Abstract
The book under review is based on the author’s dissertation and seeks to understand the travails of the Indian Left. It deals with the period of rule of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)—CPI(M)—in the Indian state of West Bengal. The CPI(M) came to power heading a coalition of small leftist parties in 1977 and stayed in power until 2011 when it lost the assembly election and the present ruling party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), came to power. The long period of communist party rule based on free elections is unprecedented in India and in the world. The rise of CPI(M), its period of uninterrupted rule and its eventual demise are all phenomena that call for examination and explanation. The book focuses on the period from 1991 onwards, when the Indian state initiated a transition in its economic strategy from a more state-led to a more market-led development strategy. The central government’s transition was followed by similar transitions in the constituent states, and West Bengal was no exception. The central thesis of the book is that the way in which this new strategy was implemented by the Left Front was a one (among several?) reason(s) why the CPI(M) and the Left Front lost political power in the 2008–2011 period. However, the book does not claim this. Its stated aims are to ‘recognize certain ideological contradictions’ to ‘develop a more textured understanding’ and ‘develop a more historical nuanced and inductive political-economic analysis’ (all quotations, p. 5).
Leaving aside the question of explanation and accepting the objective of providing an understanding of events during the period under investigation, the most fundamental choice the author makes is to locate his questions in a framework of literature debating the global changes marked by attempts to transition from state-led to marked-led economic development strategies, especially in the Global South. Much of this literature deals with the preconditions for the successful adoption of such strategies, often labelled neoliberal, with their political and institutional features and with the eventual outcomes of the transition in the form of economic growth and welfare. This is handled in an interesting way, but the question remains whether the inspiration of this literature is really helpful when trying to understand the case of West Bengal. The relevance of the broad transitions canvassed elsewhere in the Global South—external economic shocks and macroeconomic instability, debt crisis, hyperinflation, crony capitalism, rapid industrialization and public protests (p. 8)—to West Bengal is questionable. The implementation of reforms, their institutional prerequisites, distributive effects, interest group activities and the structure of reform coalitions are other elements from the international debates that hardly touched upon in the empirical study of West Bengal. India, as the author acknowledges, is a special case.
The analysis starts with an informative survey of the politics of economic transition with examples from several countries around the world, but mostly in the global South, and it ends with an introduction to the economic liberalization of India from 1991 onwards. The reforms in India came as a surprise to many observers, especially because the new policies were maintained despite opposition from powerful interest groups and political parties. Because of India’s federal character, the impact of the reforms varied among the many constituent states of the Indian federation. This observation by the author forms the basis for the analysis in the rest of the book of the specific experience of West Bengal and its CPI(M) government. In the following chapters, the author describes the trends in left politics in West Bengal. The key observation is the change from the early elitist communist party politics to what the author terms the party–society model of politics after gaining political power in the state in 1977. The party–society model describes a situation where the CPI(M) organization expanded in a way that made it a dominant element in a parallel structure to the ordinary state administration, especially in the countryside where the party organization effectively obtained a veto-power over the decisions of the administration and in the process eliminated any opposition from other political parties.
The next chapter conducts a close examination of CPI(M)’s ideological discourse and political rationale, in particular its claim to be a party of the vanguard justifying that the state institutions should be subordinate to the party. This, the author argues, sets CPI(M) apart from other Indian political parties. Over its time as a ruling party, the membership expanded in the rural areas with new members (school teachers, contractors, middle peasants and even rich peasants) joining the party, many with a motive to obtain material benefits and patronage from the membership. Winning elections gradually became the first and foremost aim of the party to keep this system in place. The author presents this development of the party’s discourse and mode of operation as a hegemonic and ‘totalitarian’ (and presumably quite solid) structure.
The chapter that follows describes the industrial decline of West Bengal over a long time period and with a special focus on changes since the Left Front came to power. When the central government started liberalizing the economy in 1991, the CPI(M) protested, but also came to realize the freedoms and new opportunities that the lifting of central economic regulations gave to a local state government. In 1994, the West Bengal government issued a new much more market-friendly industrial policy statement and began working hard to attract private capital—both Indian and foreign—to the state. The aim was to stop the industrial decline and to promote growth and industrial employment and as the author emphasizes, to solve the fiscal crisis of the state. The background for the new strategy was also that limitations of the hitherto dominant reform strategy in the rural areas had become apparent. The new strategy represented a dramatic ideological reversal and was highly controversial within the party and among Left Front parties, and it was probably only made possible by the strong leadership by the then Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu.
The fifth chapter on the politics of transition is the core of the book, and it is the longest, the most interesting and original part of the book. It describes in rich details the actions taken by the government, the many contradictory elements involved for the CPI(M) in the policy, the intense politicization of the process and the many challenges that made it difficult for the new policy direction to be successful. The CPI(M) was divided between different ideological fractions, between the party at the centre and in the state and between top and bottom of the party. It eventually achieved agreement to pursue industrial development in contrast to its earlier emphasis on agriculture, but serious disagreements over how to promote industry remained. While much was achieved, eventually the policy did not result in creating a dynamic and employment promoting industrial sector. And in the process the CPI(M) ended up with losing its political control of the state. An important element in this was the failure by the party to create a coherent vision of what type of alternative transition to industry the party was seeking. The chapter is based on a large number of interviews, many anonymous, documents issued by the CPI(M) or the government as well as observers from news media as well as party insiders. The variety of sources alone gives the story a refreshing character, and the reader gets a very good impression of the debates surrounding the implementation of the new policy.
The book ends by an analysis of the two famous instances where the government’s promotion of private industrial development clashed with the party’s traditional electoral base in rural areas, the clashes in Nandigram and Singur. In both cases, the party tried through violence and authoritarian means to assist private companies in getting land for industrial projects in dramatic conflicts with the local peasants. The author sees these incidents not as isolated but as a culmination of the process of transition that began with the adoption of the new industry-first policy in 1994. The conflicts ended in an ideological delegitimization of the party and its ‘shadow state’ that had been painstakingly established in the rural areas during the first half of the CPI(M) rule. In the panchayat elections of 2008 and then the assembly elections in 2011, the CPI(M) lost power to the TMC. (And it lost once again in 2016, after the completion of the manuscript.)
As stated in the beginning of this review, the book is a brave attempt to understand an important part of the story of the political Left in India. The period of Left rule in West Bengal is of immense interest to observers of Indian politics but certainly also to those interested in Left politics worldwide. The book not only contributes to the understanding of the specific story of West Bengal, but it also contains observations that are relevant for left parties elsewhere struggling with questions of how to promote growth and social progress in today’s globalized world. It is thus a valuable contribution.
There are, however, also many, large and small, critical comments on the book. The origin as a dissertation is perhaps the reason for its engagement with a good number of theoretical literatures and debates not necessary for its own line of argument. The international literature on transitions from state-led to market-based development strategies, from agriculture-based to industry-based and from socialist to capitalist development is not really put to use to illuminate this very localized story of a specific political party in a local, clearly capitalist-dominated setting. Although based on a review of literature, the author tends to stick to his favourites: Rob Jenkins on India’s liberalization (Democratic Politics and Economic Reforms in India, 1999), D. Bhattacharyya on the changes in the CPI(M) (various writings in Economic and Political Weekly 2004–2011) and Milovan Djilas (The New Class, 1957) on the ‘errors of communism’. There is nothing inherently wrong in using these authors, but dangers of simplification are certainly present when the viewpoints of a few authors are elevated out from much larger and nuanced debates. A similar problem arises with the reliance on evidence provided through the interviews. There are very few truly objective observers of the CPI(M) period of rule in West Bengal, and there are plenty of very strong views for or against the party. It is for this reason not easy to decide whose viewpoints to believe in. Are local representatives of business interests or anonymous party members the best and most reliable sources? The author does not discuss these issues, although I find his information gathered from the interviews quite persuasive.
Electoral statistics should always be treated with care. The data on vote shares given in Appendices 1 and 2 (pp. 203–204) are most certainly based on a misreading of Election Commission reports. How can the combined vote shares in 1969 of CPI and CPI(M) exceed 100 per cent? The vote share of CPI(M) in 1977, is it 46 per cent (Appendix 2) or 35 per cent (Appendix 4)? The data in Appendices 3 and 4 seem to be correct. The data could have been used to show that although the CPI(M) has been the winning party for a long time, it has not always been the largest party measured by vote shares. Thus, a relatively small shift in voter preferences can have large consequences in terms of shifts in political power. This is what happened in 2011. Another fact, the party’s close to 55 million members by 2008 (p. 57), can hardly be true for a West Bengal, with a total population of less than 100 million. Maybe the number cited refers to national membership, but how is that relevant for West Bengal?
A book should be judged not only by the answers it provides, but also by the new questions that it leads to. Let me mention some that are relevant for future studies of West Bengal. To fully understand the problems of the CPI(M) in the state, it would be of interest to study the subsequent experience of the Trinamool Congress (and the previous experience with Congress rule). With the CPI(M) out of power, has the advent of a new government meant that the state has improved its prospects for industrial renewal? If not, then the CPI(M) with its many contradictions were perhaps of lesser importance than the author tends to believe. And what has happened to the important ‘shadow state’ of the CPI(M)—has it been appropriated by the TMC today and now provides a base for the electoral success of its new masters? Considering the recent advance of the BJP in the state, how should we understand (and explain) this? These are new questions for future research emerging from the book, and the author should be praised for helping us to raise these.