Red terror

The massacre of policemen by Maoists in the Midnapore district of West Bengal points once again to the apparent collapse of the administration in that state. That the policemen were ambushed was bad enough but that they were without adequate means to defend themselves is inexcusable.

But the bigger question for the Left Front government is why and how the Naxal menace has reappeared in West Bengal, more than three decades after it was apparently not just wiped out but solid land reforms were undertaken. When the Left came to power in 1977, it was Bengal’s rural areas that it concentrated on, while neglecting Calcutta and other cities. The message at that time was clear: equitable distribution of land was needed to set right the class and caste discriminations of the past. The concerns of the bourgeoisie were unimportant and best ignored.

But revelations of the past few years — especially since the protests of Nandigram and Singur — suggest that 33 years of communist rule not only drove industry out of Bengal but also neglected the villages. Complacency and arrogance became the hallmarks of the communist cadre as election after election seemed to prove that the Left was inviolable in Bengal. They took longevity and continuity as an excuse for lack of action. In some sense, there is a parallel here with the first few decades of Congress rule in India, where the party started to believe that it was greater than the country itself. It took a few electoral jolts and some years in the wilderness for the party to get back on track.
It was the agitations by farmers against industrial takeover of their lands — with the full collusion of the government — which turned India’s eye to the real story of the years of neglect that the people of Bengal have suffered from. The state has not managed to do well on too many social and human development indicators and surely part of this Maoist resurgence comes from widespread social dissatisfaction and despair. In its arrogance or even its apathy, the government has not managed to join the counter attack on Maoists launched by the Centre, even though it has faced the brunt of Maoist attacks. For years, the refrain in Bengal was that although its own village of Naxalbari was the font of the movement, Naxalites no longer had any traction in that state. That is no longer true. And a beleaguered government does not seem to have the answers or the determination to deal with this renewed threat.