The Hindu Business Line : <I>Statesmanship of a high order </I>

I confess I was thrilled no end at the news of the meeting of the veteran CPI(M) leader of world stature, Mr Jyoti Basu, with the Trinamool Congress Chief, Ms Mamata Banerjee, at Kolkata to sort out the stalemate that had arisen over land acquisition at Singur for the Tata small car project and the face-off between cadres of the two parties at Nandigram. It was a display by Mr Basu of statesmanship of a very high order.

Not that it is surprising. This is the Jyoti Basu I knew from 1955, when I was Sub-Collector, Barrackpore, and later worked with him in various capacities. This is also the Jyoti Basu whose accessibility and forthcoming nature made him establish a world record in serving as the Chief Minister for the longest continuous period, winning six elections in a row until he voluntarily stepped down, without there being any need or pressure to do so.

Mr Basu is one of the very few still surviving whose qualities of leadership and human fellow feeling are reminiscent of the culture of the great heroes of the struggle for Independence. Magnanimity and tolerance were the hallmark of relations among politicians in that era, even if they were in opposite camps in regard to policies and ideologies.

They were unsparing in their criticism of each other within legislatures and on public platforms, but the language was marked by dignity and decency of the like of which too public life these days is bereft. Truth to tell, that kind of civilised behaviour and enthralling greatness is not in evidence anywhere in India any more.

It was entirely like Mr Basu to take the initiative to extend a hand of conciliation, exactly in keeping with political traditions that obtained in the country in the halcyon days of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. He is 94 (and may he live to hit a century not out!) and at an age when nobody would blame him if he left problems to be addressed in the usual course by those who bore the responsibility.

Political courage

And still, in the larger interest of the prosperity of the State, he decided, despite his failing health, to take a hand, and on his own invite Ms Banerjee for a face-to-face discussion.

At one stroke, he has put paid to the rancour and bitterness that were threatening to make festering sores of both Singur and Nandigram and won over Ms Banerjee with his readiness to use the undoubted political clout that he enjoys to have the contentious issues looked at again in a spirit of understanding and accommodation.

In particular, his agreeing to set things right in respect of the accusation made by Ms Banerjee of the CPI(M) cadres at Khejuri being behind the continued unsettled and tense situation in Nandigram is a shining example not only of the willingness of a leader to go with an open mind into complaints against one's own party cadres but of breath-taking political courage.

Mr Basu has also promised to take up with the Government the suggestions of Ms Banerjee for resolving the tangled fallout of land acquisition at Singur. This will require some doing since relocation on a reduced area at a different site will mean asking the State Government, and the Chief Minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, as also the Tatas, to go all the way back to square one, to their acute embarrassment.

Maybe, instead, a committee headed by a Supreme Court judge could be asked to go into the fairness of the process of acquisition with reference to the area of farmland involved, the consent (or lack of it) of the owners and the amounts of the compensation.

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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