In election time, a statement declaring the obvious acquires an importance. During his whistle-stop campaign tour of West Bengal, the prime minister described how the state had declined in the last three decades under the rule of the Left Front. This is a self-evident truth. People like the incumbent chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, and his cup-bearer and finance minister, Asim Dasgupta, may want to debate this by juggling statistics or by pointing out that West Bengal is still better off than some states, but this is no more than Messrs Bhattacharjee and Dasgupta believing in their own propaganda. That West Bengal is no longer an economic powerhouse goes without saying: the parlous state of its public finances and the complete lack of industrial investment are two critical indicators of West Bengal’s economic decline. In other spheres too, the same story can be repeated. The condition of government hospitals tells a tragic tale and the state of most schools and colleges echoes that. The prime minister made a special mention of Presidency College — an institution which was once the pride of India — that was systematically destroyed by the Left Front government in the name of removing elitism in education. The prime minister’s description of West Bengal’s decline, however unpalatable it might be to the chief minister, has too much of the ring of truth about it and it must have struck a chord among his listeners.
Close on the heels of the prime minister came the union home minister, P. Chidambaram, to West Bengal. He was as scathing as the prime minister about the performance of the Left Front government. There may have been a hint — but only a hint — of exaggeration in Mr Chidambaram’s description of West Bengal as the “worst-governed’’ state in the country, but not an eyebrow would have been raised if he had qualified his statement with ‘one of the worst-governed’. Neither Mr Bhattacharjee nor his illustrious predecessor, Jyoti Basu, scores very high on the governance scale. The principal reason for this is the fact that both chief ministers allowed the interests of the party to prevail over the interests of the state. To this end, they removed the distinction between the party and the government. The result spelt disaster for West Bengal. Mr Bhattacharjee can whine now regarding the bad report card he is getting. But he and his party have consistently treated the people of West Bengal badly and unfairly.