Sunday, when municipal elections were held in Salt Lake and Calcutta, will be remembered as the day the Left Front government decisively broke with its own past. For the first time since it came to power in 1977, the Left Front government allowed the rule of law to prevail even when this went against the cadre of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). This phenomenon, incredible at first sight to most people accustomed to the shameless use of cadre power by the CPI(M) on election day, was most visible in Salt Lake. The break with the past was exemplified in the outrage of the former chief minister, Mr Jyoti Basu, when he lamented, ?At the end of my career, it pains me to see our men being beaten up by police under our government.?? The simple point that Mr Basu missed is that if CPI(M) workers ? ?our men? in Mr Basu?s parlance ? break the law, they are liable to be victims of police action. For the first time since the comrades took charge of Writers? Buildings, the police acted on the axiom that nobody is above the law. Implicit in Mr Basu?s statement is the expectation that members and workers of the CPI(M) should be treated with kid gloves by the police. Under the new dispensation of the present chief minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, this expectation has been belied.

Those who are familiar with the way the CPI(M) works will find it difficult to believe two things. First, that the police acted the way they did in Salt Lake without the green signal from the chief minister, who also holds the police portfolio. Second, that the chief minister gave the green signal without the consent of the party headquarters in Alimuddin Street. The government and the party have moved in tandem to curb the cadre in a sensitive area like Salt Lake. The aim is to send out a clear signal to the rank and file: abuse of the law will not be tolerated by the government even when such abuse is done in the name and in the cause of the party. Governance has been placed above the party, and the latter has deviated from the well-known communist dictum that the party is always right.

Mr Bhattacharjee has chosen to speak to a wider constituency than the one represented by the converted and the loyalists. Mr Bhattacharjee obviously wants to make his government more acceptable to those who have an ingrained fear of the CPI(M) as a party committed to the politics of violence and protest. This aim is in tune with his agenda to transform the face of West Bengal through the injection of private investment and enterprise. Potential investors have to be convinced that Mr Bhattacharjee?s government is capable of maintaining law and order, and will unhesitatingly act against the cadre of the CPI(M) when they threaten law and order. A new era demands new priorities of governance.