West Bengal voters end communist rule

More than three decades of communist rule in the Indian state of West Bengal ended on Friday when the opposition Trinamool Congress stormed to a resounding victory in state elections.

In preliminary results, the Trinamool Congress, led by firebrand politician Mamata Banerjee, and its allies swept 225 of the state assembly’s 294 seats. The Left managed to hold on to only 63 seats.

Elsewhere in the five state elections, the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam was set for a crushing defeat in the southern state of Tamil Nadu at the hands of the rival All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.

The DMK, an ally of the ruling Congress party, has been closely associated with a telecoms scandal that an official audit claimed cost the country $39bn in lost revenue.

Celebrations broke out on the streets of Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal, which has suffered grinding industrial decline having once been the commercial hub of India.

“For many Bengalis, it’s the equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall,” said Swapan Dasgupta, a leading commentator. “For them, it was 30 years of complete stagnation where the state’s share of manufacturing output fell from 13 per cent to 3 per cent.”

Under the rule of India’s leftist leaders, Calcutta – once the prosperous seat of the British East India Company – has been put at a disadvantage to fast-growing metropolitan centres like Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad.

The Communists gained popularity in the 1970s with a land reform programme and a heavy emphasis on boosting agricultural production. They also helped relieve extreme deprivation, which earned the streets of Calcutta world notoriety. But in recent years they have looked out of touch with a national economy growing at 9 per cent.

They also made a political misstep three years ago with the forced acquisition of land for a Tata car plant that triggered mass protests.

Dipankar Gupta, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, said that Ms Banerjee’s campaigning against land being handed over by the state for industrial development had been “turning points” in the demise of the Left.

Ms Banerjee praised Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, for his support in her victory speech. “It’s a victory for democracy. It’s a victory for the people. It’s been a long struggle. Its been 35 years. It’s been just like a liberation struggle,” she said.

Ms Banerjee is admired as a determined politician, who has risen to political power without family or large personal wealth. Her critics, however, question her ability to implement policies and mock her ambitions to turn Calcutta into a modern-day London.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, 67, the chief minister of West Bengal, was expected to announce his resignation on Friday.

Fears are running high about how the Communist party of India will react to its defeat in what has been a bastion of its power. Many worry that the ruling party had failed to gauge how unpopular it had become in recent years and expect violence to follow the election result.

The Communist party apparatus has become deeply entwined with the state bureaucracy, and has considerable potential to thwart a change in political leadership.

Siddharth Varadarajan, strategic affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper, said: “The first test for Ms Banerjee will be in the first 24 hours. There is a fear of violence.”

Others believe the defeat of the Left will lead to a much-needed regeneration in a country where its message still has resonance among tens of millions of poor people.