The enormous police net-work to crush all oppositions to ‘Left’ Front misrule and the CPM’s fascist ways of functioning actually go to strengthen the state and its armed instruments of coercion. The CPM Chief Minister and his party bosses insisted on passing the preventive detention act POKA on the lines of the BJP Government’s Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2000. The clauses contained in the proposed POKA clearly declared the perceived threat to the security and integrity of the state necessitating such extraordinarily stringent Act. Legal experts and political analysists found POTA and POKA as two sides of a same coin. Buddhadeb and his company tried their level best to frame such an Act in 2002. When the peasants in some pockets of Midnapur, Bankura and Hooghly under the leadership of the People’s War and MCCI started militant movements against all oppressors facing the huge police and paramilitary forces and the CPM armed gangs. The CPM beat a retreat when protests from various quarters against such proposed criminal acts had reached the boiling point.

These hypocrites know too well that the people over here have had the bitter experiences of the PD Act, P.V Act, MISA, etc. basically used against the struggling people. In the worst height of deception they now raise their hypocritic voice against POTA and even try to come out clean by declaring to the panchayat voters in 2003 that "It is West Bengal, the only state in the whole of India where not a single person has been remanded without trial in the past 26years."189 Those double-dealers pose themselves as if they were against such detention.

The large number of people killed in police lock-ups, the imposition of the Disturbed Area Act in some parts of Tripura by the CPM Government there, the dirty tricks of release from jail and rearrest on various pretexts of the CPI (ML) PW and MCCI activists as did the earlier S.S. Ray government in West Bengal are all a testimony to the immense service of parliamentary Marxists to strengthen the state and its police department.

The revisionist CPM, which has turned into a ruling class party is showing its fascist fangs. It has been surrendering to the World Bank, IMF and MNCs by inviting them to "develop" West Bengal under ‘Left’ Front rule. For all the so-called development projects the huge debt imposed on the people and the tightening noose round their necks by imperialism shall strengthen imperialism’s control over the Indian State machinery. Right now India’s foreign loan stands at a whopping 10197 crore US dollar, according to Finance Minister Yashwant Singh.190

The parliamentary Marxists contribute handsomely for this imperialist stranglehold. As the CPM has now changed its earlier slogan from "Left-Front as instrument of struggle" to "Left-Front as people’s government" so also its earlier wall writings on the huge dimension of foreign debt on each and every Indian have been erased by the new call for "Unnayan" (development). And this Unnayan by courtesy of imperialist ‘aid’! One must not be oblivious of another consequence of this so-called development money pouring into the state. When honesty and basic principles of political life have been bidden farewell, the money is being squandered at all levels, as frequent media reports point to.

A Transparency International survey 2002 says that India stands out as one among the 30 most corrupt countries in the world.(Felix Raj, Development Issues, Corruption Remains The Major Hurdle, The Statesman 10th May, 2003) With the rampant corruption spilling even over to the grassroots via panchayats, the Indian State with its ruling classes finds a sort of way out of the simmering discontent of the deprived people.

The reactionary power-hungry parties know very well that the West Bengal people like the Indian common people are not by nature corrupt. A reputed global magazine conducted a survey of levels of integrity in several countries by dropping at several public places equivalent sums of money in small packets containing addresses. It found that about 85 percent of the Indians – mostly of the poor, hard working labourers — returned the money to the addressed.191

The state and the parties, the parliamentary Marxists like the CPM in particular, have been diabolically engaged in corrupting as many people as possible with numberless baits, real or illusory. Efforts are on in West Bengal, the hotbed of revolutionary movements, to transform it by the parliamentary Marxists and others into a place where alongside the use of the armed forces and illusory politics of submission and elections, a network of corruption has been consciously undertaken as in the other states of India.

This vitiates the atmosphere and provides a cushion to the Indian state; despotic and rotton to the core. The CPI(M)-led government has already been crowned with great success in increasing the number of police stations and forces in the last 26 years. The Chief Minister Buddhadev, while laying the foundation stone of a new police station in East Jadavpur in Kolkata on 25th December, 2000, declared the need "to shoot" the people creating law and order problem.192 He even did not care a hang for the strictures against police, say, by the state human rights commission.

The "Left" Front in West Bengal sent a good number of police officers to Andhra Pradesh in 2002 for training in anti-guerrilla Warfare on the lines of the notorious Grey Hound there: "The first 1,000 officers and personnel of the India Reserve Battalion from West Bengal began their rigorous 18-month training from June 1. Approval is waited for one more battalion of equal strength, to be headquartered in North Bengal.

Once both the elite battalions are raised, the state will not have to ask for Central assistance frequently to augment its police force writes Jayanta Gupta in the Times of India, 24 May, 2003. He further adds that "According to senior police officials, the IRB will conduct operations similar to the Central Reserve Police Force. It may participate in combing operations to flush out People’s War, Maoist Communist Centre and Kamtapur Liberation Organisation activities in various districts."(Ibid)

The DIG (HQ) Narayan Ghosh said that Andhra Pradesh has such 10 battallions; Assam and Tripura have two each while Manipur has four. And that "All expenses will be borne by the state where they are posted" Ghosh added. The fake Marxist Buddhadeb has now gone wild to strengthen the state machinery perceiving the burgeoning Maoists led peasant movements in West Bengal. And who is to bear the burden of raising and posting such butchers’ gangs in West Bengal to be engaged against the struggling people? The onerous burden will have to be borne by the West Bengal people themselves for the perfidious policy of the hypocritic, fascist ways of the CPM-led government.

In early 2002, the CPM boss in West Bengal, Mr. Biman Bose, raised the "terrorist" bogey echoing the Central Government and the US imperialists, and asked the people everywhere in West Bengal to engage them in surveillance activity in order to trace out I.S.I agents. In April, 2003 the "Marxist" led state government and the State Intelligence Branch have worked out a plan to overhaul the DIB to cope with the changing pattern of crime". On the lines of Mr. Biman Bose, in order to curb the spurt in "terrorist activities and other crimes" "the top brass have decided to revamp the intelligence network to strengthen information gathering at grass roots"193

The same report elaborates that "The police have to depend on the SIB, subsidiary intelligence branch and the RAW for inputs……The SPs of various districts urged the SIB to take a fresh look at the DIB to upgrade coordination".

The CPM-led government has now busied itself to heavily guard the state machinery taking advantage of the state-of-the art technology. The CPM mouthpiece carried a report (Ganashakti, 9 April, 2003) on how the state government "has decided to arrange the wide-area network throughout the state. This work started in April 2000. Through this arrangement the Writers’ Building will be directly connected with all the district centres. …. ‘ I-T enabled governance’ was first initiated in North America in the 1960." The writer of the report, Mr. Prabhat Dutta, identified the areas where the latest information-technology would be made recording complaints, ensuring social security, etc. Mr Dutta added that with the help of famous national and international companies like IBM, Global Service and others in the second phase of this scheme all Blocks in the districts of West Bengal would be connected.

Apparently innocuous, the massive use of IT may appear but this American model will be pressed into service basically for the state’s surveilance activity with a computerised feed-back mechanism. The system will eminently help in the name of what Dutta claimed "Good-Value Governance" eliciting consent of the people through various means to the state and the govt. policies while simultaneously sharpening the coercive instruments of the state.

What we emphasize is that, the CPM-led "Left" Front can outsmart the earlier Congress governments by virtue of its grass roots, local contacts. And with the presence of a vast network of the state bodies like panchayats, the revamp of the police department, a must for putting down any voice of protest and maintaining the interests of the imperialists and native class enemies at all levels in this crisis situation through thousands of tentacles with the clear and open support of this government will make the state power so enormously powerful. The hegemony of the state power over societal aspects will also eat into the vitals of the social fabric, the peaceful existence of various religious communities in West Bengal is at peril thanks to the inroads of communal fascist gangs in West Bengal and "Left" government’s utter surrender to the communal central government.

The looming presence of the state machinery is aided and strengthened by the social democratic CPM like forces as a part and parcel of the Centre’s massive efforts at beefing up security in the name of fighting terrorism. And what the CPM like degenerate forces are engaged in by getting institutionalised and representing the ruling classes is nothing but paving the way for unremitting policing actions of the state’s armed forces and bureaucratic highhandedness even against the voice for democratic rights, let alone any higher form of mass movements.

Notes