At 83, Jyoti Basu may head for exit

Politicians who ripen in their offices often fail to see the milestone beyond which they may start to rot in the old chair. But one may count Jyoti Basu-the Marxist chief minister of West Bengal for 20 years now-among those endowed with a better sense of timing. To leave, or even a readiness to change jobs. At 83, the patriarch of the Indian Left sees the autumn ahead if he continues in his home state. He also senses a spring of new possibilities if he throws in his hat into the politics of the Centre. Maybe with a new bid to head the United Front Cabinet in Delhi. In May last year, his party, the CPI(M), scuppered his earlier attempt to wrest the prime ministership. Basu's Delhi strategy is yet to unfold, but he is evidently drawing up his plan for departure from the state politics.

He is delegating work to juniors, avoiding formal pressing of flesh, and keeping work hours flexible. He is still the star of Writers' Buildings, the state's secretariat, but everybody there feels the star is tired.

Basu's impressive convoy of eight cars does not scream through Calcutta streets at 10:30 every morning. He retires for the day more often before lunch hour. Says a senior member of Basu's security team: "We used to have an agenda typed out everyday for the chief minister. This has now been discontinued as there are not enough engagements to put on the list."

There are more signs of Basu letting up. Earlier, he met every foreign dignitary and prospective investor in the state. Today, a sub-committee of ministers supervises and coordinates investment proposals in the state. Last year, he said he was not too keen to run for the elections.

Finally, he yielded to the party's demands. Says Gokul Bairagi, Basu's election agent since 1982: "At his age, he is pulling on just for the sake of the party and for the state." Perhaps not for long. On a recent trip to Bangladesh, Basu admitted: "My days are over. The younger ones would have to take charge now."

Increasingly, he is letting others 000 INDIA TODAY MARCH 00, 1996 take care of things. Soon after he came to power for the fifth time in May 1996, Basu relinquished the home (police) portfolio he had held for 18 years to Buddhadev Bhattacharya, who many think is being groomed as his successor. These days, Bhattacharya-also the state's minister for information and cultural affairs-selects the men for the key posts in the state.

Basu, however, is still every inch a political animal. But what is definitely 'withering away'-in a manner that Karl Marx would not have recommended- is his proven willingness to accept the party as God, and, more importantly, to keep his lips firmly zipped in accordance with the code of conduct of the CPI(M). In a recent interview to The Asian Age, Basu stunned his party's orthodoxy by spilling the beans about the circumstances of his last-minute withdrawal from the race for the prime minister's post in May last year. He confessed that the move to let him become the prime minister was outvoted in the central committee of his party by 35 to 20. Then, with regret but no rile, he described that decision of his party as a "historic blunder".

Such candour invited expected flak from the grey eminences of the CPI(M), including Kerala Chief Minister E.K. Nayanar, who said Basu had spoken out of turn. The 'young fogeys' in the party's politburo, such as Sitaram Yechuri and Prakash Karat, both hardline proponents of the view that the CPI(M) should stay away from bourgeois coalitions, remote-controlled a terse official statement which said that the issue of joining the Central Government had been "settled and closed". But, quite unfazed, Basu carried the debate onto the public platform. At a meeting in Calcutta, addressed by Basu as well as Harkishen Singh Surjeet, the CPI(M) general secretary, the West Bengal chief minister harped on the 'historic blunder' theme. Surjeet, regarded as an organisation man, was visibly embarrassed. He said the party is in "no position to join the Government at the Centre".

Surjeet's reaction was politically correct, perhaps. Nevertheless, the debate shed new light on Basu's line of thinking on the subject of coalitions, a matter of great contemporary relevance in the face of the growing uncertainties about the continuance of the Cabinet led by Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda. Basu drew from his experience of leading a centreleft coalition in 1967, and thereafter an all-hues-of-the-red coalition government since 1977. He bluntly said that Deve Gowda lacked "that experience", and hinted that a more permanent glue to keep a coalition together could have been a deeper commitment to the Common Minimum Programme of the United Front (UF).

Considering that the ruling UF's current problems arise more from the elusiveness of the Congress support from outside than from a crack-up within, Basu's wisdom may not be of much immediate help to the Deve Gowda Government. But he has a knack for knowing the ways of the Congress, a faculty which most of the UF leaders lack. To the late Indira Gandhi, Basu was more a close buddy than a political adversary. To her son, the late Rajiv Gandhi, he was 'Basuji' at official meetings and a revered 'uncle' in private conversations. While in office, former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, a dyed-in-the-wool Congressman, confided in Basu more than many of his party colleagues.

However, the reasons underlying the noise Basu is making are difficult to understand. Has he, like the Orissa veteran Biju Patnaik, developed the 'fretting grandpa' syndrome? Or, is he really ready to pitch for prime ministership should Deve Gowda find the seat getting too hot? Is he talking above the serried ranks of his party, direct to the UF constituents, and the Congress MPs who do not find Deve Gowda up to their taste but are not ready yet with a prime minister from their own ranks?

For the present, Basu has given no clue to these questions. A change of guard is not something that is talked about at the CPI(M) headquarters in Calcutta's Alimuddin Street. More so because the man in question has been the cohesive force in sustaining a coalition government for two decades. In the 20 years of his stewardship of the state, Basu has been a pragmatic leader and a hands-on manager. The power situation in West Bengal, for instance, is now decidedly brighter than in the dauntingly dark '70s. It has been a power-surplus state for years together, and the state's stability in the energy sector is the best come-hither sung to foreign investors. His resolve not to have a division in Bengal helped tackle the bloody separatist movement in the Darjeeling hills in the '80s. BASU'S image, says Partha Chatterjee, director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, is that of an "acceptable arbitrator".

In fact, his image has been more acceptable in the past 10 years when he shed his rigidity, keeping his political antennae tuned to the times. He has moved away from his earlier focus on land reforms, and the consequent redistribution of wealth in the agrarian sector, and is now bullish about industrialisation and entry of private capital in areas which were a no-no in the past. "Basu's cherished dream of industrial rejuvenation of the state has not come true, but he has given to the state the necessary push," says Amiya Gooptu, chairman of Bengal Initiative, a private thinktank, and former Calcutta sheriff.

The prospect of Jyoti Basu leading a crazy-quilt coalition in Delhi, with an acquiescent nod from the Congress, may only remain a fond dream for Bengalis who just love their icons-like matinee idol Uttam Kumar, filmmaker Satyajit Ray, or cricketer Saurav Ganguly. The chief reason why it will remain a dream is Basu's failing health. Doctors attending on him say he suffers from chronic colitis and has intermittent backache.

He has a hearing problem which even the hearing aid cannot help. However, more than due to his health, Basu seems headed for exit because he hasn't got many more conquests to make in the state he lords over. He has ideas about running the Central Government, but his age, and his party, have got in the way. The CPI(M) is bound by its constitution which allows itself to join state-level coalitions but, at the central level, that will be a dangerous liaison. So far the party has thrown its rule book at Basu, but the man has the stature to make the party rewrite the rules.

Chandan Basu, the 'comrade' papa's capitalist son, who runs a slew of businesses-ranging from biscuits to building-shrugs off the possibility of his father's retirement, saying that "It does not bear discussion". But insiders say that 1997 will be the year when Basu may hang up his boots.

They say that the panchayat elections, due in March 1998, may be advanced by a year so that the party can draw the best mileage, with Basu still in the saddle. But his coalition partners know that they may soon be called upon to march past their retiring general- tilting their cap to him in admiration and gratitude.