Mamata’s overkill dents her fair image

SNM Abdi
Kolkata-based journalist, commentator 

THe fast-spreading violence in West Bengal is a blot on the reputation of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who sees herself as a rising national figure. The CM has shot herself in the foot by failing to rein in her Trinamool cadres, unleashing pre-meditated violence to prevent opposition candidates from filing nominations for the panchayat elections. The BJP, Congress and Left naturally hauled Banerjee's partisan administration over the coals. This included the state Election Commission which revoked its own order under political pressure. The Calcutta High Court stalled the panchayat  elections to give relief to the aggrieved parties. 

Mamata Banerjee’s green signal to strong-arm methods is baffling for two reasons. Firstly, she has herself been a victim of political terror. She knows how vulnerable the opposition is to organised intimidation, considering the 30 stitches on her head and various other physical injuries inflicted by Left cadres or the police.  Secondly, the opposition is simply no match for the Trinamool which would have swept the panchayat elections anyway, going by the outcomes of the 2014 General Election, 2016 assembly poll and subsequent byelections, including the Uluberia parliamentary bypoll this January when Trinamool more than doubled its 2014 victory margin and increased its vote share by a whopping 13 per cent.

Trinamool is so deeply entrenched today mainly because of Banerjee’s administrative acumen which is lifting the state from the morass it had sunk into during the 34 years of Left rule. The post-2011 transformation of rural areas, where panchayat elections are due, is evident: narrow but well-metalled roads, three-four storeyed schools and hospitals and marked improvement in power and drinking water supplies. The Public Distribution System supplying subsidised foodgrains to the needy works without a hitch.  And the progress in sanitation is evident from Nadia being declared as the first "open defecation-free" district in the country. 

There has been a sea change in the transport sector too. Totos — a hybrid between a pedal rickshaw and autorickshaw —as also big and small buses and trucks help villagers transport goods with ease. Gone are the days of the poor carrying a heavy load on their head, trundling under the scorching sun.  

Another feather in Banerjee’s cap is the decline in the number of rural poor heading to Kolkata and other urban centres because of new income-generating opportunities in the countryside, not to speak of better living conditions. Male domestic servants, or the archetypal ‘Ramu’ in affluent urban Bengali homes, are a vanishing breed. There is still a market for maidservants from villages but their wages have gone up substantially because of a shortfall in supply. 

Interestingly, two flagship programmes changing the face of West Bengal’s countryside were launched by Mamata Banerjee. Kanyashree, lauded by the UN, gives stipends to girls who keep studying and don’t marry until they turn 18. Sabooj Sathi provides bicycles to high school students of government-aided educational institutions, but the bicycles are used by the whole family! Darjeeling and the Jangalmahal region are two more success stories. She has snuffed out statehood demands in the former and purged the latter of Maoists. Jangalmahal has witnessed more development in the last seven years than since 1947, sounding the deathknell of Left wing extremism in sharp contrast to its consolidation in BJP-ruled Chattisgarh and Jharkhand. 

Mamata Banerjee is the colossus of Bengal politics, towering above her peers. She can easily afford to cede some political space to the opposition, which, in any case, hardly poses a challenge to her. Let’s not forget that long before she became CM in 2011, aggrieved groups made a beeline for her, undermining the authority of her Marxist predecessor Buddhadev Bhattacharya. Agitating farmers in Singur and Nandigram turned to her for help, clearly showing how the ground was slipping beneath Marxists’ feet. She championed their cause and ultimately ousted the Left.    

There are still agitators and demonstrators in Bengal; pockets of the disenchanted and the alienated exist even today. But they don’t turn to Dilip Ghosh or Suryakanta Mishra, the state chiefs of BJP and the Left, respectively, for help or solace. All of them want to sit down with Banerjee to find a solution, whether it’s the Bhangar farmers of South 24 Paraganas resisting the takeover of their land for power transmission lines, or the Paschim Bongo Khet Mazdoor Samiti fighting for dying tea garden workers, or ordinary people fed up with the tyranny of local Trinamool Congress leaders who operate like mafia dons. All roads still lead to Banerjee’s abode in Kolkata’s Kalighat. 

The supreme leader must not degenerate into a supremacist. Eyeing an opposition-free panchayat — which appears to be the Trinamool’s goal — is overkill, that may dent Banerjee’s image. She should be magnanimous and reconcile to the fact that Trinamool can’t control all unions of students, teachers or workers. Complete domination is undemocratic.     

The bloodshed in Bengal doesn’t behove a politician of Banerjee’s stature, who is aspiring for a bigger role in the country’s politics. Now is the time for her to win the nation’s confidence by obeying the high court and holding free and fair elections. As a Trinamool sweep in panchayat polls is a foregone conclusion, she must close the chapter and focus on next year’s Lok Sabha polls and the 2021 assembly elections, instead.