Column

The Maoist threat in Lalgarh, West Bengal, is less an indicator of the growing strength of violent Left-wing groups than of the state’s unwillingness to confront them.

With an estimated committed cadre of around 10,000 combatants all over India, it is not beyond the power of the Central and state governments to defeat, disband and rehabilitate them over the next couple of years. But through sheer callousness and carelessness we have allowed a minor threat to grow into a Frankenstein.

Let’s dispose of the Prakash Karat nonsense first. When the Centre imposed, or rather reconfirmed, its ban on the Maoists this week, Comrade Karat was quick to take a holier-than-thou line: No, thanks. We don’t believe in banning them. We prefer to tackle the Maoists politically, he said in as many words.

This is humbug, coming as it does from the same man who has been shouting from the rooftops about banning the VHP, Bajrang Dal and Sri Ram Sene, as the Indian Express cleverly pointed out.

But let’s ignore the double standards. The Maoist threat surely needs to be tackled politically. But wasn’t that what the Left Front was doing for the last 30 years? If Karat’s answer is ‘yes, we have done that’, then the Left Front should resign. Thirty years is a long enough lease on power for a Stalinist party to make its political points to the people. If the answer is ‘no, we need another chance to deal with the Maoists politically,’ then the CPM is history.

The reality that emerges is clear: far from being a party committed to the poor, the CPM has become so self-absorbed as to lose all touch with reality. It has ruled West Bengal not by delivering good governance, but by outsourcing governance to party cadres.

Under CPM rule, the state has receded and party strongmen and hoodlums call the shots. Little wonder then that people are turning against an undemocratic, Stalinist state in Lalgarh. The Maoists are merely taking advantage of this widespread disenchantment with the Left Front in West Bengal to build a long-term base from which to develop their own undemocratic agenda.

Signs of Left Front decay have been around for a while. They did not surface just in the recent Lok Sabha elections, when the Congress-Trinamool alliance gave Karat & Co a bloody nose. In every previous election, the anti-Left vote was 40 per cent or more, but with the Congress and Trinamool going it alone, the swing vote stayed at home. This is the secret of the Left Front’s 30-and-odd years of misrule. There was no alternative.

Resentment against the Left Front has been building so strongly that Mamata Banerjee was able to mobilise support against the chief minister’s belated efforts to bring back industry to West Bengal.

From Singur to Nandigram to Shalboni (where the Jindals are planning a steel plant), people have equated any project associated with the Left Front as poison. In Shalboni, which is next-door to Lalgarh, no farmer or tribal was forced to hand over his land by the state.

The process was handled far better than in Singur and Nandigram, but despite this the CPM faced local hostility. This can have only one meaning: the people are suspicious about the party’s intentions. This also explains why it is the CPM’s offices and cadre that are targeted by local resistance groups in Lalgarh, giving the Maoists a chance to fish in troubled waters.

This is what should worry Karat. His party is no longer capable of dealing with the situation politically. The more it tries to do so, the more the Maoists will gain, for the CPM has little credibility left.

Unfortunately, the alternatives aren’t any better. While the Trinamool-Congress alliance is indeed a serious contender for power, Mamata Banerjee’s years in the wilderness have brought her closer to fringe groups like the Maoists, giving them the legitimacy they do not deserve.

In the circumstances, there is no option but to deal firmly with the Maoists before they do further damage. The liberals among us should be asking the Maoists to surrender rather than finding excuses for their murder and mayhem. We tend to get confused whenever brigands claim to speak on behalf of the downtrodden. Driven by guilt, we silently begin to espouse their cause by talking about corruption, lack of social justice and poverty as bigger evils.

Even while admitting that the state has failed to deliver on several fronts, we should not buy the logic that the Maoists are somehow saints trying to get the poor a better deal. They are undemocratic, violent and the very antithesis of ordinary decency.They must be asked to surrender or must be taken out. The development agenda can follow only when the state re-establishes its authority and credibility.