Calcutta, India - a statue of Lenin draped in garlands roses looms in the capital of West Bengal, surrounded by the flags of hammer and sickle hanging limp in the tropical wet. But the Communist State for a long time in the northeast of the India is perhaps about to obtain a cure of youth.
People tired of poverty, change-hungry Bengal, have attracted in recent elections by populist firebrand Mamata Banerjee and his party of the Trinamool Congress is expected to bring down the Communist Party of India-Marxist for the first time in 34 years when results of voting are announced Friday.
The Communists were blamed for turning Bengal into a land of labor strikes, industrial stagnation and agricultural unrest, where the cultural capital of the Kolkata India collapses and all progress but the jungle creep is at a standstill.
Communists admit they have made some spectacular political gaffes. For years, the party maintained a ban on computers in banks for fear that they would take away jobs. And it eliminates English courses in schools - a humiliation for Calcutta, the city once called Calcutta was home to the British Raj from 1772 to 1911, winners of the prize Nobel Mother Teresa and poet Rabindranath Tagore and internationally acclaimed novelists and film directors.
"We are aware of our weaknesses, the carefree approach, arrogance," Mohammed Salim, leader of the party, said. "We learn from our mistakes."
But many Bengalis, the time of introspection is over and the Communist contrition comes too late. Kolkata is today far sculpted gardens, marble memorials and university campuses, the British colonial rulers left in 1947.
Today, many Bangladeshis feel ill-prepared for the 21st century and are tired with the Communist administration led by assaillies by corruption and industrial strikes tacitly approved policies pro-worker of the Communists.
In 2006, the Communists severed seized 235 seats of the Assembly of 294 State and tried to revive the industry with a plan of Tata Motors build its ultra-compact Nano car in Bengal.
But Banerjee has helped to thwart the plan by the arbitrary montage of violent protests against what it calls acquisitions of land and forced by the Government on land for the plant in Tata. Once a small activist, popularity of the Banerjee exploded after that it was passed to tobacco while he was conducting such an event. Tata has taken its plant to another State.
The simple white sari Banerjee, flip-flops of rubber and angry denunciations have helped make her an instant friend of poor who urge for its gatherings colorful campaign uppercase and affectionately refers to him as "didi", or big sister.
What is now promising Bengal 91 million people sounds otherworldly: resorts tangled five-star coastal mangrove, a second Switzerland at the foot of the Himalayas and the development of transforming Kolkata decaying in London from the East.
She insists the industry will be a priority - an effort to calm investors after its protest apparent hunted Tata. In his current position as Minister of the Canadian national railway, it covered the State with the funds of the project and is committed to build factories, industrial parks and the stations of rails here.
"For the first time, I am inspired by the policy." Bengal has need for change, "said forager garbage Kolkata Janeswar Bera, 64." "Didi is Sandals, she lives a simple life." She is like us. ?
But the 56-year old Banerjee, who boasts of his poetry and paintings, have also raised eyebrows by about 100 of her paintings sale gross of more than $200,000 in only four days last month. Many were purchased by rich businessmen, who insisted that they were not trying to buy influence with favorite policy. His campaign, in cooperation with the applicable national Congress Party, has also attracted Communist ire for the use of expensive helicopters to transport politicians big shot distance gatherings.
The Communists say that their block left Front will win the vote independently, as the seven before, with a force that draws as much of the legacy of the India and Karl Marx.
"Since we first won in 1977, the opposition was to return to the leftists out," said Salim, the head of the party. "People know better." The future of the India is not secure without left. ?
The first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, expressed strong socialist leanings, which were written in the Constitution and reflected in programs promising to work and education for the poor. His daughter, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was staunchly pro-Soviet Union during the cold war.
Early in Bengal, the Communists - who also run the State of Kerala - had delighted many distributing land to the poor and providing the disadvantaged a kind of social dignity they had never known.
"The people of the Earth received was not much, but he had a great psychological effect," said economist Abhirup Sarkar of the Indian Statistical Institute.
The traditionally atheist Communists are also credited maintain communal peace - no small feat in a country not divided by clan loyalties, the divisions of caste and religious animosities.
"Hindus and Muslims live here with no religious bias and no riots." "I am concerned there may be violence again if the Communists are voted," said a Muslim trader in Kolkata Hindu majority.
But instead of collective violence, there were hundreds of assassinations on both sides - especially as the economy has failed.
Agriculture has suffered when the national market reforms introduced international competition and the industry collapsed in the midst of a culture promoted the Communist of labour strikes. Share of Bengal in Indian manufacturing dropped 13 percent in the 1980s just above 2 percent today, but it is still the home of 60 to 80 percent of the strikes of the India between 2007 and 2009The Economist Sarkar said.
Company, at the same time, is politicized with party worker support favor-swapping: licences for the votes of taxi or loans from the Bank to militants.
"The Communists are probably the least corrupt party nationally," said Suman Chattopadhyay, Chief Editor of the local newspaper of Bengal "ek Din", or "one day". "But in Bengal, absolute power corrupt absolutely."
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