What went wrong with Left rule in WB: Exploiters protected interests of exploited

By Harasankar Adhikari  

Left philosophy guides and directs their works against exploitation, aiming to protect the interests of exploited classes, and it believes that the class struggle is the only weapon to establish equity in a multilayered stratified society. Actually, it wrongly publicizes the process of establishing equity. We observe that it only tries to establish a class balance. The Left's every act, i.e., movement or agitation, is against capitalism or capitalists. But it has failed to achieve it because capitalists are the cause of progress and development in society and the nation. 

Their investment in business or other sectors may be in the production or service sectors, which are only venues for jobs, employment, and so forth. Secondly, people's democracy is only a system to include all for ruling a nation. It is another wrong step because people's elected representatives are mostly working for their own affiliated political parties. They strengthen their own party supporters where the supporters of opposition parties are deprived. The people’s government transforms into a government of the political parties in power. All the political parties in democratic India expend their different sector-wise unions for women, students, organized, unorganized, informal labourers, and workers who are achieving their rights. 

But these unions are for ensuring vote banks. The left-wing parties of West Bengal set up unions for all. But these do not stand for election-winning. Unionism in West Bengal has destroyed the work culture, especially in education institutions, industries, and so forth

Marxism remarkably states about the surplus value that the capitalists (bourgeoisie) enjoy through discrimination against the working classes (proletariat). So, there is a need for the right distribution of this surplus value, or equal distribution of labour, which would be the only way to bring about economic equity. Is it ever possible when a capitalist invests a huge amount of money with high risk? They are involved in a complex process of profit and loss. The labour class does not take any responsibility for this investment. But left educates the labour class for their rights for wages, working hours, and others. Undoubtedly, these are important and relevant. Do these support people without work? The high levels of unionism and unrest among labour disrupt the work culture, and production goes down. 

As a result of this, once West Bengal had a high industrial contribution, it turned to a minimum, and almost the majority of the industries (heavy and medium) came to an end. Industrial labourers were provoked to movement and agitation on dry land. They become victims of poverty and hunger. Even female members of their families entered into prostitution. So, politics brings new crises to the working class. 

Left-wing rule declined the hope of industrialization in West Bengal. What wrong has been done by the left was realized very later at their last phase of rule, and it tried to start it again at Singur-Hooghly. But the opposition led by TMC struggled and stopped it at all costs. Thereafter, West Bengal has no such industry due to its land acquisition policy, syndicate raj, and political environment. But the government of West Bengal incurred a huge amount of revenue with a summit called Bengal for Business every year. But industrialization is out of pocket.

Exploitation has been done with the school and college teachers of West Bengal. The left-wing government initiated the recruitment of para-teachers in schools. The para-teachers had the same degree and the same work but got a contractual appointment with a low remuneration compared with the regular full-time teachers. 

Critically, it was a policy to promote cadre-raj at the school level. Then, it initiated the recruitment of contractual college teachers with low remuneration. Thus, it destroys the quality of education in the state. The TMC-led government of West Bengal has just finished selling teacher jobs in schools.

So, West Bengal has lost all its glory, and the future of the state is at risk. Next, who may rebuild this state? It is the biggest challenge for the future.