Between people and power

Monobina Gupta draws from her personal association with the CPI-M and her long journalistic experience to churn out Left Politics in Bengal

That the Left Front Government in West Bengal has remained in the saddle for over three decades has been a telling evidence of its pro-people rule. Journalist-author Monobina Gupta adds her bit, “Compared to other political parties, its corruption level even after being in power for so long is far less…its leaders are nowhere near those of other parties.” Being a part of CPI-M during her SFI days in Calcutta and then reporting on the party in Delhi for various publications for a long time, Monobina has “seen quite closely how the party works.” Of late, this seasoned scribe has run a thread through all her experiences of the party — personal and journalistic, to put together 272 pages of an insightful book titled Left Politics in Bengal — Time Travels Among Bhadralok Marxists.

On its pages — an Orient BlackSwan publication, she outlines the party from how it came to power in the wake of Emergency, how “Jyoti Basu had inherited a badly messed up State from his Congress predecessor, which had to be cleaned up fast”, to a time when “a Communist almost became India's Prime Minister”, to where the party stands today. Her pen also strokes defining phases of the rise of Left in Bengal such as “the armed insurrection of peasants” in Naxalbari.

Full report here Hindu