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 the 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 the fruits of India's march to prosperity. There is a desperate desire to catch up, enjoy life and break out of the Rithwick Ghatak-Mrinal Sen caricature.

More than anyone else it is Buddhadeb Bhattacharya 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, on his part, also swore by Gandhism.

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 Potists, Luddites, poverty brokers and plain opportunists has decided that West Bengal must correspond to the idyllic bliss of Pather Panchali. In fighting for the 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 Du bigha jamin. 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, romantic 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 Yechuri that he should be batting for China, not enhancing India's competitive edge. We can delight at the professional petition-writers turning up to demonstrate in front of the CPI(M) headquarters in Delhi rather than firing missiles at the Congress and the BJP.

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. Having organised the fall of West Bengal from India's second-most industrialised state in the Sixties to a point where it is somewhere near the bottom of the league tables, the professional agitators have realised it is time to make amends. Many big time investors remain sceptical, which is why the state government has to walk the extra mile to woo them.

Should this be the occasion for quiet magnanimity - to drive home the fact that history is actually on our side - or should it be the moment to berate Marxists for disavowing their destructive ways? Is it, for example, the job of the BJP to be the upholders of pukka socialism and teach the CPI(M) true Marxism? Should Singur instead not become the symbol of an embryonic 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 Bhattacharya 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 trades 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, Bhattacharya has many of the attributes of India's most successful Chief Minister. This may be unflattering for him but, like Narendra Modi, the Bengali Buddha has shown that decisive governance is also good politics. Of course, Bhattacharya still has a very long way to run. The CPI(M)'s 30 year rule over West Bengal is still characterised by vengeful petty tyranny against its opponents. What is benignly described as "cadre raj" epitomises some of the worst aspects of intolerance, particularly in rural Bengal. There is no opposition worth the name because the democratic culture that permits organised dissent just doesn't exist. The heavy-handed treatment meted out to the protestors in Singur would, in the normal course, have been viewed as human rights abuses had they taken place in states run by the Congress or BJP. The CPI(M) has a fetish for control and wants the party to oversee all development and destruction. There is very little autonomy accorded to civil society.

Yet, the economic regeneration of West Bengal, which Bhattacharya is attempting has to be welcomed. If nothing else, it is bound to create the space for rekindling the creative urges, which have been stifled by decades of stagnation and decline. It should be borne in mind that the intellectual and political relevance of Bengal have always coincided with periods of economic vibrancy. Bengal ruled itself out of the national mainstream from the mid-1960s by embracing a spurious and narrow-minded leftism. And this coincided with the economic downfall of the state.

It may sound excessively reductionist, but the recovery of economic self-esteem is a precondition for a creative political environment - at least in Bengal. In putting West Bengal back on India's investment map, Bhattacharya may well be setting the stage for the eventual destruction of Bengali Stalinism.

Courtesy: www.newindpress.com, December 14, 2006