“If the Left has a future in India , India has no future left” Cho Ramaswamy .

Cholo paltai …. Notun bangali….What these Bengal results mean ?

The elections verdict is out and as expected , all of the exit polls ( except for CNN IBN’s TamilNadu prediction )have not even been close. But I am personally very happy. The TMC – CONGRESS candidate Dinesh Trivedi has won over the left front candidate Tarit Topdar thus ending latter’s 20 years of (mis) rule. The Left front itself has been routed in Kerela and West Bengal . But the victory of Bengal is special and very important for the people itself. Let me tell you why.

Soumo Ghoshal one of my college seniors, told me that Tarit Topdar had managed to defeat his relative Debi Ghoshal in the 1980’s by the power of rigging. Amarabh Banerjee ,one of my classmates was not allowed to vote this year , as his vote , they said had already been cast. His mother told me that he had not voted ever. When people in his locality tried to object the local CPM councilor threatened them with dire consequences . The police is a mere state tool , hence not much can be expected from it. What I want to highlight from these two examples is that the Left has since long misused the state machinery and the party cadre to rig votes and there was this growing sense of hopelessness that was engulfing a lot of people including me. No proper roads no industry, no electricity …and yet the Left was winning for the Last three decades. The message being sent out was the people of Bengal don’t care about development , they are not bothered about industry and yes in a land where all is already dark who needs electricity. I myself was very disappointed with the way Bengal was perceived by other people . So now the rout has come as a eye opener for the Left . It has several messages if the Left is not dumb enough to ignore.

1) Don’t take the people of Bengal for granted. Muscle power can win you a few elections but in the long run it hurts the party image. Left was once seen as the meeting point of all the intelligentsia , now its thought to be a culmination of power hungry goons.

2) People of Bengal have brains too. You cannot fool the middle class with communal secular drab.

3) And one advice to you . Try opening all the jute mills that your great labour unions have closed all around Bengal and then give all this NANO crap. Left was and never will be pro industry….its not in your DNA.

4) Change your policies you no brainers, and let me give you one free piece of advice in that regard , your think tank or the politbureau as you like to call it …please see to it that elected representatives take party decisions and not so called intellectuals who have never in their lives won a municipality election let alone a Loksabha seat. Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury Brinda Karat….. the list of the so called intellectuals is endless.

Sangeeta Mondol a very good friend of mine asked me who I voted for , she too agreed that change was required. This elections have shows that change will come. Cholo paltai…………