In 1977, the Left Front government came to power in West Bengal, and the world heard its loud proclamation: India is a semi-feudal, semi-capitalist society, and a state government has scant power at its disposal to transform this system. What India requires is a mass uprising! The Left Front government claimed that, despite the odds it faced, it would attempt to implement an alternative financial policy, based on Marxist ideology and socialist principles. All of India, it was thought, would soon be impressed by their unprecedented success, and the whole country would quickly move to emulate these new policies. Indeed, West Bengal would be the pathfinder, eventually leading India to evolve into a real socialist country.
Today, those at the helm of the Left Front in West Bengal are not keeping to even the fringes of their old promises. The summary of the pretexts offered for this failure goes as follows: globalisation has changed the entire situation. The people of West Bengal are aware of the fact that, owing to constitutional requirements, the profits for state-owned industry operating under a situation of globalisation are either significantly lessened or removed entirely. Nowadays, there is fierce competition between states to garner private investment, and if we fail to compete, we will remain bogged down. Moreover, the state has to incur huge loans in order to set up industry. In this context, we have to turn to foreign and domestic private capital, and if the corporate bosses are not benevolent we will perish.
Even a cursory glance at the newspapers would tell us that the leftists of India are waging a war against the central government's policy of selling out state-owned industries to the private sector. Why, then is West Bengal so anxious to place the state in a leading role vis-à-vis industrialisation?
In the past, it was said that the Centre was uncomfortable with the West Bengal government's leftist ideology, and therefore was neither giving industrial licenses to the state nor increasing funds in the state's budget. The financial agencies and banks, under the control of the central government, were also purported to be uninterested in investing in the state. Now, however, there is no restriction placed on setting up industries, as the licensing system has been done away with completely. Moreover, in the current context the Congress party at the Centre is fully dependent on the left parties to stay in government. As such, the question can be asked: What are the stumbling blocks in implementing the leftist ideology?