By Badri Raina, ZNet, May 24, 2011
Consternation
After some thirty four years of undefeated rule in the Indian state of West Bengal—often called the “red bastion” by political pundits of other shades—the Left Front has been voted out of power.
Although the shout has gone up how the Left has been “routed,” the fact is that there is greater disbelief among Left-detractors at the circumstance than among the Left itself, stridently politic pre-result noises notwithstanding. Those that gloat and experience glee barely believe that the beast has been quelled.
And for good reason. However the “rout” may be trumpeted, imagine that even in defeat, the Left Front has polled 41% of the popular vote, a million or so votes more than it polled in the parliamentary elections of 2009! And after more than three decades of continuous rule. The question may be asked: when was the last time that either of India’s major centrist parties obtained a 40% verdict in a regional or parliamentary election? The answer to that might take us all the way back to the first decade after Independence. Indeed, most parties set to form new governments in the five states that went to the hustings in the current round will do so on an electoral base far smaller than the vote the Left still commands in West Bengal. Such are the maverick vagaries of the first-past-the-post system. And yet the Left has lost, due mainly to forms of high-handedness which the Trinamool Congress and Congress combined were able to exploit fully among sections of Bengalis, including erstwhile Left supporters.
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