West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has alleged that her government is being subjected to “a culture of making a mountain out of a molehill.”
“A culture of making a mountain out of a molehill is holding sway and a chorus of negativity rants the air at the drop of every hat,” she said while coming down on her critics in the prologue of the book Hope to Reality - One Year of Working Together .
The book was published by her government on its achievements in the first year.
While instances like the arrest of a university professor for circulating e-mails containing graphics directed at her and attacks on women have invited strong criticism, her storming out of a show hosted here by an English television news channel on Friday, when faced with questions that were not to her liking, is the latest incident to have courted controversy.
“A sustained and concentrated campaign of lies and half truths to malign us is the name of the game now. They want to dent our confidence and blur our focus. But, I am convinced, the people of Bengal do not believe in the collective slander and will defeat the sinister design of all those scheming against us,” she said in the book that was released on the eve of the government's first anniversary on Saturday.
She points out that “the newborn government has been subjected to relentless and baseless malice” and accused those with vested interests as well as the “influential media” of maligning her government even as she adds that her detractors seem to ignore facts and reality.
Blaming those who oppose her government of being guided by their “petty and vested interests,” she said: “We are making impossible things through sheer determination and hard work.”
Claiming that those opposing the government were trying to give it a bad name, she said that if her government did not subscribe to their “petty and vested interests” they “turn the air blue with insinuations and declamatory aggression.” “It's akin to giving a dog a bad name and hanging him [it].”
Published - May 21, 2012 01:57 am IST
