This is an oath of office that Asim Dasgupta was certainly not administered when he became minister. Yet he thinks he has a greater obligation to support a Left-sponsored strike by the employees of his own government than to his duties as Bengal’s finance minister. And that too on a day when his party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), tries everything to foil a bandh called by an opposition party. Mr Dasgupta’s open support to the employees’ strike shows two things. It exposes once again the CPI(M)’s doublespeak. This duplicity goes beyond bandhs and strikes and is at the core of the party’s strategies on most other issues. When it suits the party’s political agenda, it has no qualms about adopting the same unfair and undemocratic methods of which it keeps on accusing its opponents. More ominously, Mr Dasgupta’s remark shows the CPI(M)’s incapacity — and unwillingness — to make a distinction between the functions of a political party and those of a government. As a minister, his allegiance has to be to his constitutional duties and to the rule of law. The government, in which he is a minister, is obliged by the Constitution to serve all the people in Bengal. His support to a partisan cause cannot be of any consequence to his office and its responsibilities. Such a stand makes a minister open to the charge of inciting the employees against his own government.

Such dishonesty among its politicians has been at the root of Bengal’s economic and social decline. Mamata Banerjee may be carrying on the old game in order to promote her own political interests, but the CPI(M), which is the original sinner, has no moral right to lecture her on the disastrous impact of bandhs on the state’s economy. The chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, should know best what effect his party’s deceptive politics has on the economy and on his own efforts to change things. Every time Bengal is forced to observe a bandh or strike, investors and others ask if anything has really changed here. When a bandh or strike is organized by the ruling party or its affiliated unions, the question is whether things can change at all under such rulers. The Marxists’ obtuse view of politics is a worse problem for Bengal than Ms Banerjee’s street battles.