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Why AAP phenomenon didn't take place among intellectual Bengalis first

By Shubham
|
Google Oneindia News

Ever since Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) earned an overwhelming victory in the Delhi assembly election, a lot of Bengalis are expressing support for the party. May be a natural distaste for the saffron camp made them more happy about Kejriwal's victory as it was perceived more to be a victory over Narendra Modi.

Bengalis are known for their intellectual capacity, still they couldn't do an AAP-like experimentation?

But going by the known history of the Bengalis, who are often seen as intellectuals, one wonders whether the new phenomenon in Indian politics called the AAP should have taken place in Bengal first and not Delhi.

kejriwal-delhi-politics

No AAP-like initiative even when the state has been seriously pegged back?

For given the Bengalis' reputation as people of wisdom and socio-political maturity, something like the AAP should have found its initial recipients in West Bengal, a state which has been pegged back politically and economically for years now.

If Bengal had once shown India the way, why it is no more the case today?

But things did not turn out as per the expectation. No leader like Arvind Kejriwal came up even as Bengal continued to witness a steady political decline and economic stagnation. For those who still believe that what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow as it was during the independence movement, didn't it raise a serious question?

Average Bengalis have lost both confidence and interest to make a change: They still belong to either of the two parties (now BJP replacing Left)

It is sad that if it hasn't but also at the same time, it is not unexpected that it didn't. For common Bengalis today have lost, to put it straight, both the confidence and the interest to effect a change. It is an irony, given the Bengalis' reactionary nature and their refusal to let something go without questioning.

Self-destructive politics has ruined the Bengalis' possibility

But it is a fact that an average Bengali has lost the power to ask a potent question today, thanks to his over-indulgence in narrow and self-destructive politics.

Being politically aware is good but to go to a point of no return just to justify a political position is of little help and the Bengalis have done exactly that throughout the years.

Bengali revolutionaries were once the nation's pride, now they are just party loyalists; even 34-year of misrule was accepted without a word

The result has been disastrous for a race which was once reputed for its thinking mind. It is surprising that the same race, which had tried various means and methods to uproot the British rule from India and also took an ideological clash to a point of no return during the early 1970s, never really bothered to disturb the status quo which had prevailed in the state for 34 long years.

Yes, there could be a voice or two against the entrenched regime of the Left Front here and there but certainly there was no concerted effort from any quarter to ensure that Bengal's sagging political fortunes were directed to a fresh direction.

Left's totalitarian politics and destroyed Bengal's intellectual independence

The shadow of the Left's destructive totalitarian politics was allowed to engulf the entire state through three-and-a-half decades. What is more shocking is that Bengal's physical wounds brought by the Partition and the ill-effects that they had brought also didn't inspire any movement from the civil quarters aiming to change the fortunes.

Bengali intellectuals get busy with parties when they need to lead a new way

Jyoti Basu did good or bad? Bengal still has to find a common answer

West Bengal and its bhadrolok class decided to stay content with whatever it had at its disposal and routinely blamed the political class for all that went bad. "Jyoti Basu did us more harm than help," says a representative of the educated middle-class while a distant farmer in rural Bengal believed that it was Basu and his party who changed his fortunes (in 2006 that fortune again changed for the bad and Basu's party was demolished within three to five years).

Bengal mistook stagnation as stability: The result is obvious

Years of stagnation in the name of stability has in a way left the will of the average Bengali rusted. The lack of fresh exposure to the fast-changing world and the disturbing trend of young minds deserting the state have left the state in a state of immobility.

Now, it's a vicious cycle which even the CM can't break

It has found itself caught in such a vicious cycle which a Bengali, even if it is the chief minister of the post-Left era, finds difficult to challenge and break. The possibility of thinking new ideas and ways of executing them have evaporated from the land where people are known to be voracious readers and culture-friendly.

Just listen to the CM's recipe for growth today: That's a formula for successful promoters, not renaissance

Today, the chief minister of the state asks people to sell sweets and road-side fries to go on and build multi-story buildings as an indication of their growth in life. An aam Bengali thinks how not to get into big avenues and just about manage a family by means of either teaching in a school at a tuition hall in the locality.

The shocking divorce from reality will bleed Bengal for perhaps ever

This shocking divorce from the reality which is changing every moment gives the answer why no Arvind Kejriwal can ever take birth in that state, irrespective of the fact that it has all the ingredients required for a politico-economic overhauling.

AAP is an experiment but Bengalis hate experiments (change)

A Bengali mind hates to change. But a culture that gives rise to a Kejriwal who essentially represents a new experimentation only relishes change and believes in achieving that. Herein lies the clash and herein lies the reason for Bengal's sorry state of affairs today.

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