Jyoti Basu's desire to quit active politics has resulted in some many on this discussion board to celebrate and also use the moment to pit venom on this grand old man of the communist movement in West Bengal. Maybe justified when one accspts that Jyoti Basu belonged to breed of Indian politicians who lived by the tenet that every thing was right as long as it helped them win/retain power. In his quest for power , he destroyed the very state that voted him again and again to power. If that was bad , it was worse that he felt no pangs of guilt! He used warped logic to justify what was going wrong in his state. As an Indian he felt no pangs in supporting the Chinese aggression or in allowing large scale illegal migration from Bangladesh that ended up being a vote bank for the CPI(M) . It did not matter to him that he presided over the decline of WB, it only mattered to him that he presided. The only regret that he would have is that the party by way of what he called an 'historical blunder' denied him the right to preside over the nation from New Delhi! Sadly history may in the end list only another historical blunder, that of the people of West Bengal in reposing their trust in that man more than once. But history may ultimately forgive the people of West Bengal since they ultimately paid a very high price for that historical blunder.
