The 34 years of Left Front led Government in West Bengal during 1977-2011 refers to the consequently winning of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly elections and democratically forming Government for seven terms starting from 1977 to 2011 (34 years) in the Indian state of West Bengal. This period (1977-2011) is the longest serving of any democratically elected communists-led Government in the world.^[1][2] The "34 years of Left Front rule in West Bengal" is a well used poltical term coined by politicians in the West Bengal politics as well as politics of India.

It was started from 1977, when Left Front, led by Communist Party of India (Marxist) won 1977 Assembly elections in Indian state of West Bengal with 2/3rd majority suppressing Janata Dal and Indian National Congress. Left Front of West Bengal included Communist Party of India (Marxist), All India Forward Bloc, Revolutionary Socialist Party, Marxist Forward Bloc, Revolutionary Communist Party of India and the Biplabi Bangla Congress, while Communist Party of India, Socialist party joined in later years.^[3] Jyoti Basu was sworn in as Chief Minister of West Bengal after being elected from Satgachhia constituency. The Left Front ruled the state for seven consecutive terms 1977–2011, five with Jyoti Basu as Chief Minister and two under Buddhadev Bhattacharya. The rule ended in 2011, when All India Trinamool Congress historically defeated Left Front in 2011 Assembly elections.

Left Front and the politics of West Bengal

Left Front

The Left Front (Bengali: বাম ফ্রন্ট; baam front) is an left-leaning alliance of left and communist political parties in of West Bengal. It was formed in January 1977, which subsequently won 1977 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election in June 1977 and formed Government in the state. The alliance won every election after that upto 2011 and formed Governments for consequent 7 times.

The Left Front includes:

• Communist Party of India (Marxist)
• Communist Party of India
• All India Forward Bloc
• Revolutionary Socialist Party
• Revolutionary Communist Party of India
• Marxist Forward Bloc

Elections

Major opposition parties

• Janata Dal

Main article: Janata Dal

• Indian National Congress

Main article: Indian National Congress

• All India Trinamool Congress

Main article: All India Trinamool Congress

Political controversies

1979 Marichjhanpi Massacre

The massacre in Marichjhanpi, which took place under CPI(M) rule in Bengal between January 26 and May 16, 1979, relates to the eviction of refugees from the reserved island of Marichjhanpi, Sunderbans, who had fled from East Pakistan thereby leading to the death of a sizable population among them.^[8]

Out of the 14,388 families who deserted [for West Bengal], 10,260 families returned to their previous places … and the remaining 4,128 families perished in transit, died of starvation, exhaustion, and many were killed in Kashipur, Kumirmari, and Marichjhapi by police firings (Biswas 1982, 19).^[9][10]

After leading the Left Front government for consecutive five terms, Jyoti Basu retired from active politics and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was appointed as his successor. In 2000, the Left Front came back to the power with Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee again assuming the office of the Chief Minister.^[8]

The state's economic recovery gathered momentum after economic reforms in India were introduced in the early 1990s by the central government, aided by election of a new reformist Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in 2000. About during 2007, armed activists, and Maoists have been organizing terrorist attacks in some parts of the state,^[11][12] while clashes with the administration have taken place at several sensitive places on the issue of industrial land acquisition.^[13][14]

Singur Tata Nano controversy

The Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government wanted to set up a Tata Nano factory in Singur, Hooghly.Tata Motors started constructing a factory to manufacture a car, Tata Nano which was estimated to cost $2,500. The small cars were scheduled to roll out of the factory by 2008. Singur was chosen by the Tata Motors among six sites offered by the West Bengal state government. The project faced massive opposition from displaced farmers. The unwilling farmers were given political support by West Bengal's then-opposition leader Mamata Banerjee. Banerjee's "Save Farmland" movement was supported by civil rights and human rights groups, legal bodies, and social activists like Medha Patkar, Anuradha Talwar, Arundhati Roy and Magsaysay and Jnanpith Award-winning author Mahasweta Devi. Leftist activists also shared the platform with Banerjee's Trinamool Congress. The Tatas finally decided to move out of Singur on 3 October 2008. On 7 October 2008, the Tatas announced that they would be setting up the Tata Nano plant in Sanand in Gujarat after Ratan Tata received a call from the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi.

Nandigram violence

The Nandigram violence was an incident in Nandigram, West Bengal where, under the orders of the Left Front government, more than 4,000 heavily armed police stormed the Nandigram area with the aim of stamping out protests against the West Bengal government's plans to expropriate 10,000 acres (40 km²) of land for a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) to be developed by the Indonesian-based Salim Group. The area of Nandigram had turned into an internal-security threat for the country.^[15] The Trinamool Congress, collaborating with the Maoists, had isolated the entire area from the rest of the country, by cutting up all the roads and blocking them by tree trunks. Weapons were being collected and stored for an armed rebellion.^[16] The villagers were brainwashed against the Government and the progressive scheme. However, the shootings, in recent developments have proved to be a conspiracy of the TMC and Maoists alike. Indeed the police had to resort to firing when the armed mob refused to disperse even after much persuasion and tear gassing and started attacking the police. The then Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya was awarded a clean-chit for non-involvement in the Nandigram violence by the CBI.^[17] The police shot 13 villagers dead and one died from a very suspicious knife-attack, thus sparking controversies whether the police were, in the least, the ones to fire. At least 30 police officers were injured in the incident.

The SEZ controversy started when the government of West Bengal decided that the Salim Group of Indonesia^[18][19][20] would set up a chemical hub under the SEZ policy at Nandigram, a rural area in the district of Purba Medinipur. The villagers took over the administration of the area and all the roads to the villages were cut off.

Land reforms and agriculture

Left Front is considered for the most successful land reforms in India. While land reform had not made much headway in most of India, West Bengal has achieved many notable land reforms compared to it in fields like redistributing agricultural land ownership, regulating sharecropping relationships, and distributing homestead plots.^[21]

Operation Barga

In the first term of Left Front goverment, one of the main key priorities were land redistribution^[22][23] and the most effective was Operation Barga. Introduced in 1978, it was a comprehensive and radical measure for land reforms which was further formalised through two legislation in 1979 and 1980.^[24][25] The operation sough to actively identify and record bargardars (trans: sharecroppers) by present occupational status without any reliance on ancestral records, producing official documentation for enforcement of the rights of bargardars to crop share from landlords and priority rights to lands in cases of both voluntary sale of land and forced sale of ceiling surplus lands.^[26][25] The effects of Operation Barga included:

• The number of recorded bargardars increased from 0.4 to 1.2 million by 1982,^[24][26] and resulted in the coverage of 50%+ output share concessions towards bargardars to increase from 10% to over 50% among registered bargardars and over 33% for unregistered bargardars.^[25][27]
• The number of landless rural households decreased by 35% during this period.^[28]
• Through Operation Barga, more than 1.39 million acres of land was acquired by the government^[29] and about 1.1 million acres of land was distributed among 2.54 million relatively land-poor households^[21] including 1.4 million share-croppers^[30][31] and 3.04 lakh poor peasants of the state.^[32] This counts about 8% of arable land and 34% of agricultural households.^[21] About 800,000 acres of land were distributed to 1.5 million heads of households between 1978 and 1982.^[30]
• Between 1977–1980, the Government oversaw the identification of nearly 1 million acres of ceiling surplus land and its subsequent redistribution.^[33]
• The implementation of the operation is noted to have improved the social status, dignity and prestige that was unheard of in the previous political regime.^[26][25] From 1978 to 1988 gram panchayats, the representation of bargadars, landless labourers and cultivators (with landholding of below 3 acres) increased from 1.8% to 11.3%, from 4.8% to 16.8% and from 21.8% to 30.17%.^[29] This also gave security and dicision making power to the poor and the bargadars.
• In addition it accounted for approximately 36% of agricultural growth during the period as a consequence of greater production incentives due to a lack of eviction threat and increased output stake.^[27]
• The operation is also credited to have created a cushion against farmers' suicides in West Bengal by improving the economic stability of farmers and decreasing economic inequality.^[34]

West Bengal accounted for 20% of total land redistribution in the country even though it accounts just 3.5% of total Indian land. Up to the year 2000, 1.6 million bargadars have been officially recorded as 86% of sharecroppers existing in the state. Also about a third of total cultivators in the state have been recorded as bargadars. Almost 9,00,000 bargadars were recorded between 1978 and 1988. But between 1988 and 1997 the process slowed down comming to less than 90,000 bargadars.^[29]As of September 1999, nearly 296,000, households had benefited by receiving homestead.^[21]

Patta land

One of further successful land redistribution was done by pattas. Land has been redistributed among 2.745 million ‘pattadars’. Barga and patta both had covered 41.3% of the rural population of West Bengal. The state alone accounted for 47% of all India beneficiaries. Between 1993 and 1999 around 95,000 acres were given to pattadars.^[29] 6.25 lakh joint patta and 1.65 lakh female patta have been distributed.^[32]

Major land reforms, acts and timeline

There were numerous acts with a number of significant amendments from the LF Government. Some of them are,^[21]

• West Bengal Town and Country (Planning & Development) Act, 1979
• West Bengal Land Reform (Amendment) Act 1981
• The West Bengal Inland Fisheries Act, 1984
• West Bengal Thika Tenancy (Acquisition and Regulation) Act, 2001
• East Kolkata Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Act, 2006

In 1990s, the land reforms process slowed down. Those who were given land or cultivation rights through land reforms could not hold it because of rising input prices and falling output prices (see Agriculture, 1990s) resulting difficulty in cultivation. As a result 13.23% of pattadars and 14.37% of bargadars gave up their cultivation rights or had lost their land. The number of landless rural households was also increasing throughout the 1990s, i.e from 39.6% in 1987-88 to 41.6% in 1999-2000. Small cultivators faced more land loss specially in regions where large-scale operation was the most profitable. In 1999-2000, rural-urban inequality increased more precisely. The village consumption per capita was 52% of per capita urban consumption in West Bengal compared to 56% as of all India and nearly 80% of agriculturally advanced states like Punjab, Haryana.^[29]

Irrigated area expanded from 32% to about 70% from 1977 to 2006.^[35] Upto 2006, Scheduled Caste beneficiaries in West Bengal were 1.04 million (49.5% of all India) and Scheduled Tribe beneficiaries in West Bengal were 0.53 million (62% of All India).^[35]

Upto 2011, homestead land has been distributed to over 3.24 lakh landless labourers.^[32] In the 7th term (2006-2011), Left Front government brought land from willing farmers at a price 25% higher than the market price and redistributed them. 739.37 acres of land were purchased and redistributed to 5476 poor and landless families in the rural areas.^[32]

Agriculture

1977-1990

In the earlier terms of LF Government, agricultural production, grew at a spectacular rate, specially in the 1980s. West Bengal emerged as the largest rice producing state in India contributing more than 15 per cent of national production.^[29] The agricultural growth jumped from an annual average of 0.6% between 1970–1980 to over 7% between 1980–1990.^[36] In the 80s, West Bengal moved from being a food importer to a food exporter and became the largest producer of rice outstripping the states of Andhra Pradesh and Punjab which had previously held the status.^[36] During the 1980s, overall foodgrains had a growth rate of 5.81%, which was only 0.96% in 1979.^[37]

Boro cultivation

Left Front introducted high yielding boro rice cultivation. Boro was an extremely labour-intensive form of rice cultivation carried on by small cultivators in small plots of land using mainly family labour. Due to land reforms and Operations Barga, Boro cultivation was successful among farmers. This gave advantage to the farmers by raising more than one crop in a given year. Also the requisite water for boro cultivation was available from minor irrigations like shallow tube well. During the 1980s boro cultivation grew at an average annual rate of 12 per cent.^[29] Total factor productivity growth for the period was more rapid in West Bengal (3.93% annually) than in any other major Indian state.^[21]

1990-2009

The aricultural growth significantly slowed down in the 1990s due to a number of reasons. Boro cultivation could not be expanded due to unavailability of water and stopped. Demand and productivity both did not increased and West Bengal failed to export its rice to other states and abroad due to poor marketing strategies. Foodgrains input prices increased but the profit was less. Growthrate of foodgrain decreased to 2.13% in 1994. As a result, the percentage of cultivators in the rural workforce in 1991 fell from 38% in 1991 to 25.4% in 2001. At the same time, growth of boro cultivation slowed down to 5 per cent. The overall agricultural growth became around 2% in the 1990s.^[29]

Despite overall agricultural slowdown in 1990s, 2000s were more competatively more better. During the 7th LF government, agriculture has grown at 3.1% in West Bengal from 2006-07 to 2009-10, compared to only 2.1% at the national level. West Bengal produced 14.3 million tons of rice in 2009-10, which was the highest for any state in the country, accounting for 16% of all-India production.^[32]

In 2006, the index of cropping intensity in West Bengal was 180, the second highest in India. The area under high yielding seeds increased from 28% to 96%. About 83% of the gross cropped area consisted different types of high yielding crops.^[35] West Bengal became also the first among all states in the production of vegetables (12.8 million tons in 2009-10). The LF government spent Rs. 400 crore to procure potatoes at an assured price of Rs. 3.50 per kg to prevent the losses of potato growers.^[32]