BHARAT BALLOT 09: A CRACK IN THE LEFT FRONT'S WEST BENGAL

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 KOLKATA 000075

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TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR IN
SUBJECT: BHARAT BALLOT 09: A CRACK IN THE LEFT FRONT'S WEST BENGAL
ARMOR

REF: KOLKATA 7


1. (SBU) Summary. As the fourth most-populous state in the
Indian Union, the seat of one of India's four great metropolises
and the bastion of the Communist Party of India - Marxist
(CPI-M),West Bengal politics has always had national
significance. More important than the national electoral issues
of terrorism or the US-India civil-nuclear agreement to the
parliamentary elections in West Bengal are those of land
acquisition, development and the possibility of a change in
state government. A blossoming All India Trinamool Congress
(AITC) and Congress party alliance poses the most serious threat
to the ruling Left Front's efforts to maintain control of the
state's parliamentary delegation in 2009 and legislative
assembly in 2011 since it came to power in 1977. Nationally, a
weakened CPI-M would be in less of a position challenge positive
developments in the US-India bilateral relationship, such as the
US-India civil-nuclear agreement, and regionally beat an
anti-American, anti-imperial drum. End Summary.


2. (SBU) PolOFF engaged with a number of politicians, party
members, journalists and businesspersons over the past couple of
months to compile the following overview of the West Bengal
electorate, political parties and personalities, issues and
alliances ahead of the national parliamentary elections.
Polling in West Bengal will be conducted in three phases on
April 30, May 7 and May 13.

People - The West Bengal Electorate


3. (SBU) West Bengal is the fourth most populous state in the
Indian Union with 83 million people and 42 of the 543 Lok Sabha
seats (lower house of parliament). Hindus, predominantly
Bengali in ethnicity, constitute approximately 70 percent of the
population, Muslims 25 percent, with additional small Buddhist,
Christian, Jain and Sikh populations. While 18 million people
claim Scheduled Caste status (affirmative action based on
membership in a historically disadvantaged socioeconomic
religious community) and 4 million claim Scheduled Tribe status
(affirmative action based on membership in a historically
disadvantaged tribal community),caste and tribe status do not
represent electoral fault lines within the state, as in some
other Indian states. While there is an absence of visible
religious or communal tension in the state, the lack of
development and opportunities within the Muslim community, as
exposed by the 2006 national Sachar Committee report contribute
to a perceived sense of disadvantage in this minority community.
More than two-thirds of the population is employed in the
agriculture sector; however, there continues to be sizable
industrial presence despite the hemorrhaging of industry that
began with the shift of the Indian capital from Kolkata to Delhi
in 1912, continued with the waves of refugees arriving after the
1947 Partition of India and the 1971 birth of Bangladesh, and
accelerated during the three decades of communist rule that
began in 1977.

Parties and Personalities


4. (SBU) The Left Front is an electoral alliance of nine
leftward leaning parties, whose largest party is the CPI-M. It
was dominant in the last election cycle. In the 2004
parliamentary elections, the Left Front won 35 of the 42 seats
(CPI-M won 26); in the 2006 state assembly election it won 235
of 294 seats (CPI-M won 176). The "first past the post"
electoral system magnifies the extent of left political control
in the state - in 2006 its actual vote share was only 50
percent. While the most prominent CPI-M politician in the state
is the Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattarcharya, the state party
Chairman and Politburo (central party) member, Biman Basu, heads
the CPI-M organization. Despite the party's pride in its
organizational capabilities and party discipline, it currently
suffers from what appears to be an inter-generational conflict
over transfer of power. Age - he is 95 years old - and the
physical and mental health of the legendary former Chief
Minister and CPI-M patriarch Jyoti Basu prevent him from being
the active party unifier in West Bengal that he once was. The
party has resorted to pre-recorded Jyoti commercials to try and
rally the flagging comrades, who are split between supporters of
Basu, and his successor in office, current Chief Minister
Bhattarcharya. The Left Front finds itself on the defensive,
having to explain its decision to withdraw from the UPA
government, downplay the threat of any opposition alliance
through comparisons to an unsuccessful AITC and Congress
alliance in 2001, and contextualize the strong Left Front
showing in the 2004 parliamentary results as a historical
aberration to reduce voter expectations for 2009.


5. (SBU) The Opposition in West Bengal is led by the AITC, a

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regional party without any representation outside of West
Bengal, centered on the firebrand politician Mamata Banerjee.
She split from the Congress party in 1998 over differences with
the state party leadership and formed her own party which
currently has one Lok Sabha seat and 29 state assembly seats.
The 54-year old woman is a seasoned Left-baiter with the
single-minded focus of dislodging the regime in West Bengal. A
common criticism of AITC is that she practices an unpredictable
"politics of opposition" and will not hesitate to sensationalize
whatever opportunist agitation that she comes across at the
expense of the state (a la Nano in Singur). She has exposed
chinks in the Left Front armor, picking up Left Front defectors
who did not receive party tickets to contest the elections -
such as former CPI-M parliamentarian Abu Ayesh Mondal who
recently joined AITC - and assembling a star cast of new
contenders. AITC's challenge, which they've recently started to
address, is to demonstrate that they are serious about and
capable of governing. Many urbanites were disappointed by what
was viewed as the AITC's politically opportune, but economically
irresponsible Singur agitation.


6. (SBU) Current state Congress party president and Indian
Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee was installed by the central
Congress party to provide leadership at the state level after
the debilitating stroke of the former party president P.R. Das
Munshi in October 2008. While Mukherjee has been a member of
parliament since 1969, he was first elected to a Lok Sabha seat
in 2004 from Jangipur. As an astute, well-spoken and educated
"native son", and the only Bengali politician of national
significance in the Indian government, he enjoys wide-spread
admiration amongst the West Bengal electorate and politicians.
A sitting CPI-M member of parliament recently told PolOFF that
Mukherjee, as the one candidate with universal political
support, would not encounter any difficulties in returning to
parliament. The Congress party is a pragmatic opposition party
that is more focused on national level politics than on the
state and has strong organizational representation in the north
Bengal districts. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is virtually
non-existent in West Bengal and does not currently have a member
of parliament or legislative assembly in the state.

Electoral Issues - Land and Development


7. (SBU) Land acquisition and economic development are the two
primary electoral issues in West Bengal - more important than
national issues of terrorism, the international economic
slowdown or the U.S.-India relationship and the civil-nuclear
deal. While local CPI-M party members and politicians admit
that the party will need to explain its withdrawal from the
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in July 2008 over the US-India
civil-nuclear deal, it will not actively campaign on this issue
as it lacks resonance amongst the population. The CPI-M
national party has, however, included it in the party election
manifesto.


8. (SBU) The Government of West Bengal's disastrous attempt to
forcibly acquire agricultural land for industry, in Nandigram in
2007 and Singur in 2008 (Reftel),has provoked a backlash
amongst farmers, tribals and other marginalized communities.
The string of recent land acquisition failures has prompted the
state's industrialists and businessmen to question whether the
Left Front can continue to deliver politically on the
commitments of the West Bengal government and agencies to
industrialists, specifically for land, and to look outside of
West Bengal for business opportunities. The irony is that due
to the CPI-M's success in land reforms, the "people's party" is
now faced with the politically sensitive topic of how to
re-acquire land from empowered farmers to promote industry and
develop the state. The government's political inability to
impose its will has encouraged other communities to forcibly
resist land acquisition and emboldened the Opposition to
challenge the state government. In a January state assembly
by-election the AITC candidate and Congress-supported
uneducated, illiterate mother of one of the slain activists from
Nandigram trounced the CPI-M candidate and seized what had been
considered a safe CPI-M state assembly seat. Ms. Banerjee, the
most prominent opposition politician in the state, has adopted
"land" as her primary electoral issue both literally and
physically, having collected "bloodied" dirt from Nandigram to
carry with her to every West Bengal district throughout the
campaign.

Strategy - Unite to Conquer


9. (SBU) On March 2 Pranab Mukherjee announced that "an
understanding" had been reached between AITC and Congress to
jointly contest the parliamentary elections in West Bengal.

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Congress has yielded the role of primary opposition to the AITC
and will contest 14, as opposed to AITC's 28, parliamentary
seats, reflecting its recognition of AITC's current superior
strength. Several state Congress party members have expressed
displeasure at what they believe to be poor seat bargaining and
surrender to the AITC. Mamata has defended her party's
allocation of contested seats as a de facto recognition of
political strength and reward for leading the charge against the
Left Front over the last two years. AITC and Congress have
united from their respective positions of strength at the state
and national levels to exploit a perceived Left Front
vulnerability in West Bengal and prevent a non-Congress, non-BJP
Third Front from emerging as a national alternative.

Comment: The Beginning of the End of Communist Rule in West
Bengal?


10. (SBU) Since Nandigram, AITC has been riding a wave of
momentum to mount what may be the most formidable challenge to
Left Front's lock on politics in West Bengal since 1977. AITC's
success in the May 2008 panchayat elections (held at the
village, block and district level),wins in recent state
assembly by-polls, and prominent CPI-M defections are all
encouraging signs for a nascent center-driven Congress and AITC
electoral alliance that needs to overcome some grumblings at the
ground-level. While AITC and Congress can rally around their
leaders Banerjee and Mukherjee, CPI-M faithful lack that
awe-inspiring leader at the state level (state cadre are more
concerned about West Bengal politics than the, at the center
much trumpeted, Third Front). The CPI-M's defensive tactics,
conceding and downplaying the predicted loss of parliamentary
seats before the election, as opposed to campaigning on its
performance in government, is indicative of a party struggling
to hold on to power and vulnerable to an opposition riding a
"wave of change" 32 years in the making. For the CPI-M and the
AITC, the 2009 parliamentary elections are but a teaser for the
real prize, which is control of the West Bengal legislative
assembly. For India, though, the parliamentary elections in
West Bengal may be much more significant. It may represent the
first signs that the iron-fisted control that the communists
have had in West Bengal - and the disproportionate influence in
national politics that the communists have been able to exert
due to their control of the state - is beginning to erode.
Given the rhetorical hostility of the CPI-M to the United
States, the derogation of communist power in West Bengal would
be a positive development for U.S.-India relations.
TAYLOR