Bengal’s New Battle: Didi vs Her Demons

Mamata Banerjee’s feckless response to recent hospital horrors in Bengal and her political threats over oil prices are symptomatic. Her paranoia is affecting her priorities. And the Left’s lying in wait

Sunday Economic Times, 6 Nov, 2011

Change, said Heraclitus, is the only constant. But over 34 long years in West Bengal, the Left proved many wise men wrong. Mind you, Bengal did change under Left rule -- but after the early euphoria of land reforms, mostly for the worse. The May 2011 verdict was as much against lost opportunities of development, job, enterprise, capital, you-name-it, as it was against a systemic takeover of the administration and basic democratic rights by the party. So when Bengal finally voted Mamata Banerjee in, only one emotion overrode relief: hope for a turnaround.

Six months on, sample this. “I am concentrating on industry. Regarding infant death, if you still have some queries, ask my health secretary. Please don’t disturb me,” chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who holds the health portfolio, told reporters on the death of 47 babies in a week in three hospitals in Kolkata, Burdwan and Murshidabad. Two days later, a newborn in Murshidabad died on Wednesday when the doctor used carbolic acid instead of dettol to disinfect. The CM’s response hasn’t changed since a similar crisis in July: the Left is to blame for the pathetic medical infrastructure in the state.

But inertia is no excuse, given the expectations. Last month, my elderly aunt, having seen many a cynical autumn, dismissed my indifference towards ever the same festive crowds with an unusual prod: “Are you sure you want to miss this (Durga) pujo – the first after poribarton?” It struck me that I was in kindergarten when the Left Front came to power; that not much of my memory dates back beyond 1977. Could this be the reason why I, belonging to the first of many so-called Left generations, found pujo and much of Bengal the same ever all these years?


Potholes, Pujo. ‘Liberation’

The potholes, the winding jams, the rickety, smoke-spewing buses were all in place. So were the noisy, tireless, pandal-hoppers. Just when I was wondering if Rabindrasangeet wafting from select traffic signals was the only change I would encounter in Kolkata, Mamatadi held out a few surprises.

The parks in Kolkata have been reclaimed for the bhadrolok (gentry). Families now enjoy evening walks without being intimidated by drug-addicts or hoodlums. Pity, the municipal workers lock the premises soon after sundown; the move, I am assured, has nothing to do with moral policing. There are just too many homeless in the city.

Pujo too was different. It is a multi-crore industry, and the organisers — clubs, big and small — were mostly controlled by the Left. This year, several “Left pujos” had Trinamool challengers. Elsewhere, the control over organising committees changed hands. While scores of pujos organised by Left workers shrunk in scope, those under Trinamool Congress (TMC) patronage saws a 300-700 per cent increase in their budgets.

The pujo backed Mamata’s close aide and Bengal industry minister Partha Chatterjee used to be a modest neighbourhood affair until recently. This time, the idols were brass-and-mahogany, and everything else was as lavish.

Even during the festive season, a highly polarised local media had played up reports of sporadic political violence. But to her credit, Mamata had sent out a message for peace immediately after assuming office. A veteran IPS officer recalls the bloodshed across the state the Left had ended a long, almost uninterrupted Congress rule in the late 1970s. “From that experience, we were prepared for another bloody transition. But by and large, Mamata has succeeded in keeping TMC workers on leash.”

Left leaders play victim in public. In private, many of them sound relieved. “We expected much worse. Whatever (violence) is happening has a pattern. In areas where we did not allow any opposition, our cadres are facing the backlash. Elsewhere, they (TMC) are giving us some space.”

But the command structure of TMC is far from robust across the state and too many musclemen who earlier served the Left interest have simply switched sides. A good number of “renegade” communists have joined in too. While some of these turncoats are taking on the old-timers in their new party, others are clashing with the comrades they deserted.

On the margins of politics, the newly “empowered” are struggling to handle their “liberation”. On the first day of this pujo, the officer-in-charge of south Kolkata’s Garfa Police Station asked a few TMC-affiliated auto-rickshaw drivers to stop drinking in public (actually the reasonable man suggested that they move their party from the main road to a nearby alley). He spent the pujo in hospital with several fractured bones.

But Has the Left Gone?

So is this what turnaround is about? And if indeed the earth did not shake and little blood flew, why did it take Bengal so long to dislodge the red brigade?

During an adda (an informal, often wasteful, discussion), an old acquaintance reminds me of Martin Seligman. In 1967, the American psychologist made a startling observation. When dogs were confined and subjected to random electric shocks, after a while they refused to run away even when not in harness. Seligman called the condition “learned helplessness” – a mental state when making any effort to end misery seems useless.

Over the years, Mamata’s biggest success has been to stand up, often alone, against the Left bullies and demonstrate that it is possible. She even risked physical injury to find acceptance among the bhadrolok voters who sniggered at her lower middle class upbringing, non-ladylike demeanour and shrill theatrics. But as Mamata persisted against all odds, ridicule slowly gave way to admiration, and her antics morphed into courage.

The balance finally tilted with Singur and Nandigram. Mamata stunned the Left in the 2008 Panchayat and the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. The writing was on the wall. The Left government hung on, limp, inactive for two years – a sad waste even by Bengal’s standards. Six months after the inevitable Assembly poll outcome, Mamata’s voters are still so thrilled to have ousted the Left that they refuse to judge their didi yet.

But even in its rout, the Left secured a 41% vote share. The party is still entrenched in the social and administrative systems. From bureaucrats to lawyers, teachers to union leaders, artistes to police, most were either bona fide Left cadres or co-opted by the party. They blatantly benefited theparty for personal gains. It is one thing to defeat the Left but quite another, to quote an MLA who teaches at Jadavpur university, to change “this morally and professionally corrupt way of life” they institutionalised.

Not surprisingly, the so-called Left way of life – of rewarding loyalty over merit – is reflected in a number of Mamata’s early decisions. Everyone who can claim to have helped Mamata’s campaign feels entitled to a share of the spoils. Considering the previous regime packed most key posts with cadres, some purging was inevitable. But her education minister Bratya Basu makes it clear that “one cannot be both Left and deserving”. So the same us-and-them syndrome that divided the intelligentsia under Left rule is being practised by the new regime.

A number of cultural icons of Bengal have been shown the door in different government committees in favour of juniors from the TMC camp. Members of the TMC education cell, many of them with a Left past, have been handpicked to head different education boards. Even non-Left factions in various university and college teachers’ unions are unhappy that the new government’s attempt at education reforms is no less arbitrary and unilateral. The new government has also redrawn the lawyers’ panels for all its departments. The list of such partisan shake-ups is long.

There are other worries: The Left was trying to withdraw outdated, polluting vehicles from Kolkata’s roads. Mamata has allowed these to ply. Before the Assembly polls, Park Street footpaths were freed of hawkers. Now, they are back. Mamata scraped the water tax Buddhadeb had levied under the Centre’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. While she is working late evenings, there has been no visible change in a system where the right political affiliation entitles government staff to “pension-on-the-job”.

Mamata’s HR Problem

So does change have a chance at all?

The CM has inherited empty coffers. If she cannot raise funds due to her populist compulsions, she cannot invest in infrastructure development yet. So looking to the Centre for a bailout -- and now using the fuel price hike issue for a better bargain -- she is mostly dealing in symbolism without the overheads: the law to return Singur land to owners; the visits to Darjeeling and Sikkim; the tough posturing on Teesta; and playing the media on on the issues of Maoists and Gorkhaland. But by setting childlike deadlines for resolving longstanding conflicts, she might have set herself up for early scrutiny.

Mamata also faces an acute shortage of quality human resources in TMC. She got many nondescript carpetbaggers elected; they contribute little as MLAs or ministers. In a cabinet sorely lacking in administrative experience and capability, Mamata has saddled herself, and a few chosen ones, with too many remits. The few bureaucrats she trusts also have their hands too full.

It’s not a coincidence either that none of her top ministers — former home secretary Manish Gupta, former Andrew Yule HR executive Partha Chatterjee, or former FICCI secretary general Amit Mitra — has a political footing. The only senior Congress leader in the cabinet, Manas Bhunia, is irrigation minister. Even Subrata Mukherjee, who gave Mamata the ticket to contest her first Lok Sabha election in 1984, has been assigned the insignificant portfolio of public health engineering.

Call the Mamata a control freak or insecure or both, she decides for all ministries, addresses the press on all issues (often several times a day) and even picks the furniture for the Writers Building (secretariat) corridors. A debilitating trust deficit does not allow her to promote a second rung leadership in TMC or even assign a government spokesperson. She may have been toasted for single-handedly winning 227 seats, but an all-Mamata ruling party and an only-CM government cannot deliver, even if didi frequently clocks 18-hour workdays.

Soviets Vs Bengal

When Soviet communist states crumbled, the party was razed to the ground, making regeneration possible. In a democracy, the defeated survives. The Left now argues that its average vote share has been 49 per cent and it ruled all these years due to divisions in opposition vote. Had Prakash Karat not insisted on withdrawing support on the nuclear deal, paving way for the TMC-Congress alliance, they claim, the Left could still be in power.

Clearly, the red brigade is in no mood for any introspection or change within. They will be back in their elements if voted back any time soon. So Bengal’s hope for a turnaround rests solely on Mamata’s ability to deliver. For that she must first fight her own demons.

To change Bengal, Mamata must change herself.