Kolkota, March 27: Politics cannot be over-simplified and equated with arithmetic, where two plus two makes four; in politics two and two can also add up to a zero, said West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee here on Saturday. He was referring to the alliance forged by the Trinamool Congress and the Congress in opposition to the Left parties for the Assembly election.
“It is the people’s way of thought, their judgement that will decide [the outcome of the election],” Mr. Bhattacharjee said in an interview to a local Bengali television channel, ‘Chobbish Ghanta.’
Admitting that there were lessons to be learnt from the reverses suffered by the Left Front in recent elections, including the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, Mr. Bhattacharjee said the mistakes made “are being rectified.” Perceptions regarding the so-called “winds of change” had changed.
“We are overcoming that situation and will be able to do so,” he said, confident that the Left Front would be returned to power for the eighth term.
“We have learnt from our experiences of the past, and we can ensure an even better government in the future,” Mr. Bhattacharjee said.
The central focus of the next Left Front government would be to increase job opportunities while consolidating food security, while steps would be taken to ensure peace.
On the achievements of the Left Front, who had ruled the State over the past 34 years, Mr. Bhattacharjee said that despite the setbacks such as the scuttling of the proposed chemical hub project at Nandigram in 2007 and the relocation of the Nano small car factory to have come up at Singur in 2008 “even the politically blind and the Opposition, which never acknowledges our successes, know what it means to hand over ownership of 84 per cent of the land in the State to the poor farmers.”
“Eyes cannot be shut, not even of the Opposition, to the successes of the past 34 years”, he said.
“While the State has become self-sufficient in paddy, the pace of industrial growth has been sustained despite [the setbacks in] Nandigram and Singur. Moreover, there has been a leap in the quantum of investment reaching the Rs.15,000-crore mark in 2010 alone,” Mr. Bhattacharjee pointed out.
The abilities shown by the Trinamool Congress leadership, with its limited experience in governance, was not what the people were looking for in those administering the State, he said.
Citing the “haphazard” manner of functioning of the Railway Ministry under the Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, its “failure” to fulfil the role it was expected to play in the overall economic growth of the country, and the dysfunctionality of the zilla parishads and panchayats under the party’s control, Mr. Bhattacharjee said that the people would not accept a government in the State that would suffer the same fate.
–Agencies