Buddha's smile and the Bengal polls

"Times have changed. You have to accept it," Bhattacharya said, when asked if praise from a lot of unexpected quarters, like captains of industry, embarrassed him. It was a valid question.

Bhattacharya, a student of Bengali from Kolkata's Presidency College, had been spotted as a potential Communist party worker by a professor, Surya Banerjee. The present chief minister was groomed by then CPI-M general secretary Pramod Dasgupta, who also groomed most of the current crop of leaders.

In the CPI-M -- a party whose discipline regime is almost as strong as that of its sworn enemy, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh -- Bhattacharya was groomed not in organisational work, but as a public relations person.

Maybe that training is coming in handy.

"My responsibility now is to build industries in the state. So, I have to be friends with businessmen. I have to convince them to come to this state. Do you want me to not do that? Do you want me to drive people out because we are Communists? We are not fools. We are realists," he added.