Trinamool supremo has to do much more now to meet Amit Shah's challenge writes, AMULYA GANGULI.
———
Having routed a redoubtable adversary like the Left Front in West Bengal in 2011, Mamata Banerjee must have considered herself to be invincible for much of the past decade. Her belief in her own prowess was such that at one time she was even being projected by her acolytes as a possible future prime minister.
It is unlikely that such grandiose claims will now be made even by her most devoted followers when she is in danger of suffering a serious setback in next year's Assembly election.
Few will believe that she may actually lose, given her widely acknowledged fighting spirit and the likelihood of her party, the Trinamool Congress, playing the card of Bengali chauvinism against "outsiders" who believe that Rabindranath Tagore was born in Shantiniketan, as the local BJP's official twitter handle said. But the possibility of the BJP running the Trinamool Congress close cannot be discounted.
For bringing her party to such dire straits, Mamata has only herself to blame.
Her most serious mistake was in not only letting the anti-socials, who were earlier associated with the Left, enter the Trinamool Congress in sizeable numbers, but also in giving them a free hand to indulge in their hooliganism, unlike the CPI(M) which maintained some kind of control over the rowdies.
The most outrageous instance of the goons running amok was during the panchayat elections in 2018 when the Supreme Court described the conditions in West Bengal as "grim and grave" because no votes could be cast for as many as 20,000 seats where the Trinamool candidates won unopposed.
“Her most serious mistake was in not only letting the anti-socials, who were earlier associated with the Left, enter the Trinamool Congress in sizeable numbers, but also in giving them a free hand to indulge in their hooliganism, unlike the CPI(M) which maintained some kind of control over the rowdies.
But, if this was an instance of widespread violence, what was no less disturbing were the routine incidents of house-owners being unable to transact any business of buying or selling their property unless they paid what came to be called "cut money" to the Trinamool goons.
It is probably this "cut money" phenomenon which has hurt Mamata the most with critics mockingly altering her well-known "ma, mati, manush" slogan to "ma, mati, mafia".
As Suvendu Adhikari, a prominent local politician, said to justify his switching to the BJP, the idea of "tyaag" or sacrifice in Trinamool had been replaced by "bhog" or conspicuous consumption.
The Chief Minister herself may have retained her austere lifestyle by continuing to live in her modest accommodation in the middle-class locality of Kalighat in the heart of Kolkata. But the promotion of her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, has been widely noticed, so much so that Union Home Minister told a rally in Midnapore that he was being groomed to be the next Chief Minister.
“It is probably this "cut money" phenomenon which has hurt Mamata the most with critics mockingly altering her well-known "ma, mati, manush" slogan to "ma, mati, mafia".
As those politicians who have been leaving the Trinamool in search of greener pastures in the BJP have pointed out, it is the rise of Banerjee and of the role played by the ubiquitous poll strategist, Prashant Kishor, whose services can be availed of by any party, which have alienated the old-timers in Trinamool.
Their feeling of being ignored, coupled with what Saugata Roy, Trinamool M.P., referred to as the "allurements" offered by the BJP, are leading to the exodus in ones and twos of the fortune-seekers from the party, casting a shadow over its electoral prospects.
But the desertions might not have occurred if Mamata had shown herself to be a more capable administrator, not only in terms of checking lawlessness, but also in ensuring the state's development.
“Their feeling of being ignored, coupled with what Saugata Roy, Trinamool M.P., referred to as the "allurements" offered by the BJP, are leading to the exodus in ones and twos of the fortune-seekers from the party, casting a shadow over its electoral prospects.
For all her efforts to attract investments by visiting Singapore (2014) and London (2017) and hosting a global business conclave in Kolkata in 2019 where the Reliance company's Mukesh Ambani promised to invest $1.4 billion in the state, Mamata hasn't been able to shed her anti-business image because of the ouster of the Tatas from Singur where they were building their first Nano factory.
The resultant desolation on the industrial front made Nobel laureate Amartya Sen compare Kolkata's otherwise impressive but deserted airport with Fatehpur Sikri, Emperor Akbar's abandoned capital. Yet, there are still people around who remember the city's glorious days both during the British Raj and for several decades afterwards when it was the "second city" of the empire and boasted of its industries and mercantile houses.
“But the desertions might not have occurred if Mamata had shown herself to be a more capable administrator, not only in terms of checking lawlessness, but also in ensuring the state's development.
A glimpse of this period is available in Satyajit Ray's film, Seemabaddha, which depicts Kolkata's well-attended Saturday races and hedonistic night life.
Then, the transition to Fatehpur Sikri, which began with the "flight of capital" under Left rule, is still continuing despite Mamata's efforts to turn Kolkata into London with the Hooghly river as the "theme on the lines of the Thames", as she once said.
For the BJP, it is not only lawlessness which it uses as a stick to beat the Trinamool with, but also the accusations of Muslim "appeasement" by the latter which, the saffronites believe, is disliked by the Bengali middle class. These "bhadralogs" are likely to keenly watch, therefore, how the entry of Asaduddin Owaisi's Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen in the poll fray will undercut Mamata's supposed hold on the 27 per cent Muslim vote bank, thereby helping the BJP. (IPA)
(Amulya Ganguli is a veteran journalist and a seasoned political commentator.)