Kolkata: CPI(M) Patriarch Jyoti Basu’s fervent appeal to Congress supporters in West Bengal to vote for the Left in the 10 assembly elections was a SOS from a sinking ship. Ironically, it was Prakash Karat who urged people to get off the ‘sinking ship’, the Congress party during the run-up to the last Lok Sabha elections.

As the Left Front in Bengal has morphed into one of the most reviled political forces in Bengal after being in power for 32 years, it is wildly hoping against hope of driving a wedge between the Congress and Mamata Bannerjee’s Trinamool Congress party to again come to power by proxy in 2011.

It would continue to try and wager on such an impossibility as this is the first time Mamata Bannerjee’s TMC and the Congress have come together to drive the Marxists out of power. And they have the blessings of the people of Bengal evident in results of the last Lok Sabha elections where they lost 17 seats to the alliance and the assembly elections held thereafter.

According to West Bengal PCC president Pradip Bhattacharya, “Basu's statement has exposed the bankruptcy of the CPI(M) in West Bengal. How can the Congress supporters cast their votes in favour of the CPI(M), which is their party's political enemy?" According to him, the plea was made by veteran communist and former chief minister Jyoti Basu at the behest of Front chairman Biman Bose and Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.

Communists know that a credibility loss after 32 years cannot be brought back in a couple of years and the people of Bengal are not willing to buy the idea of asking the Congress to return what they think are past favours for supporting them at the Centre.

That explains their last ditch attempt by roping in the nonagerian former chief minister.

And their pet issues of anti-centre read Congress, anti-imperialism read the US, empowering the downtrodden and uplifting the minorities don’t hold good anymore. The Sachar committee report testified the abysmal record of Muslims in West Bengal compared to other states with a lower population percentage. With Barack Obama in the White House, the anti-US logic doesn’t hold water anymore.

But why have the people decided now to give the Left Front a resounding lesson after bearing with them for the last 32 years?

They are witnessing a real TMC-Congress alliance for the first time in the state. And a major national party like the Congress could not have done on its own what Mamata and her TMC did by basing their campaign only on Bengal-centric rhetoric. Trust on her was rightly bestowed by the Congress high command by letting her have her way for the recent assembly elections of central Kolkata’s Sealdah and Bowbazar by pulling away party candidates. And the drift away from the Left Front veers as much to the TMC as the Congress, which has emerged as the most popular national party.

If Marxist government, supposed to be in sync with the poor, is updating an error free below poverty line (BPL) list for all the 341 blocks in West Bengal after 32 years, then it smacks of administrative ineptitude. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya himself felt that political allegiance had impacted list building instead of poverty.  Now the chief minister is asking officials to make poverty the determinant instead of political leanings as 1.97 crore people are under BPL of a population of 8 crore according to the last census.

Take the traditional vote bank of the Left, the poor and downtrodden, tribals, Muslims and even the middle class. They have all veered away. Even in NREGA, West Bengal has faltered and the reasons are self explanatory. And ideological leanings have not only impacted lifting people out of poverty but it had also seeped into every sector, be it education, health, law enforcement or any other, making all of them fall from grace.

The middle class is miffed as higher educational institutions staffed with Marxist ideologues have turned mediocre making them send their wards to other cities for an elementary graduation degree. English was taken off the primary education level in the mid-80’s, reversed in the last few years to box them in the state’s ideological perceptions.

Firing on villagers in Nandigram and Singur proved communist party cadres and police were one and the law keepers of West Bengal can either stay holed up in their barracks or fire indiscriminately at unarmed villagers. And divergent views emerged recently from the administration and the CM after swapping imprisoned tribal women for a police officer held hostage by Maoists. Much of the anger in the villages is due to the ideological nepotism that froze socio-economic condition of large swathes of the rural population despite lofty Marxist ideologies.

And the secret disenchantment of apparatchiks about the top brass at AK Gopalan Bhaban is no secret either. But the state party men could also not maintain the bond with people on the ground. While the communists talk of TMC violence, they forget that much of their alleged cadre based violence is not from ground up but from top down. Brinda Karat suggested dum dum dawai (severe bashing up) for the opposition to Nandigram land taking by the government in 2007.

But why they have not banned the Maoists as yet?

People of Bengal want the CPI (M) out as arrogance has made both the party office at Kolkata and the headquarters at AK Gopalan Bhaban balloon into the stratosphere. People want political parties to take charge of Bengal whose top brass are also elected by people’s mandate and not by the process followed in China and erstwhile USSR. While the government and other political parties stood strong about recent Chinese incursions into Arunachal Pradesh, the Left parties were the ones that kept quiet.

People also wonder why the Left was so wary of taking power at the Centre when they had a real chance more than 10 years ago with Jyoti Basu as a PM candidate.

Did the Marxists know all along that affirmative action is imperative in Central governance and they would be better positioned opposing them? Then what exactly is the leitmotif of the Marxists that have in the last couple of years turned the Left movement on its head.

Buddhadeb inherited a cancerous CPI(M) that grew in strength not because of pro-poor ideologues after the Left Front came to power in 1977, but self seekers. And in the two and more decades before him, the party grew in strength only while the core vote bank was neglected. And the SOS from the patriarch was a last bid attempt to stave off the inevitable.