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IT is not often that the outcomes of state assembly elections generate such a widespread feeling of relief, if not approval. Nowhere is this more apparent than in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu where the electorate handed out a decisive drubbing to the incumbent regimes – a clear indication that the voters as citizens, even as they value performance and delivery, react badly to the arrogance, high-handedness and insensitivity on the part of those in whom they had earlier reposed trust.

Take West Bengal first. There is little doubt that the early years of the CPI(M) led Left Front are remembered positively. Not only did the Jyoti Basu government prevent widespread violence against the Congress for its many misdemeanours during the ‘hoodlum years’ of the early 1970s and the Emergency, its successful spearheading of Operation Barga and then the institutionalization of the panchayat system both helped spur agricultural growth and effect a transfer of power that won the Left durable support in the countryside. Equally important was its ability to keep communal violence in check. But in many ways that is the end of the good news.

Over the three and a half decades that the Left Front ruled West Bengal, even as the party consolidated its hold over power, the situation of the people stagnated, if not, slipped. But more than the many questionable policy choices – a singular disregard for the urban areas, the inability to spur industrial growth, the steady decimation of the education and health infrastructure, and this list can be expanded – it was the complete blurring of distinction between the government and party that effectively turned West Bengal into a one-party state. Convinced of its electoral invincibility, the party grew more arrogant and increasingly out of touch with both the miseries and the aspirations of the people.

The fact that the Left Front survived as long as it did is testimony, not to its ability to satisfy the urges of the electorate, but its organizational acumen in using all levers of state power to garner votes and a divided opposition. As long as the disaffected masses felt that there was no alternative, the Left was safe. And it is here that the tenacity of the Mamata Banerjee led Trinamool Congress, which waged a long and lonely battle against Left misrule, needs to be given full credit. A combination of the mishandling of Singur and Nandigram on issues of land acquisition, the Rizwanur case and the publication of the Sachar Committee Report on the status of Muslims, alienated what was till then a secure voter base and Mamata’s ability to break the climate of fear and despondency finally paid rich dividends.

Hopefully, a chastened Left will draw the right lessons from its electoral debacle. It needs to break out of its ideological strait-jacket, particularly about operating in a multiparty democracy, shed its Leninist organizational legacy, rework the relations between party and government and, above all, imbibe humility in its relationship with people. Free citizens do not approve of a party seeking to meddle in all aspects of everyday life.

The Tamil Nadu verdict too is proof that parties can no longer afford to take the voter for granted. An obsessive preoccupation with the family, overweening nepotism and corruption, even if the government functions reasonably well, does not go down well. There were, of course, other reasons behind the dismal performance of the DMK-Congress, in particular the huge power shortages which badly affected agriculture and small-scale industry.

But more than performance or alliances, it was the attempt of the DMK to reduce the party to the family, in complete disregard for the intelligence and dignity of the voters, that eventually resulted in its defeat. The ageing patriarch should have been more sensitive to the fact that the next generation in the family does not enjoy the same level of credibility as he once did, and that in the Jayalalithaa led AIADMK, the party faced a formidable opponent, capable of capitalizing on his mistakes.

Even as the Congress/UPA can draw some legitimate satisfaction from its credible victory in Assam as also its narrow victory in Kerala, its drubbing in the Kadappa bye-election by Jaganmohan Reddy, this despite the full might of the party arrayed against him, should serve as a wake-up call.

The fate of both the CPI(M) in West Bengal and the DMK in Tamil Nadu is testimony that the goodwill of past performance and sacrifice is no guarantee against declining returns. An obsessive reliance on family without refurbishing the organization and empowering regional and grassroots leaders – a hallmark of Congress culture – is clear indication that unless the grand old party seriously revisits its basic premise, it too may soon be relegated to history.

Harsh Sethi