JOIN USFaltering Mamata is down but not out
The victory of Mamata Banerjee in the 2011 Assembly polls in West Bengal is somewhat like what Rajiv Gandhi (former Prime Minster, who was assassinated in 1991) had achieved in 1984. She fired the imagination of not just her party workers but also the general public, sweeping away votes in her wake.
Not much unlike Rajiv, she squandered it away too soon, with people questioning her regime within 24 months of her coming to power. Mamata emerged the uncontested leader of a state that had been tied to the fetters of Left rule for more than three decades, with hardly any signs of change. She stood for making a difference and it was the slogan of poribartan - ‘change’ in Bengali - that drove her campaign.
Her preparation for the role of Chief Minister did not begin few months before the 2011 Assembly polls but since she embarked on the anti-establishment movement from Singur and subsequently at Nandigram in 2006. It became clear that Mamata was the only true opposition to the Left Front.
She was the ‘Great Wall of China’ for the red brigade of Alimuddin Street (the CPM state headquarters has stood on 31, Alimuddin Street for decades, the name of the rather narrow lane becoming one with the party).
Battle-hardened and fiery rhetoric-spewing didi — the elder sister as she is addressed by her followers, along with a large part of Bengal and even the national media — grew stronger as she matched steps with the Left Front government of three decades, causing trouble wherever she went and rousing rabble, wherever she stopped. It all started with Singur, a small hamlet in the district of Hooghly, around 45 km from Kolkata.
A section of local farmers refused to part with their land in the face of extreme force from the administration, which was trying to acquire around 1,000 acres of multi-crop land so that Tata Motors could set up a factory to manufacture its much-hyped cheap car, Nano. Getting a whiff of the resistance brewing, Mamata jumped into the fray and took over the movement.
Her hands were further strengthened when she managed to beat the Left at its own game of intimidation, often violent, at Nandigram in East Midnapore, around 180 km from the state capital. The CPM-led government planned a chemical hub there, driving away around 75,000 people from their home of generations.
Singur changed everything. Apprehensions of forcible land acquisition under the Left regime spread like wildfire and Trinamool emerged the strongest voice, with people from across Bengal rallying behind didi. She found further voice in Kolkata’s intelligentsia and Bengal’s cultural elite, who came out on the streets in her favour.
Things, however, changed within months of Mamata coming to power.
Although the Left was still ostracised, the intelligentsia, including the likes of Magsaysay Award winning author-activist Mahashweta Devi, filmmaker Aparna Sen and social activist Medha Patkar started expressing concern over the new regime. The very issues that brought Mamata to power seemed worst-hit in her Bengal, pointed out academic Sunando Sanyal.
“Law and order situation is dismal with Bengal emerging a state with probably the highest rate in crimes against women; civil liberties are at peril. The media is being asked to pursue self-censorship. Anybody questioning her ways is being branded a Maoist. She seems as bad as the Left,” said Sanyal, who was an ardent Mamata supporter until his decision to resign from the government committees he was associated with under Mamata’s government.
General opinion was that if employment generation seems to be a far cry in Bengal, industrialisation has become nothing more than a pipe dream. Many others, including theatre and film actors, professors of leading colleges and universities in the state are asking the same questions, although some others are still hopeful. The extent of fear, however, is palpable since hardly anyone was ready to be named or have quotes attributed to them.
One such professor pointed out that people still remember the fate suffered by Prof Ambikesh Mahapatra of Jadavpur University, who was harassed and even arrested on charges of hacking another’s email account after he shared a cartoon taking a jibe at Mamata and Mukul Roy, Trinamool Congress general secretary and Railway minister for a brief period in 2012, before Trinamool withdrew from the UPA.
Egotistic leader
Nirbed Roy, a Congress leader, who was once with Trinamool and has seen Mamata closely, pointed out that although it was hard work that helped her rise up the ranks, the Trinamool supremo is markedly egotistic, which lead her to take one regressive step after another. “When she came to power people had a lot of hope. She disappointed within few months. She got a great opportunity but was misguided,” Roy commented.
A political science professor from Calcutta University, however, believes Banerjee can still change her path by adding some structure to her party, instead of keeping all power and responsibilities concentrated in her own hands.
“She is a prominent mass leader, one you don’t come across easily. But with mistrust at the root of her political existence, it is difficult for her to run the administration,” he said. As an opposition leader Mamata could afford to walk at her own pace because then her role was clearly etched out. “When the person is in power and does not have faith in anybody else, it is difficult to run a government,” he pointed out.
Before the CPM placed the mass movement at Singur before her on a platter, Banerjee was waiting in the shades, hoping for a balm to cool the festering wounds Trinamool Congress received in the 2006 Assembly polls, winning 30 seats in a House of 294, and in the 2004 General Elections, where she saved her own seat but lost seven others secured in 1999.
As she makes overtures towards Bihar’s Nitish Kumar and Y S Vijayamma, honorary president of YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh, her designs hint at a bigger game plan, involving Delhi. She has been making the right noises towards a non-Congress, non-BJP and non-Left federal front that could attract the interest of Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati or, even Jayalalitha.
Explosion delayed
But will 2014 be Mamata’s year or does she fade into oblivion, the distant memory of a one-term Chief Minister of a hapless eastern state? It might be for providence to decide where she stands next year, the hidden laws of a probable outcome does not point towards total desolation, at least for the foreseeable future. Analysts are not willing to commit to Banerjee’s seemingly well-kept plans of an axis of regional satraps.
They, however, agree that she will remain a force to reckon with in the run-up to the General Elections in 2014. A recent opinion poll by AC Nielsen and a Bengali news channel gave her 13 seats in 2014, which did not sit well with most observers.
“It is true that Mamata is faltering but she is doing it with an attitude that will make it hard for her to plug the holes till it’s too late. She might be running on a short fuse, the explosion has been carefully delayed,” said the professor of politics.
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