Those familiar with Bengali films of an earlier vintage may be forgiven for thinking that West Bengal is the land of the permanently aggrieved. Judging by the celluloid depictions, nothing ever seems to go right for the hapless clerk and the small peasant. The family's medical bills are forbidding, the son struggles unsuccessfully to find employment, there is no money to pay for the daughter's wedding, the moneylender usurps the meagre produce, the pet dog whines for lack of food and, to cap it all, the local factory closes down and the owner, inevitably a lascivious Marwari, immortalised by Utpal Dutt, runs away with the Provident Fund. The hero, if at all he can be called that, finally finds solace in joining the thousands who while away their creative hours marching with red flags and chanting cholbe na.

Of course, today's reality is not so unprepossessing. The mobile phone revolution with its attendant cultural attributes has hit West Bengal with a vengeance. There is a spectacular retail boom throughout the State and even the roads don't resemble a throwback to Berlin, 1945. Most important, the average Bengali appears to have realised that man-made disasters deprived the State of reaping all the fruits of India's march to prosperity.

There is a desperate desire to catch up, enjoy life and break out of the Ritwick Ghatak-Mrinal Sen caricature. More than anyone else, it is Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee who has grasped this yearning for change. He may have begun life reciting the morbid poetry of Sukanta and Mayakovsky but he has evolved with time. He has turned his back on the dreary intellectualism that has characterised "progressive" Bengali thought. That he claims to be a Marxist is neither here nor there. Jawaharlal Nehru also claimed to be a Gandhian.

The controversy over the acquisition of 997 acres of fertile agricultural land for a Tata-run car factory in Singur epitomises the conflict between two perceived notions of Bengal. It is understandable that a rag-tag alliance of Pol Pot-ists, Luddites, poverty brokers and plain opportunists has decided that West Bengal must correspond to the idyllic bliss of Pather Panchali. In fighting for 70-year-old Kashinath Manna's right to prevent appropriation of his small holding, they are wistfully recreating the lost battle of Rabindranath Tagore's Do Bigha Zameen. In the battle between the Arcadian and the motorised vulgarian, their vote is decisively with the former. The choice, if nothing else, is so wonderfully filmi-style Bengali.

True, there is a perverse delight in pointing to the double-standards of the comrades. We also love it when professional dissidents like Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar forcefully remind Sitaram Yechury that he should be thinking of China not India. At the end of the day, however, these are school debating games. The point is that after four decades of vandalism, the barbarians have recognised the virtues of capitalism and development.

Should this be the occasion for quiet magnanimity -history is on our side - or should it be the moment to berate Marxists for disavowing their destructive ways? Is it the job of the BJP to be the upholders of pukka Socialism? Should Singur instead not become the symbol of a New Left which has turned its back on the destructive legacy of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and other upholders of the failed theology? My admiration for Bhattacharjee is boundless. He has taken on the CPI(M) orthodoxy headlong and won. He has promised to harness market capitalism and he is doing it by cutting out doctrinaire rubbish from Government policy. He is a decisive Chief Minister who espouses the right sort of causes - opposition to unchecked immigration from Bangladesh, stern measures to tackle Islamist terrorism, the creation of a modern education sector and impatience with militant trade unions. He promised he would deliver the Singur land to the Tatas by December and looks set to meet the deadline. He has shown that firm and courageous decisions win admiration and votes.

Indeed, Bhattacharjee has many of the attributes of India's most successful Chief Minister. Like Narendra Modi, the Bengali Buddha has shown that decisive governance is also good politics.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, December 12, 2006.