Poriborton is not revolution

Through a series of misdemeanours, especially during its last term in office following a massive victory in the 2006 assembly elections, West Bengal's Left Front government alienated a cross-section of people in the state to the extent that its rout in the May 2011 election was widely anticipated. After taking power in 1977, the Left Front – a coalition of left-wing parties led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M) – had ruled West Bengal for 34 years, the longest continuous reign of any state government in India's history. Afterwards, there was an outpouring of explanations for this collapse of the colossus; many of the most critical questions are still awaiting answers.

Ranabir Samaddar's Passive Revolution in West Bengal: 1977-2011 covers much of the Left Front's reign, and more, in 43 essays originally published between March 1986 and June 2012. These are clubbed into six thematic sections serving, in the author's own words, as "both history (of the past) and chronicle (of the present)". Samaddar is a well-known political chronicler and critical thinker whose work on West Bengal over the last three decades has provided rich insight into the Left Front's rise and fall, raising difficult questions about the transformation of the CPI(M) and its leaders during their time in power, and about the hollowness of India's democratic process. The book is admittedly a rushed project, a "diary or a journal" put out within months of the Left Front's fall. As a collection of old articles, not arranged in chronological order and also lacking thematic cohesion despite the effort at categorisation, the book makes for tedious reading at times. Still, it serves as a useful chronicle, throwing light on the causes of the Left Front's downfall, and on the making of West Bengal's second 'passive revolution' after 34 years of Left rule. It succeeds in making its point: that many of the changes West Bengal underwent under CPI(M) rule, and also the party's own downfall, were a direct consequence of the fact that the party, when faced with the dilemmas and compulsions associated with parliamentary politics, abandoned the vision of revolution that first won it popularity.