Bengal chief minister and veteran communist leader Jyoti Basu set the tenor of the rally when he said that now that the mass of the people "have kept intact the Red bastion of Bengal, and has ensured the continuance of Left Front for yet another term in office, the additional responsibility of leading the country out of the morass the BJP has created over the recent past, too, shall have to be addressed by the Left even while organizing its task-based priorities in Bengal," and that "neither of the issues brooked any delay."

"People," said Jyoti Basu, "have exercised their franchise, and they have judged us on the basis of what we could do and what we could not, given the reality of the constraints amidst which the Left Front has had to function." "We Communists," reminded Basu, "are never in the habit of trying bluff our way out, whatever the adversity of circumstances may turn out to be."

The opposition in Bengal, "an opportunistic alliance of political groups," backed up by reactionary forces both inside and outside of the country, Basu stated, had chosen to concentrate on a slur-and-smear approach, whilst the willing scions of the corporate media made half-truths and untruths the stuff of their electoral coverage."

On some mornings in the days ahead of the Vidhan Sabha polls, mused Basu,

"we were simply flabbergasted to read, yet again, for the umpteenth time, how this time around there would be no way the Left Front would be able to avoid a crushing electoral debacle." Perhaps the people, too, had had enough of this lie campaign, declared Jyoti Basu, and had chosen to provide a fitting response to the burgeoning Goëbblesian drive by ensuring that the Left Front came back to office with an emphatic two-thirds majority.

"Certainly, the occasion demands a mood of rejoice but the festivities must not cloud us to the great need to take a close, hard look at our weaknesses and our lacunae in living up to the totality of the expectations of the people, all the people, in Bengal," commented Jyoti Basu.

"Development must not remain a mere slogan," said Basu, and added that "it must necessarily have to be transformed into a battle cry with which every worker of the Left Front and of the different Left mass organizations must approach the task of providing assistance in running a government, where there would no other focus of interest other than that of the people themselves." And in the midst of the celebrations, the Left must never forget that "we have greater tasks ahead, tasks that involve the creation of a new society."

Concluding, Basu said that "in Bengal, and elsewhere in this vast country of

ours, people look to the Left Front as a beacon of hope, as the advanced

outpost of democracy: we must never let them down, and this shall be our

pledge of the day,"

Secretary of the Bengal unit of the CPI (M), Anil Biswas thanked the people for making sure that the Left Front triumphed over a multi-layered situation of adversity, and for the sixth consecutive time, and pointed out that despite the addition of, over the past four years, of several crore of voters in the age group of 18 - 20 years, the Left Front could retain the percentage of votes it had polled back in 1996.

Biswas recalled the late comrade Promode Dasgupta’s words during the victory rally of the Left Front celebrated way back in 1977. Comrade Dasgupta while felicitating the people for ensuring the electoral triumph of the Left Front had pointed out that "while this is a historical achievement, many more such milestones shall adorn the onward progress of the Left Front in the decades to come, and our responsibilities shall increase manifold."

Keeping this in mind, declared Biswas, " we must become more responsive to the emergent needs of developmental work while further strengthening the underpinnings of democracy in the years and decades ahead."

Polit Bureau member of the CPI (M), and Left Front leader, Biman Basu said that there was need to disseminate among the younger generation the historical backdrop of the building up of the Left Front. Very often, commented Biman Basu "alliances born out of sheer opportunistic compulsions, and fashioned in the glitz and glamour of luxury parlours are passed off glibly as the "opposite number" of the Left Front." And media hype provides suitable blessings of "authenticity."

The young men and women of today must know, pointed out Biman Basu, that the Left Front was forged over and in the midst of struggles and movements launched in the face of the stiffest of reactionary resistance, to look resolutely to the interests of the common people: the worker, the kisan, the khet mazdoor, the urban and rural poor living at the very edge of society, and the uprooted.

And since the corporate media would dare not recount history, said Biman Basu, "it devolved on the workers of the Left Front, on the sympathizers and the supporters of the Left, to present before the younger generation the situational realities through which the Left Front has come up, and not merely as an electoral platform."

Mounting the podium in the midst of a roar of applause, Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya began by thanking not merely those who "have voted for us but also those who have stood apart, for we need their help and cooperation, too, in the running of the pro-people, especially pro-poor Left Front government."

The people of Bengal, said Bhattacharya, "have made their verdict abundantly clear, and the message must have reached the hearts and minds of those who had clung to mores of anarchic behaviour to try and turn back the inexorable march of history to bring back, if they could, the dark days of the 1970’s."

The choice before the electorate was clear: development, peace, and amity on the one hand, and violence, chaos and hooliganism on the other. The verdict has been as expected. But the responsibilities, too, have grown multifold. "As a state government," said the chief minister, "we have to function in the backdrop of a national political scene where there is dysfunction at every level of the body politic, thanks to the BJP-led union government’s shameless surrender to the dictates of the international corporate capital and its adjuncts."

Economic crisis dogs the country at every step. To carve out an alternate path of pro-people development, said Bhattacharya, needed utter dedication, an outlook of sincere empathy to the needs of the people, and most of all, the courage of conviction that we must not fail the people, not ever, come what may.

"The days ahead will see the Left Front government adhere to the focus of the election manifesto and the administration to be made more dynamic, more sensitive, and more responsive, while the ministry shall have to function but as one unit, speaking in one voice, the voice of the Left Front in which the people have once again reposed their trust," concluded Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, as fireworks lit up the evening sky, and slogans in celebration of Left Front’s electoral victory rent the air.

Other speakers at the rally included Debabrata Bandyopadhyay (RSP), Subrata Basu (Forward Bloc), Chanchal Ghosh (CPI), Moni Pal (Socialist Party), Ratanlal Agarwal (DSP), Mihir Byne (RCPI), Pratim Chatterjee (Forward Bloc-Marxist), and Sunil Chaudhuri (Biplabi Bangla Congress). The rally was presided over by veteran Communist leader, Prasanta Kumar Sur.