When hoodlums beat up teachers of Calcutta University, and manhandle its vice-chancellor, one suddenly gets an idea of how low civic life has sunk in West Bengal. And if these hoodlums are actually students as they claim to be, then matters are infinitely worse. What is happening in West Bengal is not just a tragedy for West Bengal; it is a national tragedy. Bengal has for long been the beacon for the country as a whole, its vibrant and sophisticated cultural and intellectual life a source of illumination for all. A snuffing out of that life would be a national loss.
As a non-Bengali, I can vouch for it, having learnt my economics from an Amartya Sen and a Sukhamoy Chakravarty, having developed a taste for cinema through the works of a Satyajit Ray, a Ritwik Ghatak and a Mrinal Sen, and having been introduced to literature through a Rabindranath Tagore, a Sarat Chandra Chatterjee and a Manik Bandyopadhyay ( via my mother who knew the language and read avidly). For the good of the country it is essential that democracy and civility (the two are not contradictory, as is often made out) return to Bengal as early as possible.
Some would interject that the disintegration of social life in Bengal began even before its current political dispensation, indeed from the days when the Left was in power. To enter into a debate on this is, I believe, a waste of time, since what is important today is: what is to be done? The old bhadralok culture of Bengal is in tatters, which should not cause regret; the problem is that nothing has emerged to take its place. All the hallowed institutions have been undermined, but no new institutions have been innovated other than the panchayats of the early Left Front days (for whatever they are currently worth).
Much emphasis is placed these days, in the political circles, upon the need for a restoration of democratic life in Bengal. This is absolutely essential, but the democratic vision needs fleshing out. What it should mean, and what it should not, have to be thought out. Democracy for instance cannot mean the freedom of a multiplicity of hoodlum groups to tyrannize people as opposed to one single group; it must mean above all the putting in place of a set of institutions that can command popular acceptance and respect. The very programme of revival of democracy in West Bengal, in short, requires a more comprehensive agenda than the mere ending of the tyranny of ruling-party hoodlums. It requires a citizens' charter through which the people can recapture their enthusiasm for a creative democratic life.
Such a charter can be prepared, for widespread public discussion, by a group of thinking persons whose secular and democratic commitments are beyond doubt, but who are outside of the discipline of political parties (because being bound by party discipline would prevent them from giving free expression to their own considered views on particular issues). West Bengal fortunately has many such persons: the names of Ashok Mitra, Shankha Ghosh, Shankar Sen, Amiya Bagchi and Ashok Nath Basu come readily to one's mind. The Left has to take the initiative to request such persons to constitute a group for preparing a charter of this sort. The Left must do so because it is potentially the most progressive force in the state; and it can realize its progressive potential precisely by taking such an initiative.
The Left, in short, must commit an act of self-negation of a sort it does not normally do: it has to take the initiative for getting for itself an agenda "from outside", which it would, of course, be under no obligation to accept but with which it must very seriously engage.
This, as I said, would be an unusual step for the Left. But we live in a world where bold and unusual experiments in democracy are being tried out: we have just had in Greece for instance, perhaps for the first time in history, a referendum among people on a matter of economic policy that bourgeois society insists on leaving to "technocrats" (which typically means representatives of finance capital). No matter what happens in Greece in the days to come, the very fact that the people gave their verdict on an economic policy measure (at the initiative of the Syriza government) constitutes a remarkably bold experiment in deepening democracy. Syriza may well betray the verdict of the people, but at its own cost.
The group I am proposing, I must emphasize, does not have to be representative of all political-ideological tendencies. The idea is not to find some lowest common denominator; the idea on the contrary is to present to the people a citizens' charter worked out by people of a certain political-ideological persuasion, which is broadly Left, on the basis of which they can be expected to emerge increasingly into playing a "subject" role. To take the Greek example again, Syriza did not just ask people to vote in a referendum; it specifically asked them to vote "no". It projected a position; and I am asking for such a projection of position that breaks from the current stasis. And I believe that the projection of such a position should come initially from a group of non-party persons with impeccable secular and democratic credentials.
The tendency among Left intellectuals, rightly, is to emphasize the structural obstacles to any basic change in social conditions. But even in the interstices of the existing structures certain important changes can be brought about, which, in turn, can then create the ground for other, more basic, changes. Even for revolutionaries, in other words, the path to the revolution must lie through a breathing of life - not in accordance with bourgeois perceptions, of course - into certain institutions that exist in a bourgeois society. A revolution, for instance, requires thought; and a society in which institutions of higher education are in a shambles, or communalized or commoditized, would find it harder to generate such thought, whence the need to re-invigorate them.
The citizens' charter I am talking about, therefore, must not confine itself merely to asking for basic structural changes. It must address immediate pressing problems of the state in a concrete manner, including suggesting transitional arrangements that make even the longer-term structural changes more concrete to visualize. Such a charter, for instance, must address itself to issues like how to make educational institutions autonomous of political interference even while ensuring their accountability to society; how to ensure a minimum level of nutrition, healthcare, and education for every citizen; how to ensure that the children of the minority community do not remain confined in perpetuity to a ghettoized existence; how to break the stranglehold of the upper-caste elite in the social, cultural and intellectual life of the state; how to alleviate the problem of unemployment (even though it cannot be eliminated under capitalism); and so on.
Some amount of research involving inter alia the calculation of resource requirements and resource mobilization possibilities, would be needed for drawing up such a programme. Some funds would be needed for such research. These have to be raised neither from political parties, nor from big business (including the many endowments they have), nor from foreign sources, directly or indirectly. They have to be raised through voluntary contributions from the people.
Such a charter would also resolve one of the issues that is much discussed nowadays, namely what kind of alliances the Left should enter into in the coming elections. Any answer to this question within the terrain of the old politics would leave many people cold, even though they may be as eager as anyone else for a democratic resurgence of West Bengal. What is required is a change in the terrain of discourse itself. The Left should have no compunctions about entering into electoral arrangements with any political formation that accepts in substantial measure the citizens' charter, not necessarily the one prepared by the group itself, but the one that takes shape on the basis of public discussions and the Left's engagement with it.
A basic tenet of Marxism is that "theory" is brought to the working class from "outside", which is the rationale for the formation of working-class political parties. The Left, which provides theory from "outside" to the working class, has itself, however, always used some "outside" inputs: Lenin, for instance, had relied heavily on the works of Hobson and Keynes. The only new thing suggested here is that the Left should take the initiative in setting up an "outside" group.
The suggestion I am making is undoubtedly hazy. But reflection would show that not being hazy would defeat the very purpose of my suggestion.
The author is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
