The oblivion of idealism

In 1977, the Left Front government came to power in West Bengal, and the world heard its loud proclamation: India is a semi-feudal, semi-capitalist society, and a state government has scant power at its disposal to transform this system. What India requires is a mass uprising! The Left Front government claimed that, despite the odds it faced, it would attempt to implement an alternative financial policy, based on Marxist ideology and socialist principles. All of India, it was thought, would soon be impressed by their unprecedented success, and the whole country would quickly move to emulate these new policies. Indeed, West Bengal would be the pathfinder, eventually leading India to evolve into a real socialist country.

Today, those at the helm of the Left Front in West Bengal are not keeping to even the fringes of their old promises. The summary of the pretexts offered for this failure goes as follows: globalisation has changed the entire situation. The people of West Bengal are aware of the fact that, owing to constitutional requirements, the profits for state-owned industry operating under a situation of globalisation are either significantly lessened or removed entirely. Nowadays, there is fierce competition between states to garner private investment, and if we fail to compete, we will remain bogged down. Moreover, the state has to incur huge loans in order to set up industry. In this context, we have to turn to foreign and domestic private capital, and if the corporate bosses are not benevolent we will perish.