The ‘Modi Model’ is for Avowed Communal Bigots and Capitalists: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee

Kolkata: Away from public life due to ill health for the past five years, former West Bengal chief minister Budhhadeb Bhattacharjee has lashed out at both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee for “bolstering communal” feelings in hitherto peaceful and secular West Bengal, which is seeing widespread violence in these elections.

“It is the Trinamool Congress (TMC) which invited the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to West Bengal, and by aligning with them, helped them to create a communal situation. Our task is to uproot this politics and to keep Hindu-Muslim unity alive in the state,” he said in an interview with the mouthpiece of his party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Criticising Modi for favouring his ‘crony capitalist’ friends, Bhattacharjee said: “The chowkidar (watchman) of opportunist capitalists should be ousted at all costs.”

The veteran Left leader, who is a former polit bureau member of the CPI(M), has been fighting a serious respiratory illness, and has been away from active public life for some time now, said the time had come to “decimate the ‘Modi Model’ and to uphold Leftist ideals, secularism, and an independent economic way as the real alternative.”

He said in this election, the Left should highlight a pro-people alternative, as they did in 2004. During that time also, the communal forces were cornered and a secular alternative was formed and the Left bench strength in Parliament increased. That reality, he said, was also present in the present election.

Bhattacharjee said both the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister were taking “calculative steps so that communal feelings are bolstered,” adding that “ploy of BJP and TMC to communally polarise the state has crossed all precedence.”

He lamented that in West Bengal, there were negative vibes all over. “Everywhere there is a pandemonium and a desolate condition, especially among youths of the state. On one side, industry, agriculture are on a downslide, one the other, greed and instigations are aplenty. The anti-socials are having a field day in West Bengal,” he said, adding that the task of the Left forces was to bring youth back on the right path.

For that, the success of panchayats should be re-instated, agricultural output needs to be increased and modernising agriculture was a must, he said.

The former CM said jobs need to be created and for that industrialisation, free education and health are the pre-requisites.

Commenting on a BJP ‘upswing’ in the state, Bhattacharjee said: “Yes, there has been some danger, and in some places, the danger is already present. Our task is to bring back the people from this self-destructing mode. There is no use in leaping from a TMC frying pan to BJP’s fireplace.”

Expressing dissatisfaction over the conduct of elections in the state, he said so far, the way elections were being conducted had raised some questions.

“Though there has been partial improvement, the fact remains that the situation is being controlled by the ruling party and a section of the partisan police force. But what is striking is that the body language of the resistance of people is changing and is on an upswing. It is through this route only that the forces of terror and anarchy can be defeated,” he added.

On the role of the Left, Bhattacharjee said the million-strong Brigade Rally and the continuous fight that the Left parties had waged in the state since the last few years would reflect in these elections. “We have carefully analysed the trajectory of the mass movements in the last few years, and accordingly we have also modified our tactics,” he added.

When asked to comment on the ‘binary’ fight between BJP and TMC being projected by the media, Bhattacharjee said the people of the state had seen the Left Front government, and had also seen the TMC government and were quite capable of differentiating between the work of the two.

“I would like to appeal to people to do a comparative analysis, especially the younger section, who should do deep introspection and evaluation of the work of both these governments. I am sure that that their evaluation will be positive, and the danger emanating from TMC will be defeated in the state,” he said.

The former West Bengal CM said it was a fact that there had been a rapid downfall in the living standard and in the state’s socio-cultural indicators in the past few years, after the TMC came to power.

“Clutching on to these facts, the BJP has made inroads into the state. Hence, TMC should be comprehensively defeated in the state and the BJP’s advance should be resisted. Throughout the country, the opportunist “chowkidars” should be ousted at all cost,” he said.