Sweet and sour for Ms. Banerjee

November 26, 2014 12:41 am | Updated November 16, 2021 04:44 pm IST

Soon after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s astounding performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the general feeling was that she was “clearly riding a tiger”. Her confidence-building speech last Saturday promised retaliation, which indicated that she was desperate to rein in the BJP, the quasi-Opposition in the State. This very well could be the time for her to recount mistakes and answer questions a leader owes her electors. Why did her party cadres attack and pressure the Left Front supporters to such an extent that they joined the BJP? Why did she align herself totally with the minorities to polarise the State? Why did she not question her colleagues as they siphoned public money through Ponzi schemes? Why brand all critics as ‘Maoists’, and of late as ‘rioters’? The ‘whys’ are many and the answers are definitely blowing in Bengal’s pre-winter wind. But then again, Ms. Banerjee has assumed the role of an unpredictable leader-incarnate and the party does not have any committee at a higher level to monitor or regulate her. Which means she has a free hand to shelve, scrap or amend existing policies at will, as in the case of her amendment last week of the Land Reform Act to relax norms on landholdings in order to develop mega-township projects.

Likewise, Ms. Banerjee may unpredictably divert all available funds to build roads and health-care facilities till the Assembly election of 2016, seeking to ensure victory. The BJP may not be in a position to counter such projects. She has another advantage. Previous election results have established her firm support base in rural West Bengal, if not always in urban areas. Because of her anti-privatisation policies, which her managers have failed to highlight, Ms. Banerjee enjoys rural support at the cost of waning corporate backing. Perhaps now she needs to recall the early days of the Left Front government, when the Communist Party of India(Marxist) — through its organisational network — managed to convince half of West Bengal that the State was being discriminated against by the Centre and the ‘ruling elite’. On the other hand, the CPI(M) pushed its pro-poor programmes, which changed the lives of the rural poor — the real vote base. Even though Ms. Banerjee does not have any more land to distribute, she can address poverty. Hence, emulating the Left Front may not be a bad strategy, particularly when her celebrity- supporters have branded her a ‘neo-communist’, and she has in any case lost the ‘big capital’. While the BJP’s house is still not in order in the State, though the party is growing, Ms. Banerjee needs to ‘retaliate’ strategically, shunning violence and connecting with the people: it would seem that she retains her main strength of being able to connect with the masses.

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