Current media discussions about Lalgarh seem to miss out one crucial fact: Till less than a month ago, it was not a Maoist fortress, but a place where a fascinating experiment with a new kind of democratic politics was being undertaken. Maoists were certainly present, but they were constrained to go along with the mood inside Lalgarh, as earlier posts on Kafila have pointed out. This mood was certainly not one of forming ‘dalams’ or squads of roving Maoist guerillas. In fact, as People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA) leader Chhatradhar Mahato told Times of India a couple of days ago, ‘if the state government had done even 10 percent of what we have done, the situation would have been very different.’

For over five months, the PCPA, with popular participation, built reservoirs, dug tanks and tube-wells, revived irrigation canals and built roads. The Lalgarh Sanhati Mancha, based in Kolkata, collected money and helped set up a health centre in Katapahari. Much of this work was accomplished at one-fifth or one-sixth the costs shown by the panchayats – on the rare occasion they ever undertook such work. A committee with five men and five women would take decisions on a day to day basis. Compare this with any other place where Maoists are active and the difference is immediately apparent. The Maoists, known for their allergy towards, and impatience with any kind of developmental work, had to actually put up with all this.

In fact, Koteswara Rao (alias Kishanji), a senior leader in charge of Maoist operations in the Jharkhand-Bengal region, even cited to journalists as evidence of CPI(M) failure, that ‘the CPI(M) government is not implementing any Central government project’. The reference here is clearly to the non-implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) – revealing the extent to which issues here are different from the ones that Maoists like to take up. It is the long story of neglect, poverty and destitution in many parts of West Bengal that lies behind the desire for ‘independence’ amongst the tribal people of this region.That is why, when the people succeeded in ousting the police and CPM – undoubtedly with Maoist backing – they immediately got down to developmental work. Such an initiative could only have been undertaken in a participatory and democratic mode, based as it was on voluntary popular initiative.

All this will, in a few days from now, be in the past. Already marauding Maoist gangs have taken over and emerged in their most preferred mode –  the model of Maoist-dominated areas of Chhattisgarh or Andhra – will be replicated. Soon there will be just two forces – armed Maoist gangs and the armed state forces. All possibilities of peaceful democratic politics and all developmental activities, including through schemes like NREGA, will be made impossible. The brief spring of popular democracy will fade in memory. One can in fact wager that from now on, Maoist diktat will decree NREGA and such other governmental schemes ‘unlawful’. For along with them and development, comes the state.

True to their style, Maoist cadres who have been freely roaming around so far, will henceforth come only under cover of darkness, leaving the hapless inhabitants of Lalgarh to face the brutality of the security forces. This has already begun. Those arrested and tortured will be the common folk while the guerillas move to safer havens.

It is important to state all this because, once again, mainstream media – especially (but not only) television – reports have begun to portray the Lalgarh story as if all along, Maoists have been in control of the situation. This is a story that suits both the ruling CPM and the media that wants quick sound-bytes avoiding all complexity.

The story of the emergence of Maoist influence in the area is quite classic. In the background lies decades of grinding poverty, neglect and exploitation. But that is not all. As we have been repeatedly saying in our earlier posts, from about 2000 onwards, the state government and the CPM has been in an aggressive mode, crushing every democratic protest all over West Bengal, by labelling it ‘Maoist’. Young men and women have been picked up, framed and tortured by the police; ordinary people – including older people –  have been routinely harassed. In Lalgarh, the story of this brutality has surpassed anything, elsewhere in the state.

Today’s Times of India carries a transcript of an interview of ‘Manoj’, a young 25 year-old Maoist leader of Lalgarh. His story is worth reading and thinking about.

He narrates the woes of the local populace thus: ‘When it rains here, the dirt tracks turn muddy and we are forced to drag ourselves and our cattle through the muck. We are not able to ride our bicycles or use carts. We don’t have clean drinking water. People are forced to drink filthy, yellow water. After sunset, we live in the dark as there is no electricity here. No jobs either.’ He then goes on to say:

In 2002, we got tired of being treated like rodents. So, the villagers got together and demanded development in our area. This infuriated the local CPM bosses. The police and Marxists slapped false cases on us, accusing us of working for the People’s War Group (PWG). They branded us Maoists. So we began to think we might as well join the Maoists.

Manoj speaks of how his family of Congress supporters, shifted their loyalty to the Trinamool Congress when the TMC was formed. By the way, Chhatradhar Mahato himself used to be a TMC supporter – and this is the supposed ‘basis’ of the CPM-NDTV allegation that the TMC has been supporting the Maoists. The truth really is that once the repression began after 2002, and especially after the Salboni blast last November, people increasingly moved towards the Maoists. Manoj’s story is a case in point. One day he and many others were arrested as ‘Maoists’ and lodged in jail. It was there, he tells us, that he met a Maoist leader and converted to Maoism.

The CPM is fond of narcissistically flaunting its world record of thirty two years in power – with no apparent anti-incumbency – as ‘proof’ of its performance in governance. Yes, that some important positive initiatives were taken in the first ten years it was in power. That was what secured it its firm base and saw it through for the next ten years. In the meantime, the party steadily became a corrupt party of self-seekers and power brokers.  The rise of Hindutva in the 1990s actually gave it a fresh lease of life with minorities strongly supporting it and liberal and left-wing public opinion completely closed towards any criticism of the CPM and LF. Inside the state, however, people see the year 2000 – the the year of the accession of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya as CM – as the turning point after which Maoist-hunting became the general mode of suppressing all oppositional voices.

It is only now becoming clear that in the last two decades the CPM and LF has not undertaken any developmental activity whatsoever in the state. What has happened instead, is that a new kind of virtually totalitarian power has been put in place, in which the local panchayat, the MLA, the district administration, the police and the ubiquitous ‘party’ act in tandem. There is no avenue of appeal against local corruption, non-implementation of schemes like the NREGA (West Bengal has the worst performance on this score), absence of simple developmental activity like provision of water and electricity. There have been starvation deaths in neighbouring areas in West Midnapore and in the tea gardens in the north but there is no way of even making the CPM acknowledge this.

In no other state is it possible to find such a completely closed situation where power speaks only to itself.

And classically, in such situations, no piecemeal correction is possible. Discontent builds up slowly into anger, waiting for the opportune moment to strike. That moment began with Nandigram which showed the arrogance of the party bosses in dealing with peasants who have long supported them. The successive elections since then have shown that the dam has now broken. Mass anger was waiting to burst forth and the Maoists were waiting in the wings, ready to take over, riding on the crest of that anger. They have indeed taken over. In this part of West Midnapur we are in for a long haul.

But the lesson here is not only for the CPM. It is also for the Congress, the UPA and everyone else: The poorest of the poor cannot be left to fend for themselves while the elites party. The beginnings made through the NREGA, RTI and the Forest Act – broughtinto being through the pressure of mass movements –  need to be continued and their implementation monitored.

But by far the most important lesson is that armed and violent conflict becomes almost inevitable when all avenues of democratic politics are squashed, when power assumes the supreme arrogance of the kind that CPM has in West Bengal. Even in this adverse situation, let us remember, the people of Lalgarh continued with the democratic experiment for five brief and shining months – but the inevitable spiral of violence that had been unleashed on them was bound to come full circle. When the CPM and the Indian state have eliminated all possibilities of democratic dissent, all that is left is is the Maoist strategy of armed struggle that has no room for any anti-state voices except itself.

A shorter version of this article was published in the Times of India (Sunday Times, 21 June 2009)