Left Talks About Development?

By: Subhadeep Bhattacharjee

“Industrialization will continue” is what the Chief Minister of West Bengal Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said in a recent election rally ahead of the civic polls in the state. Nobody doubts his intents to bring some change to the state in the form of industries. Everybody is convinced that the Bengal CM is trying his level best to convince the investors to pump in the much needed wealth into the state. But the big question arises can Mr. Bhattacharjee convince his party men. The answer is a sad negative as he faces much more opposition within his party than anywhere else. None of the indoctrinated member of the Left seem to realize that it is necessary to change with time.

The Chief Minister is a great general in the wrong army. The numerous election rallies that Left leaders host has one common song “we will bring in development to the state.” The big question is what did you do for the past three and half decade that you had been in power? Where were your development plans when you had clear mandate in every state election? No government in India had been blessed with such thumping majority term after term. Had it been a Nitish Kumar or a Narendra Modi, West Bengal would have been the most flourishing state in India. What prevented the Left from taking developmental steps that would have brought in much needed development in the state?

The Left has been regularly portraying itself as a party of the peasants and workers. The productivity of one hectar of land in Bengal is 2.2 metric tons a year compared to 4.5 in Punjab. This despite the state being blessed with the mighty Ganges. So if figures are to prove anything the government has failed. The definition of Kolkata in a major dictionary WordWeb states “One of the largest cities in India and one of the largest cities in the world; located in eastern India; suffers from poverty” So Left did not do anything to protect the interests of the workers as well. It’s claim to fame has been closing down 6500 odd small and big industries in the state from 1970s to the late 1900s

When the entire nation was reaping the benefits of LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization) Left MPs sitting in the opposition benches were busy criticizing the policies of the government. When Parliamentarians from other state were driving the growth engine to their state the Left was busy talking about ideology. The results is a situation where a Left party worker of the 70s is lying in his death bed but his son cannot attend him as he has to earn his living in Bangalore or Pune as his father and his colleagues chased out the intellect of the society and any chance of investment that could have taken place in the state.

At the hour of independence Bengal was the most electrified state in the country and it’s growth rate was second only to Maharashtra. Today 29% of rural Bengal is electrified and the state no longer figures in the top ten states in the country on the GDP growth count. Somebody has to take the blame for all this stagnation that has happened in the state. Will the Left leaders do that? No, they will talk about ideology and Marxism. But it is high time that people in the state wake up and realize that they have offered too many chances to the Left who have failed themselves as well as the state in all parameters of development.