Greece’s
Tsipras And Tripura’s Manik Sarkar: Two Communists In Perspective
Saeed Naqvi
Upon my return from a driving trip around Europe, the front page
anchor of the Indian Express caught my eye. It showed Union Minister for
Communication and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad in a warm
handshake with the Communist Chief Minister of Tripura, Manik Sarkar, at the
inauguration of an Internet Gateway in Agartala.
Even more striking was the treatment the newspaper gave to
the headline which encapsuled raw, facts: the state has an astounding record in
the incidence of crime, civilians killed, security personnel killed,
kidnappings, encounters, rebels killed. The figure on every count is ZERO.
When a former Director General of Police in Tripura, B.L.
Vohra a year ago gave me similar figures for the previous year, I rubbed my
eyes with disbelief. I had never imagined a senior police officer, conservative
to the core, in such ecstatic praise of a communist Chief Minister.
So, last April, I turned up in Agartala. Lo and behold, I
found myself seated in the presence of the present DG Police, K. Nagaraj,
endorsing all the figures I see on page one of the newspaper today.
Ofcourse, at the top of the page, across six columns, are
stories related to the Vyapam scam, but I found the Tripura story heartwarming.
This, for a variety of reasons including the unstated petrifaction at Europe
grappling with communism in Greece, then possibly Pablo Iglesias’s Leftism in
Spain and similar streaks in all of Latin Europe.
India had its first communist government in Kerala in 1957
snuffed out by Indira Gandhi.
For 35 years, Jyoti Basu, a communist to boot, ruled West
Bengal until his successors fatally mishandled the land issue.
All of that later. Let me, for my immediate purposes, try
and explain the Tripura phenomenon, from my notebook.
The State has been ploughing
its furrow diligently with some quite extraordinary results on the Human
Development scale and which no one discusses. Has the State with a population
of 40 lakhs, not been in focus because it is small? Only Sikkim and Goa are
smaller. Or has the media thus far been squeamish about applauding a State
which for 32 of the past 37 years has been under Left Front rule? It was for
this reason the page one display was striking. I had seen nothing positive
about the new Greek political preference in European newspapers. The contrast
was refreshing.
Some of its records are
amazing. Its 96 percent literacy makes it the country’s most literate State.
Literacy rate in Gujarat is 83 per cent. Kerala was once the leader but its
Human Development record in recent years has been slipping.
Life expectancy of 71 years
for men and 73 for women in Tripura too is a record. In Gujarat, it is 64 and
66. Tripura’s Bengali population ruins the absence of gender bias among
tribals. Even so, it is 961 as against 918 in Gujarat.
The great genius the
leadership has demonstrated is in grasping an essential truth: like politics,
good governance too is essentially the art of the possible. Instead of beating
its breast and flailing its arm around, the regime picked up all the Central
and State schemes, put its head down, called in the officials, party cadres,
involved the three tier Panchayati Raj system and gave a sense of real
participation to the elected Autonomous District Councils which cover two
thirds of the State and all the Tribal areas of Tripura.
This is the key. The basic
conflict in the State, one which exploded as the fiercest insurgency in the
North East, was on the tribal-non tribal faultline.
Under the Maharajas, who
figure in mythology, Tripura was overwhelmingly tribal. But after the creation
of East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), Hindu Bengalis from contiguous territories
that were once managed by the Maharaja, migrated to Tripura. The tribals, (a
total of 19 tribes) became a minority in the State. The 70:30 ratio in favour
of the tribals was exactly inverted. Today 70 percent of the population is
Bengali.
The Congress, its eye always
on the main chance, fell back on the simple divide and rule strategy, pocketing
the Bengali vote bank. If ever there was a shortfall, there was always a tribe
to be played against the other.
A great tribal, communist
leader, Dashrath Deb saw the future. He launched Jana Shiksha Abhiyan or
campaign for education among tribals in 1945 forcing the Maharaja to recognize
500 primary schools, which mushroomed and today saturate the State – a school
every kilometer.
It was from this wide base
that the tribals gravitated towards communism while the Bengalis were turning
towards the Congress. While the Congress was content with sectarian divine, a
leader like Nripen Chakraborty accurately gauged the difficult social reality:
without tribal support all Bengali agenda would be circumscribed. Likewise,
tribals would not advance without Bengali help. The call went out: tribal-non
tribal unity was the absolute imperative.
The idea flared up, across
the State for two reasons. Tribals, who had taken to communism in the 40s and
50s, grasped the idea instantly. In driblets, Bengalis too came into the fold.
So, while the Left slowly expanded its platform of unity, the Congress
persisted with its Bengali focus, not without electoral gains. True, the Left
Front has 50 seats in a House of 60, but the 36 percent of the opposition vote
share must be largely credited to the Congress.
What keeps the electorate,
indeed the population persistently in the Left’s thrall is the universally
accepted incorruptibility of the leadership. Congress MLA Gopal Roy shook his
head in agreement “personal incorruptibility cannot be denied”.
The first Left Front Chief Minister
Nripen Chakraborty (1978 to 88) entered and left the official residence with
same two tin trunks – full of clothes, books, and a shaving kit. Grocery
purchases for the CM’s household were made on a ration card. Modern capitalism
would probably consider him an outcast because he never had a bank account.
His disciple, Manik Sarkar,
Chief Minister for 17 years without a break, is equally austere. His wife, a
school teacher, goes to work on a rickshaw.
In efficient implementation
of central schemes, the State has no parallels. Clinics, schools, anganwadi,
infant and mother care, electricity distribution and, above all, building
roads, connecting the remotest areas.
Heaven knows what feedback
Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has on his Swatch Bharat or clean India mission,
but if he were to send his officers to some of the more remote parts of
Tripura, they would rub their eyes with wonder at what has been achieved in
such a short period.
The road from Agartala winds
around Longtarai hill range to Ambassa, about 80 kms away. A measure of the
administration’s reach is Kumardhan Para, at a forbidding height.
A few years ago, folks at the
village walked 18 kms to reach grocery stores in Ambassa. Today the Kumardhan
peak has been conquered; a motorable road has been laid right upto the village
centre. Little wonder Milind Ramteke, IAS, Collector of Ambassa (Dhallai) and
his Block Development Officer, Amitabh Chakma, are local heroes, village after
village.
The problems of Tripura, in a
sense, begin now. The King of Bhutan floated the idea of Gross National
Happiness. That, roughly, has been Tripura’s trajectory. It is now on an
efficient welfare plateau. What next? It has an inimitable school network. But
very little by way of college and technical education. There are no openings
for the educated youth. The State, surrounded on three sides by Bangladesh
looks admiringly at Shaikh Haseena. Indo-Bangla friendship will give it access
to Chittagong port, 70 kms away.
The regime is not paranoid,
but it is “aware” that the Church networks affect both college and post college
job scene. A middle class so created is inherently anti “Left”, says a CPM
leader. Moreover, further penetration by the Church would provide an opening to
Hindutva forces to enter the scene with a countervailing sectarian agenda.
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