Bengal’s final communist CM (2000-11), defeated by Mamata, passes away | India Information

KOLKATA: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, 80, the primary Left Entrance CM who needed to provide an industry- and investor-friendly face to Bengal and his celebration, handed away round 8.20 am on Thursday at his modest Palm Avenue flat in Kolkata following a cardiac arrest. He was 80 and is survived by spouse Meera and son Suchetan.
Bhattacharjee, a person of many obvious contradictions, will above all be remembered for being a communist CM who needed to take his state to a path of industrial progress with out corruption and kickbacks.It was most likely inevitable that he can be misunderstood, each as a Marxist at CPM’s Alimuddin Avenue HQ and as an administrator on the Writers’ Buildings headquarters. The consequence, too, was inevitable: his 11 years within the CM’s workplace ended with CPM’s electoral defeat in 2011 from which it’s but to recuperate in 2024. Redemption, although, has adopted a lot faster than anybody, together with Bhattacharjee himself, anticipated.
His efforts to make Bengal a hub for industrialists could have failed each administratively and politically; however it’s a measure of his success that each celebration in Bengal now has to swear by industrialisation. tnn
Kolkata: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, 80, the primary Left Entrance CM who needed to provide an industry- and investor-friendly face to Bengal and his celebration, handed away round 8.20 am on Thursday at his modest Palm Avenue flat in Kolkata following a cardiac arrest. He was 80 and is survived by spouse Meera and son Suchetan.
Bhattacharjee, a person of many obvious contradictions, will above all be remembered for being a communist CM who needed to take his state to a path of commercial progress with out corruption and kickbacks. It was most likely inevitable that he can be misunderstood, each as a Marxist at CPM’s Alimuddin Avenue HQ and as an administrator on the Writers’ Buildings headquarters. The consequence, too, was inevitable: his 11 years within the CM’s workplace ended with CPM’s electoral defeat in 2011 from which it’s but to recuperate in 2024. Redemption, although, has adopted a lot faster than anybody, together with Bhattacharjee himself, anticipated.
His efforts to make Bengal a hub for industrialists could have failed each administratively and politically; however it’s a measure of his success that each celebration in Bengal now has to swear by industrialisation.
A neta whose reputation can’t be measured by votes
It’s a measure of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s success that each celebration in Bengal now has to swear by industrialisation and make it some extent to current itself as an industry-friendly entity wooing traders. In each his failures and redemption, Bhattacharjee can declare kinship with the unique Perestroika man of communism: Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviet chief tried to restructure his nation and his celebration however, finally, presided over the USSR’s break-up. And, very like Bhattacharjee, Gorbachev discovered solace in historical past being a lot mellower in judging his efforts than the individuals he as soon as led. And, for each, redemption got here earlier than their dying.
Bhattacharjee tried to maneuver his state away from the falling returns of subsistence agriculture and use the excess expert manpower to construct a strong progress path by industries. He additionally okayed contract farming and invited non-public investments in agricultural infrastructure (for processing and packaging farm produce and rising manufacturing). Govts within the state and the Centre took all these cues a lot later.
Bhattacharjee additionally needed his celebration to return out of its over-dependence on the crippling bandhs and, as a substitute, create a optimistic work tradition. And, in contrast to a lot of his CPM colleagues, Bhattacharjee genuinely strived to interrupt his celebration’s hegemony in instructional establishments and public life. In all these, as a lot as in all the pieces else, his efforts to steer CPM in a special course could have come too late. It could, nevertheless, be a mistake to measure Bhattacharjee’s reputation solely by votes. Sure, he misplaced in his personal meeting constituency, Jadavpur, in 2011 when his celebration misplaced workplace. However many credit score him — and his rally in evidently frail well being — for his celebration successful again the distinguished seat 5 years later (although it misplaced Jadavpur once more in 2021). And, in an age when self-aggrandisement is the norm amongst politicians, he earned respect — if not votes — by going right into a retired life match for each a Bengali bhadralok and a communist apparatchik. Bengal could have voted him out of workplace however, in that compelled retirement, Bengal found in him yet one more of its icons: a frail outdated man, sporting a pyjama, glad being away from public glare, main a peaceable, retired life that will be the envy of many richer in wealth.
All this whereas, he wrote two books — Phire Dekha and Phire Dekha II — the place he made some observations on his tenure as CM, the function of the opposition and in addition the function of the governor. Bhattacharjee, whereas reflecting on the Singur-Nandigram days resulting in the Tatas shifting out of Bengal, wrote: “It was an irreparable harm to the state. Typically I ponder the place I made the error. Was it land acquisition itself or was it the method of land acquisition? Was I too mushy on the opposition? We’ll take classes from that have.” Bengalis could not have discovered him match for the chief minister’s workplace however his pottering round a modest govt flat — in a not-too-well-to-do Palm Avenue neighbourhood after retirement — reassured them: politics was not all knavery and a politician may be a bhadralok.