Maverick mass leader

Published : May 18, 2012 00:00 IST

Ambikesh Mahaparta (centre), the Jadavpur University professor who was arrested for forwarding an e-mail that took a dig at Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, at a protest in Kolkata on April 17.-SUSHANTA PATRONOBISH Ambikesh Mahaparta (centre), the Jadavpur University professor who was arrested for forwarding an e-mail that took a dig at Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, at a protest in Kolkata on April 17.

Ambikesh Mahaparta (centre), the Jadavpur University professor who was arrested for forwarding an e-mail that took a dig at Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, at a protest in Kolkata on April 17.-SUSHANTA PATRONOBISH Ambikesh Mahaparta (centre), the Jadavpur University professor who was arrested for forwarding an e-mail that took a dig at Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, at a protest in Kolkata on April 17.

Mamata Banerjee's political base remains strong, but her authoritarian policies and actions have alienated a section of the middle class.

IN the 2011 Assembly elections in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee made history not just by becoming the first ever woman Chief Minister of the State, but, more significantly, by achieving what many considered an impossible feat dislodging from power the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front, which had been running the government for 34 years. By dint of sheer perseverance and a single-minded resolve that she kept alive for years through the vicissitudes of her political career, she finally attained what her legions of admirers consider to be her rightful place, the chief ministership of West Bengal. It was a decisive victory in which the Left Front managed to win only 62 out of 294 seats. A year later, Mamata Banerjee remains strong politically though her occasionally whimsical and mostly autocratic behaviour is leaving a sizable section of her urban middle-class supporters cold.

Though 11 months is too early to make a proper assessment of the performance of any government, there has so far been no indication of any dramatic turnaround in the condition of the State. Though she seems to have alienated a section of her urban middle-class voters and very influential sections of the media, this has not yet made any impact on her rural support base.

Mamata Banerjee's core strength, which consists of Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and minority votes, remains in tact. However, it is clear that she does not wish to take any chances, particularly with the Muslim vote, which constitutes around 28 per cent of the State's electorate and is a crucial factor in West Bengal politics. In what is being seen as a clear move to keep Muslim voters on her side, she announced a honorarium of Rs.2,500 a month for Muslim clerics across the State. It is not that she is unsure about losing their support; by this she is further strengthening the party's ties with the minority community, a Trinamool leader told Frontline.

This move has, however, set Hindu priests clamouring for stipends and special benefits. This is extremely dangerous politics, as it is divisive along communal lines, said a source in the Left Front. The Congress believes that Mamata Banerjee's hopes of securing the Muslim vote all for herself may not come true as a sizable section of the Muslim population in the State are in the Congress strongholds of Malda and Murshidabad districts. Moreover, the idea that Muslims vote en bloc has not always proved correct.

OUTMANOEUVRING THE LEFT

Mamata Banerjee's resurgence from the political wilderness was essentially on the strength of prolonged and violent agitations in Singur and Nandigram against the Left Front government's policy of land acquisition for industrial use. Suddenly, it was as if the roles were reversed. While the CPI(M), with its industrialisation drive, was perceived as being on the side of big business, the Trinamool leader presented herself as one fighting for the rights of poor farmers. At that time she was part of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Soon she detached herself from the NDA and, with her battle cry of Maa, Mati, Manush (Mother, Earth, People), embarked upon a campaign to capture power in West Bengal.

A year after assuming power, she continues to outmanoeuvre the Left at its own game. With her firm stand against foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail, the setting up of special economic zones (SEZs) in the State, and the Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority Bill, she has stolen the Left's thunder. Her party has no political ideology of its own, so she has been trying to hijack ours. But we feel it is only a gimmick. Soon the general public will realise that, a senior CPI(M) leader told Frontline.

With 19 members in the Lok Sabha, the Trinamool Congress is the second largest constituent in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) after the Congress, and Mamata Banerjee perhaps feels now that her position is unassailable in the coalition. She has tried to take full advantage of her importance and has had her way on practically every issue she has set her mind on. She has opposed the Centre on issues ranging from FDI in retail to the Lokayukta clause in the Lokpal Bill and the National Counter Terrorism Centre, and has practically held it to ransom over financial assistance to West Bengal. She, in fact, even set a deadline to the Centre to accept her demand for a three-year moratorium on the interest on loans taken by the State government. The question now is, can she really afford to antagonise the Centre or be out of the UPA? While it is true we need her support at the Centre at present, she too needs us to leverage as much as possible from the partnership, a senior Congress leader said.

According to political observers, she has invested too much in the minority vote bank to go back to the NDA. At present she needs to have some say at the Centre to bail her government out of the financial crunch that the State is facing a leverage she knows she will not have if the BJP comes to power, said a source in the Congress.

RISE IN POLITICAL VIOLENCE

There has also been a rise in political violence in the State in the past one year. Since May last year, more than 90 people have reportedly lost their lives in political violence. While the CPI(M) claims that 61 of its workers and supporters were killed, the Trinamool says its toll is over 30. The violence, however, is not just between the Trinamool and the Left.

There have been numerous instances of flare-up not only between the Trinamool and its ally, the Congress, but also between various factions of the Trinamool. In fact, in a recent incident, Tourism Minister Rachpal Singh's car was attacked as it got between two warring Trinamool factions. Every day, CPI(M) and Left workers are being attacked by ruling party workers. The government is simply not concerned about our complaints. The law and order situation has become worse than what it was during the 1970s when the Congress was in power. What is happening now is unprecedented, Surya Kanta Mishra, the Leader of the Opposition and member of the CPI(M) Polit Bureau, said.

Several incidents that have betrayed an attitude at once authoritarian and ruthless in the Mamata Banerjee government have led to disenchantment among a section of educated urban middle-class people, who were overwhelmingly behind her during her ascent to power. Her open hostility towards any media that are perceived to be critical of her government; her refusal to admit her mistakes and the tendency to blame a widespread conspiracy of the CPI(M) and the media to discredit her; her intolerance towards any kind of criticism, even in jest; and what appears to be a streak of vindictiveness displayed in the reprisals for such alleged offences all these have alienated a considerable section of the Bengali intelligentsia that had supported her less than a year ago.

Her attitude has become laughable. Every time her government makes a blunder, she says the whole thing has been shajano' [staged]. If we are to believe her, everything is shajano from the Park Street rape case to attacks on the media, said Aniruddha Saha, 32, a software engineer. The Park Street rape case referred to by him has been an embarrassment that Mamata Banerjee may find hard to live down. At first she dismissed the report that a woman was raped in Kolkata's Park Street as one fabricated to malign her government. Later, when she was proved wrong by the investigating police officer, Damayanti Sen, she promptly transferred the officer to a relatively less important post.

Her tendency to lapse into denial mode at the time of a crisis that could embarrass her government later was evident during the spate of suicides by farmers and agricultural workers across the State. Even as 29 farmers and agricultural workers killed themselves under the burden of debt between October 2011 and January 2012, Mamata Banerjee did not budge from her stand that only one farmer had killed himself since she assumed power in May 2011. She also hinted at a Left conspiracy behind what she believed were false rumours.

The cases of farmer suicide have put district-level Trinamool workers in a fix. We have to deal with the situation on a daily basis, but nobody dares tell her anything. This way we will be losing the support of farmers, a Trinamool worker told Frontline. The same attitude was witnessed at a time when a large number of crib deaths started taking place, mainly in Malda district. She dismissed them as media hype in collusion with the CPI(M).

Political observers feel that in many ways she continues to behave more like an opposition leader than one at the helm of the government. She sees the spectre of the CPI(M) behind any embarrassment to the government. Even the media are not spared. Hardly a single public meeting goes by without her talking of some insidious plan or the other of the CPI(M) or the media, or at times even both, to discredit her government.

RELATIONS WITH THE CONGRESS

One of the ironies of Mamata Banerjee's political situation is that she is fighting not only the opposition, that is, the CPI(M)-led Left Front, but also her alliance partner, the Congress. The relationship between the two has, in fact, worsened to the point that one of the most strident voices of criticism against the government is that of the Congress. There has also been a demand from within the Congress ranks that the party go it alone in the upcoming panchayat elections. That is good news for the Left, which will stand to gain at the zilla parishad level if there is a division of votes. However, the Trinamool is expected to dominate at the gram panchayat level.

While most political observers and the opposition have chosen to reserve their opinion on the performance of the government on the grounds that 11 months is too short a period for a proper assessment, Mamata Banerjee has been vocal in her own appraisal. She has, on different occasions, announced that her government has completed 10 years' work in 10 months, and that 90 per cent of the work she had set out to do has already been accomplished.

However, many feel that it may be a little too early in the day for such proclamations. Even as laymen, we find her claims a little difficult to believe. If so much has indeed been accomplished, then why is it not apparent to us? asks Nilima Bhattacharya, a teacher in an English medium school in Kolkata.

ACHIEVEMENTS

A major achievement of the government has been its success in curbing Maoist violence in the Jangalmahal area. Mamata Banerjee has successfully combined armed forces operations against the militants along with the promise of development in the region in order to rid the forested areas of the three districts of Pashchim Medinipur, Bankura and Purulia of Maoist violence, which has been prevalent since 2008. But here too she has been criticised by a section of her supporters for the manner in which she used the Maoists to gain the political upper hand at one time and then discarded them after coming to power. However, her supporters call it realpolitik.

She has also been successful in bringing about a pause in the violent agitation for Gorkhaland by signing an accord with the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha for the establishment of a largely autonomous Gorkha Territorial Administration. However, many feel it is only a temporary respite from violent agitations that have marred the peace in the Darjeeling hills since 2008. The CPI(M), in fact, believes that the GTA will prove to be another wedge driven between the people of the hills and the plains.

INDUSTRY

Mamata Banerjee's prolonged and violent anti-land acquisition agitation against Tata Motors' small car project, which finally forced the latter to shift out of West Bengal, had won her rural votes, but at the expense of being labelled anti-industry. She now appears to be anxious to shrug off this reputation and is trying to woo industries, though taking care not to alienate the rural poor. In a clear overture to industrialists, her government has passed the West Bengal Land Reforms (Amendment) Bill in the Assembly, which will allow individuals and companies to acquire and hold land above the ceiling of 24.2 acres (an acre is 0.4 hectare). But she has also made it clear that the State will not acquire land forcibly.

The government claims to have received investment proposals of over Rs.80,000 crore in the first nine months of its tenure. However, there are economists who feel that the government lacks direction as far as any concrete economic development plan for the State is concerned. I don't see a clear-cut policy of the government, merely statements of MoUs [memorandums of understanding] being signed and proposals worth crores. How much of these will be translated into actual investments remains to be seen, said Dipankar Dasgupta, eminent economist and former head of the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi.

Moreover, according to industry sources, the government's hands-off policy in the area of land acquisition will undoubtedly be a deterrent for some industries in spite of the raising of the land ceiling. The nature of landholding in West Bengal is such that for a private company to acquire land by itself is a daunting task. The government must intervene, or else proposals will simply remain proposals, an informed source in industry told Frontline.

MASS LEADER

Through all her ups and downs, one thing that never diminished was Mamata Banerjee's appeal with the masses. Though it can be argued that the Left Front government defeated itself with its own attitudes and mistakes, that the vote cast was to throw out the CPI(M) rather than bring in the Trinamool, and that it was an unprincipled alliance based more on political opportunism and immediate exigencies that brought about the change of government, there can be no doubt about one fact that Mamata was the only credible face of the opposition against the Left, and it was her resilience, more than anything else, that saw her assuming power in West Bengal where the Congress had failed repeatedly.

She made it practically on her own as a woman and, most remarkably, without the protection of any male mentor. She is not just the leader of the Trinamool Congress, she is the Trinamool Congress. Time and again people have written her political obituary, and she has proved them wrong repeatedly. She is, in fact, arguably the last great mass leader since Jyoti Basu. A tremendous orator, she speaks the language of the masses, and they respond to her at a personal level.

Another remarkable aspect of hers is her indefatigability. She is always on the move, constantly in touch with the masses and invariably among the first to arrive at a scene of crisis or catastrophe. Even those who do not endorse her brand of politics can never deny her courage, fortitude and financial integrity. She has indeed traversed a long and hard road from very humble beginnings to being included on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

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