Obituary: Unusual Leftist CM who wooed industry to Bengal

Shubhadeep Choudhury

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 8

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, West Bengal’s last Marxist Chief Minister, passed away at his Palm Avenue residence in south Kolkata on Thursday morning. He was 80 and is survived by his wife Meera Bhattacharjee and their daughter Suchetan.

Suffering for a long time with chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, Bhattacharjee had abandoned public life because of his failing health. Having succeeded Jyoti Basu as the CM in 2000, he remained at the helm till May 2011 when Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) struck an alliance with the Congress and stormed to power in West Bengal, ending the over three-decade Left Front rule in the state.

Known for his trademark white “dhoti” and “panjabi” (as dhoti-kurta is called in Bengal), Bhattacharjee was also a playwright and a poet. An alumnus of Kolkata’s elite Presidency College, he perfectly fitted the bill of the good-old Bengali intellectuals with a varied range of interests.

Filmmaker Satyajit Ray was a friend. Bhattacharjee restored the white paint of Shaheed Minar near Esplanade in Kolkata after Ray expressed disgust seeing the red coating given on the monument by the first Left Front government.

Describing Bhattacharjee as an “outstanding leader of the party”, CPM politburo said in a statement: “He was a poet, playwright and writer. He translated many international literary works into Bengali. He wrote extensively on the changes in China and published a book on the subject.”

In Bengal, the CPM drew flak from its critics for the exodus of industries from the state. Bhattacharjee wanted to change the narrative and pushed for the state’s industrialisation. He succeeded in getting the prestigious Tata Group to set up a car factory at Singur near Kolkata. The resistance of the local villagers to land acquisition for the factory snowballed into a major agitation catapulting Mamata to power and bringing to an end the Left Front’s 34-year rule.