Among the present Chief Ministers in the different regions of India, Jyoti Basu happens to be holding the reins of power in a region for the longest period at a stretch. He is unparalleled in many ways. His life history indicates how being committed to destroy a system one can still become an upholder of that system. Right now Jyoti Basu has become the ‘great mediator’ of our national politics. However, the purpose of this book is not to indulge in unalloyed adulation or biased panegyrics born out of an overwhelming infatuation but to present in a highly readable and thought-provoking manner a balanced and level-headed, impartial and thoroughgoing evaluation of his regime for the last 14 years, highlighting both the positive and negative contours of this long period with the help of a massive amount of carefully collected data: historical, economic, political and statistical. In various chapters and author has wielded his pen almost like a sword and made a shrewd and sardonic, insightful and intriguing and also perhaps a heretical and iconoclastic analysis of the jig-saw puzzle which is known as leftist politics in West Bengal or for that matter, India, at the present moment.
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