With Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s passing away in 2024, not only was the Left era in West Bengal over, but also gone was the last hope of reviving West Bengal as a modern, functional state, which he had kindled in the hearts of middle-class Bengalis. His misplaced gamble of turning a deeply entrenched, archaic political machine rooted in an 19th century ideology into a high-tech engine for employment in 21st century India proved to be a disastrous political and economic miscalculation, scaring and driving industries away from the state for how long no one knows.
Caught between an elite ruling class bent upon preserving its privileges that was averse to change and the concomitant risks, and a local coercion system that thrived on taking a “cut” from every brick laid, that dream had to die its natural death. Out of its ashes emerged the new brand of leaders that would choose a path to nowhere, replacing the dignity of hard work with a culture of rent seeking and extortion. It took no time for them to perfect this culture into an unassailable institutional machinery ~ the ‘Syndicate’ that reaches everyone and spares no one.
It was not that the Syndicate was their invention; in the violent political landscape of Bengal, it had always existed, but the speed at which the machinery was transformed into an all-embracing extortion apparatus was unmatched. It now functions with ruthless efficiency, like a well-run corporate business. It isn’t just a group of local toughs anymore ~ there is an SOP (standard Operating Procedure) that spans all economic activities in the state, from the smallest neighbourhood to the largest cities. Whether one is building a home or starting a small factory, the system demands a “cut.”
This has spread to the very grassroots, creating a “Parallel State” that is much more efficient at extracting people’s money than the government is at collecting taxes. If the Left had turned West Bengal into a “Party State”, the new rulers have turned it into an “Extortion State” which makes it impossible for big factories to breathe, or small factories to grow. Bengal now increasingly resembles the Bihar of yore, which survived on remittances of its labourers, who sought jobs anywhere outside Bihar.
At the other end of the political spectrum in Bengal is the “Salon”, the small circle of elite intellectuals ~ journalists, artists, poets, theatre personalities and academics ~ the self-proclaimed “progressive” Bhadroloks who continue to engage in intellectual discourses creating, critiquing and amplifying political narratives that serve the interests of the rulers by influencing the opinions of ordinary folks.
The Salon and the Syndicate are united by one common strand: preservation of the status quo at all costs ~ with a common hatred for anything that challenges it. These self-appointed gate-keepers of culture and thoughts have their vice-like stranglehold on all the levers of state power, while the state itself stagnates and is allowed to wither away, while the youth, the future doctors, engineers, scientists, civil servants ~ hurry to flee away from the state’s once famed and now rotting educational institutions and toxic socio-political environment, to brighter futures in other states, and to contribute to their growth.
The capital, or whatever is still left, also flees away from a failing and flailing economy. The Salon continues to enjoy its evening whiskies, secure in the knowledge that whosoever could grow to challenge their authority is departing, and the loyalty of the rest has already been bought with endless freebies that continue to increase the state’s debt without adding any capacity to generate the resources to pay it off. Welfare is being auctioned off to buy votes and loyalties, mortgaging the future of a state that is now in an advanced state of decay ~ morally, socially, educationally, and economically. Of course, the freebies tap is not unique to West Bengal, but its scale and impact on the state’s finances are mind-numbing.
In 2011, the new government inherited a debt of Rs 2 lakh crore as a legacy from the Left rule. In FY 2024, that debt had spiraled more than threefold to Rs 6.25 lakh crore, and the interest payment on it has risen from almost Rs 16,000 crore to Rs 43,000 crore. It now constitutes almost a fifth of revenue expenditure (RE). West Bengal is today one of the most indebted states in India, thanks to the free-flowing freebies. The Salon would be horrified to think of comparing West Bengal with a once-laggard, backward state like Assam. But while Assam today spends 3.8 per cent of its GDP on capital outlay, West Bengal spends only 1.7 per cent.
The key to accelerating economic growth is investment in capital assets. In FY2024, West Bengal’s GSDP (Rs 17.2 lakh crore) was thrice that of Assam (Rs 5.7 lakh crore); but in that year, West Bengal’s growth was only 10.6 per cent compared to Assam’s 19.1 per cent. It may only be a matter of time before Assam surpasses West Bengal in terms of growth and development, if current trends persist. The number of schemes that dispense state largesse at the cost of higher indebtedness of the states is mind-blowing. The state spends another fifth of its RE on these schemes and subsidies, while salary and pension take away another 40 per cent of RE, starving capital outlay, education, health, and other sectors vital for growth and forcing it to borrow.
It is like becoming an auction house ~ every election, the doles are raised as people get more addicted to free unearned cash and deem it their right, binding any future government to follow suit and depriving the state of funds for the all-important capital outlay. It has become a game in which all parties try to outbid each other while the society watches helplessly as institutions like the Supreme Court and EC turn a blind eye. The manifesto of BJP now outbids TMC freebies by a wide margin. Its promise of Rs 3,000 per month to every woman in Bengal to breach the TMC’s strongest bastion ~ women voters, is double that promised by the TMC under the Lakshmir Bhander scheme; an additional Rs 21,000 has also been promised for every pregnant woman.
To the unemployed youth, it promises Rs 3,000 a month, double that promised by TMC, and an additional Rs 15,000 to prepare for competitive examinations. There are also promises made to farmers, teachers and government employees to implement 7th pay commission recommendations and release all arrear DA instalments as mandated by the Supreme Court. All these promises will cost the exchequer at least an additional Rs 60,000 crore a year at a conservative estimate. Interestingly, the addiction to freebies is mirrored by the state’s addiction to alcohol, which is the second-highest revenue earner for the state, after the State GST. The state’s excise collection now exceeds its revenue from the sale of petroleum products by a wide margin of over Rs 6,000 crore (FY2024).
Dole and liquor make a lethal cocktail for an addicted populace that is far easier to manage by a “Dealer State” than managing an educated, intelligent, and vocal one demanding reform, quality public goods, and employment opportunities. The state of West Bengal today reminds us of Rome when it was fast losing its glory. In his classic “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, Edward Gibbon wrote how a populace was kept in a state of idleness and wantonness by the gratuitous distribution of corn by the state: “The people of Rome… were supplied with corn, at first by private charity, and afterwards by the public bounty.”
The emperors found it easier to gratify the multitudes by sordid entertainment like gladiator-fights than to command their respect and obedience through hard work. “The frequent and splendid games… were exhibited at the expense of the emperors, and contributed to amuse the idleness of the people.” Along with doles, the ecosystem of political favours, coercion, extortion and state-tolerated violence equally ensures that voices of protest remain muffled. It is another machinery perfected to ensure that no protest becomes loud enough to threaten the status quo. A spark of hope for change was ignited in the aftermath of the heinous killing of a lady doctor at a state-run college last year, but the spark was effectively managed by this machinery and extinguished before it could grow into a fire. The state of West Bengal today is a broken system that still retains its resilience. One is left wondering how such a system could survive so long.
The answer probably lies in the nature of the largest opposition party that seeks to propagate an alternative narrative shaped less by history and more by mythology, with social polarisation as its chief instrument. Strategies of both look identical, without any vision to reverse the decay of the state. Bengal’s future today lies in the hands of people who must make the correct choices. When the state fails, people must take the lead. Would they still prefer to live within the gilded cage provided by the freebies while the state decays, or do they want freedom from the overwhelming stench of that decay that envelops all of us?
(The writers are, respectively, a former Director General, CAG of India, and a Distinguished Professor at RKMVERI, Belur)