My earliest memory of politics was in the Midst of height of Communist rule in Bengal. The golden age of the rule of the longest running Chief Minster from his riegn in middle of 1977-2000. A rule which then it seemed eternal rule of the Red Communist.
The Memories are of the long Bands called in by either forces. The huge rally that used to block our travel back from school. But undoutablly the most vibrant memories are of the evening hour of political gathering downstairs at my house. Though the actual talk were for only 30 odd minutes, catching the officer goer's walk back to home from office, the pivotal point of their walk back to their home from bus stop. But my memories are of the long Patriotic communist songs sung over the loudspeakers. Be the songs of Ruma Guha Thakurta or Bhupen Harika it idolized the party and its idology. The medium made me appreciate many of the great songs and made me aware of the songs and literature of the era and people behind them.
The song and literature was a products of an era of a group who though bought a lot to change the grass root of Indian populace but will be, albeit unfortunately for what they could not have achieved. The dream and idealism of 80's Calcutta.
There are many of great products of people who made that era. We will always remember and idolize Satyajit Ray and Amartya Sen but surely among them would be Jyoti Basu.
My recollection of him and the political atmosphere in which I was got my intellectual borth was of love and hate. The "Positive Liberty" (read about in Wikipedia) of the marxist government and the grassroots real impact it had in Bengal was always a stuff that enamoured me towards them. The true social upliftment and some great individual who I saw in real life and saw in the political atmoshere like Jyoti Basu or Somnath Banerjee were so much idfferent from the crop of politicians which other states were producing. In a sense which made me respect the politicial atmoshere to which I was born. But at the same side I could never completely fathom why with such great minds and good atmosphere was Bengal languishing in the economic demise which were so much stark. Be it my visits to Budge Budge's closed Jute Mills and huge unemployment it brought about in the small town or visit to the never start-up Electronic City of Salt Lake. There remained an enigma which perplexed me for so long. An enigma of why the social and grassroot movements can not also bring industrial revolution. The answer will certainly will come in demise of the great Soviet Nation and recently why California is bankrupt while Texas with laisse se faire grows. The answer was that movement and thought process was a bit too early. Today Laisse Faire economics lays in shambles but its heiht was in in 80s and 90s. The East Asian Giants like Singapore and Thialand. An age when the great Communist forces in Europe were decimating and China rightly moved away from Mao's Philosophy to Deng Xiaoping's economics. And in that milieu was this lone state in a country that was trying to latch on to the Economic movement which seemed it had alluded it. A state ruled by a political system that was proven unsuccessful wan was dying world over. And it was reigned by a sort of maverick called Jyoti Basu. As said by Pranoy Roy on his death "India's greatest dies today, man who many are not made anymore". He somehow captured the huge dilemma of the state and the times he rules over it. A time in which I came to know myself.
