Enemies masquerading as comrades have been the biggest threat to Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee?s vision of a new Bengal. On Thursday, his enemies struck big and hard, shutting down the state in the name of an industrial strike. The miseries inflicted by the bandh on the people and the damage it caused to the promise of Bengal?s economic revival were not entirely unexpected. But the first impressions of the bandh could be misleading. It could, therefore, be wrong to see it as a victory for the Centre of Indian Trade Unions. In fact, CITU may have actually overreached itself and thereby given the chief minister a stronger case to put it in its place. The new economic scenario and Mr Bhattacharjee?s own reforms agenda have made CITU?s old tactics largely irrelevant. Since manufacturing is no longer the main choice for new industries, the very idea of the working class too is undergoing dramatic changes. Even the traditional idea of trade unionism is fast losing relevance in the new industrial and economic context. But CITU seems to be unwilling ? and unable ? to grasp the new realities and change its old ways. The more it fails to change, the more marginalized it feels. The CITU?s overzealous ways to enforce the bandh were actually a sign of its desperation. It threw tantrums only because it could not win the argument. The irony was that CITU ended up hurting Bengal and Mr Bhattacharjee more than the government in New Delhi.

How Mr Bhattacharjee faced CITU?s onslaught was perhaps even more significant. His grim visage and stony silence barely concealed his anger at CITU?s strong-arm methods. A louder message came from his wife, Ms Meera Bhattacharjee, who went out to work in defiance of the bandh. If the chief minister did not openly cry foul, it was left to the industries minister, Mr Nirupam Sen, to call the strike ?unwarranted?. The two of them have led the charge for remaking Bengal?s image. They know how hard the task has been and how much harder the strike would make it. Mr Bhattacharjee has also been largely successful in getting his party on his side. That is why, for all its love of agitational politics elsewhere, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) stands by his reformist policies in Bengal. The strike itself was an example of the CPI(M)?s strategy for national politics. It was clearly aimed at expanding the left?s influence across the country.

The problem is that neither the investors nor the people really make the fine distinction between Mr Bhattacharjee?s reforms and CITU?s militancy. The conflicts between the party?s leaders in New Delhi and in Bengal only confuse them. If CITU shuts down Bengal, they blame it on Mr Bhattacharjee, just as they see in his policies a new future for the state. He must, therefore, fight it out within the party. The strike and its excesses in Bengal have handed him an opportunity. He has had some successes; the CPI(M) and even the CITU have been forced to change many of their old ways. But the bandh showed how unreformed communists can remain prisoners of the past. They do not inspire great hopes for Bengal?s future.