Goodbye, faded red?

Failed governments get thrown out in the elections. Corrupt politicians go to prison. Dictators are forced to step down. Regimes change. Everywhere, except in West Bengal.

I am on the wrong side of thirty now. If I was a football player, I would probably consider retirement. And yet, I have not seen any other party in power in West Bengal except the party I prefer to term Communism redundancy advocacy party (henceforth will be referred to as crap). An entire generation of Bengali's grew up, went to school, went to college, found a job, started a family; while the same crap ruled. The remarkable part is, West Bengal is neither a heaven on earth as this kind of total allegiance to crap will indicate, nor it has a dictatorial system. Crap won democratic elections. So many of them, that I lost count.

The obvious question is why, and unfortunately there is not a clear non-partisan answer. Part of it is like how the reservation system is implemented in India - so called backward castes were treated terribly by your great great grandfather, so the dumb guy living a palatial house next door with a backward-caste-lastname will be picked ahead of you for admission to a college or for a job. The previous government did some unmentionable bad stuff, which our generation only heard about, but that meant they can never ever be voted back. To all fairness, crap did some good stuff for rural folks yeas back, but simultaneously they systematically politicized the whole society. People in high posts all over the state became political appointees. People needed to be crap-sympathizers to get jobs or promotions. Effectively west Bengal became crap monopoly. Fear and favor ruled. Opposition parties had no effective existence - their candidates could not enter their constituencies. In polling booth after booth in rural areas, crap got close to 100% of the votes, sometimes more.

One has to give credit where credit is due. I am sure it was no mean feat for them to control every aspect of the society so efficiently. But as they say, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. They grew arrogant, and the pressure to keep their loyal followers happy was growing all the time. They needed low skill jobs, and crap also had to keep rural folks happy. Mediocrity ruled, teaching of English in schools were abolished, computers were shunned. That crippled an entire generation, who could not compete in national level. Exodus of students to engineering colleges down south became commonplace. Those who could afford, learned English anyway. The class difference was ironically used as a tool by crap to paint a picture of elites against us. The state which lead in education and innovation lost its aura, and those who succeeded did not because of the state policies, but in spite of them.

Imaginary enemies were invented and blamed for all ills. Amazingly people fell for it too, or pretended they did to keep crap happy. All the non-developments were blamed on the central government, all the dissidence on CIA and USA. Periodic strikes were organized against them, even when the central government was supported by crap, the ridiculousness of which was somehow drowned in mass hysteria. Unions and unionized workers became powerful, so powerful that they started dictating the terms to the factory managements. Those who tried to comply with the outrageous demands could not afford it long. Those who did not were termed as "America-r dalal" and violence ensued. Net result was the same though - closed factories. That militant unionism spread to all sectors. In universities, non teaching stuff proudly claimed "Aamrai to sob chalai", in government offices, there was no impetus to get work done, or even come on time. The whole mentality was turned into an "us versus them" scenario, where "them" were conveniently defined according to the situation. Anyone could block the road, burn buses, beat up the station-master, occupy or encroach on a land, and still claim to be a victim.

I do not know if the alternative will be any better. Honestly, I do not care, and that is not because I am living away. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I see a real chance of crap being cleaned in this election. A change is desperately needed to get rid of this well entrenched arrogance propagated and used in all these years. I hope that happens.

P.S - these are all intended to be factual statements.

Good Ol Times Are Back in Bengal

My profound apologies to my nonexistent international readers. I could not resist commenting on this Singur-Tata-Mamata drama.

When I was growing up, this same bunch of people, who has been in power for an eternity in Bengal, opposed computers in particular and industrialization in general. They called it the US conspiracy to rob the youth of their jobs. We listened. After all, anything going wrong in Bengal was the fault of the imperialist Americans, when the central government could not be blamed. Again we listened. It felt slightly cliched when they supported the central government but still blamed them for all the ills. But then again, we were so used to it by then, we still listened. And of course the big bad Americans were sitting right there, staring at us, sniffing at every opportunity to harm the hard working Bengalis.

So how did they keep all these enemies away? By sheer people power, of course. Any thing you do not like, assemble a mob, pelt stones at random directions, set something totally unconnected on fire and block traffic for hours. It obviously worked, since the idea gained ground. Soon, we were swamped with gifted holidays (read strikes) and a chance to play cricket on the main thoroughfares of the cities. One has to notice how cricketing fortunes of Bengal improved from then on. The police never tried to stop any protesters (unless they were from opposition parties, who by definition were anti-people and pro-American) - and anybody even thinking about defying them, willingly or by some compulsion, met with violent consequences. All was well. How I miss those peaceful times.

Now this poor lady. She is only trying to learn from history. Only way to connect to the people of our state is evidently to cause chaos and disruption, and oppose industries grabbing land. And now, no wonder, she is being blamed as a part of a bigger conspiracy by Americans.

I do not know much about the exact details of the land acquisition process and fairness of the compensation. I do not know if it was good agricultural land.

But sitting in the land where Americans are still a majority, I do know this. Americans care a damn about whats happening in there. And I have a sneaky feeling they never did.

Another "Red-wash" for CPI(M) in WB

*sigh*

Damn!

Its over just like that. This is the first time I did not travel anywhere in my spring break (impending qualifiers and all that) and thought I would have a full week of time to do the stuff I hate do normally. Like cleaning up my apartment or doing laundry. But with a hectic next month staring at my face after the break is all but over - I realised my house is as messy as before and I am barely left with any wear-able clothes for the week. *Sigh*

I have not really written this post to wash my dirty linen in public though. I am more worried about a lot of other things - one of them is the assembly elections in West Bengal. I am slightly more politically aware than a lot of other people would expect - and I am disappointed to see the two Congress factions bickering among themselves - which would result in left parties sweeping the elections once again. I did a bit of "research" after the last general elections and here are the results. They clearly show how the CPI(M) could have been given a run for their money even in the past scenario - when the opposition had insignificant presence in rural areas resulting in CPI(M) polling almost hundred percent ( or more!) votes. Now the voter lists apparently have been cleaned up a bit and the observation would be stricter. A fragmented opposition would lose their best chance in years to do any damage the ruling combine just by squabbling among themselves and not looking at the bigger picture.

P.S - If someone has the email address of Mamata Bannerjee - please forward her this post!