Mamata Banerjee was the hope that people rallied around to end the 34-year-long regressive Left rule. But since poriborton (regime change), she has appropriated the same opportunistic forces and partisan strategies that prolonged the Left stranglehold. As the promised remedy threatens to perpetuate the malaise, the worst news for a shortchanged Bengal is that there is no political alternative in sight.
Yahoo News, 11 February, 2014
Milan Samiti is a one-room youth club with a powdered carrom board in a refugee-dominated neighborhood of south Kolkata. Montu's father came here during the 1971 Bangladesh war, joined the Communist Party and worked as a clerk in a government school. He "retired the year they killed 14 people", Montu recalls. That was the Nandigram massacre in 2007, a few months before he, the youngest of three siblings, joined college.
For about two years, Montu remained one of Bengal's thousands of unemployed graduates. Today, he says he is a full-time club secretary and oversees a few boys who run a small construction agency for him. It is not a "very respectable arrangement", but Montu makes enough to keep his family from complaining. "There is always some road work or something," he says.
Montu is still upset that he couldn't make it to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's mega rally in Kolkata maidan on January 31. There is only so much one's stomach can take on a generous daily diet of whiskey (Aarsi, nothing less) and chicken (fried, buttered, chilli-ed, mostly fried). "Imagine, an upset tummy on such a big day! I really missed being there. Imagine [a crowd of] 15-20 lakh people! All of us love Didi [Mamata]. She has done so much for us."
Ostensibly, that refers to numerous contracts for minor public works and financial doles to neighborhood clubs. The signs are omnipresent. Lanes and alleys are being resurfaced. Footpaths are being paved. Kerbstones are being replaced. New kiosks are coming up for traffic cops. Railings are getting fresh coats of paint.
"The CM wants the government to be visible and such low cost beautification impresses people. The work goes to party [the Trinamool Congress] functionaries who don't have the capital for bigger projects. But now they are making money because nobody is really auditing these small contracts. This is about capacity-building for corruption," says an officer in the Public Works Department.
One notch below these "party contractors" on the list of Mamata Banerjee's beneficiaries are those who control the neighborhood clubs across Bengal. Last year, in September alone, 4,395 clubs in the state received a total of Rs 63.95 crore. Each got Rs 1-2 lakh. Didi's bounty came from money raised from the market by shelling out the highest rate of interest of 9.94% for 10-year state development loans.
It's a useful handle because clubs control local youth, says a development worker with a health NGO that operates in four districts. "Unlike the Left parties that were built primarily from the grassroots, Mamata's new party when it started out did not have adequate organizational base in many areas. By drafting in clubs, she is now filling in those gaps. But, in the long run, of course, political affiliation only corrupts social institutions."
The likes of Montu, of course, do not see it that way. "Before poriborton [regime change], the local committees [of the CPI(M)] controlled everything. For all practical purposes, most clubs were extensions of party offices. You would get nothing done unless you were with them. How can you say that things have changed for worse?"
So, have things changed for the better? "Yes, for me [they have]!" Montu laughs. Then, catching my quizzical look, he blinks uncomfortably. "Others...I can't tell, really."
To understand Mamata's strategies, says a former trade union activist in Howrah, one has to understand how the degeneration of the CPI(M) came about since the 1980s. "What began as the politics of empowerment for the marginalized through land reform etc. became the politics of partisan entitlement (paiye deoar rajniti). If you were with the party, you got jobs, your children got school admission, your parents got hospital beds. As the party got primacy over people, the criminalization of politics began."
The result has been devastating for Bengal. Thousands of party-protected and mostly under-qualified candidates in government jobs led to a crippling loss of work culture. The party was entrenched in schools, colleges, the police, everywhere - compromising the quality and professionalism of the services. Any opposition, political or social, was crushed by goons protected by local committees.
At the same time, says a retired Block Development Officer (BDO) who was posted to the southern districts of Bengal in the 1980s, the focus shifted to villages where it was still easier for the politically privileged to bulldoze the rest into toeing the party line. Officials like him, he says, reported as much to the local CPI(M) functionaries as to the senior bureaucracy. From compulsory subscription to party mouthpiece Ganashakti to summary settlement of disputes at local CPI(M) offices, party control was absolute.
"Following the electoral drubbing in Kolkata after the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, the CPI(M) focused entirely on consolidating rural votes by creating local power centers. They were political keep without any ideology, and have no problem now serving Didi as long as she doesn't tighten the purse strings."
Mamata's brazen dismissal of criticism from various urban platforms stems from her confidence that the rural voter is with her. Her land agitations in Singur and Nandigram made her the darling of the farming communities, particularly the minorities among them. Once in power, she acquired the rural vote managers who abandoned the Left. The allegiance of thousands of clubs has further tightened her grip.
Tarun Naskar, a professor at Jadavpur University and the lone Socialist Unity Centre of India-Communist (SUCI-C) MLA in the Bengal Assembly, underlines this continuity of the Left and the TMC rule. "Mamata began exactly from where Buddhadeb [Bhattacharjee] had left. The result: there is still no space for political opposition. Look at the violence even in student elections. The party is still supreme, only it is called the Trinamool Congress now. If anything, the new government has taken the state to new lows."
The most prominent of these "new lows", according to Naskar, is corruption in public life. "We had not heard of horse-trading in Bengal politics till last week when the TMC got all four of its candidates elected to the Rajya Sabha despite not having the numbers. It's anybody's guess how many crores it took to break those Left and Congress MLAs. But what do you expect from a party that extorts more than Rs 5 lakh for a primary school teacher's job?"
Under the Left, sarkari jobs were mostly a reward for loyalty to the party, though reasonable donations helped one appear more loyal than the rest. Now, the highest bidders take most of the jobs. In November 2013, among the 1.07 percent candidates who cleared the Teacher Eligibility Test of the West Bengal Primary Education Board were allegedly several relatives and aides of TMC MLAs and leaders. Some even managed to get their entire family on the successful candidates' list.
At times, the lines between the two regimes merged seamlessly. "My brother had to donate Rs 60,000 to the CPI(M) local committee to get a paan shop evicted from a plot of land he purchased 11 years back. Now that he wants to build a house, he must buy construction material - cement, brick, everything - from a TMC-approved supplier," says the former BDO. "It's not just about paying exorbitant rates but he can't even object to the substandard quality of the material they supply."
Director-actor Bibhash Chakraborty was among those Left intellectuals who broke ranks to back Mamata in her fight for poriborton and is yet to give up hope. "We have to give her the full five years before taking a call. Already, she has handled contentious issues such as Jangalmahal and Gorkhaland well. In certain ways Trinamool maybe going the CPI(M)'s way but I believe we'll soon see course corrections. The early stages of change are chaotic and there may be political compulsions."
Perhaps such compulsions have led Mamata to indulge her party's criminal elements. "It is in the nature of spirited boys (daamal chhele) to get naughty once in a while," she said from her grand stage at the maidan on 31 January, dismissing charges of political and administrative inaction vis-à-vis crimes against women. Then she recalled a string of similar incidents under Left rule to defend her government's record and, perhaps unwittingly, underlined how little has really changed.
A former police commissioner of Kolkata sees the spiraling crime graph in terms of internal hierarchy in the two parties. "Once excesses take place, both the Left and Trinamool defend their cadre no matter what. But the CPI(M)'s layers of command - local, zonal, district and state committees - ensured certain checks and balances. In Trinamool, there is not even a second-rung leadership below Mamata. But she cannot possibly watch every party worker all the time."
To be fair, point out party insiders, Rajya Sabha member Mukul Roy and state minister Firhad Hakim are close confidants of Mamata and enjoy a degree of authority. But a triumvirate at the top cannot compensate for the absence of a structured organisational command necessary to enforce party discipline. Far from it, Mamata cries conspiracy every time her party workers are charged with rape or murder.
"It may not be easy at times for our boys to handle power. Especially when they have faced political oppression for so many years," admits a young TMC leader. "Didi does not want the common man to suffer but we have clear instructions not to take shit from the CPI(M) goons," he says, adding that political violence will continue till his party establishes its undisputed sway over the Opposition. "But we are getting there sooner than we had hoped."
No doubt, his unapologetic grin has Didi's blessings. At her Brigade Parade Ground rally last month, as a section of the crowd jostled with the cops to get closer to the stage, she stunned the security personnel by directing them over the microphone to let the mob break a few barriers. "I could not believe that a chief minister was instructing us to set the crowd free. Thank god, we could avoid a stampede and nobody was injured," an assistant sub-inspector recalled later during Narendra Modi's rally at the same venue on February 5.
"For her, the end always justifies the means, whatever the means. This is not political recklessness. This is politics of setting one's target and getting there at any cost. Look at her policy on minorities. She does not care how partisan it looks as long as she has 26 percent of the population behind her," says the former commissioner.
A middle-rung Congress leader who worked with Mamata in the 1990s claims that she has always known her mind. "She may be talking about poriborton in Delhi but her entire focus is on Bengal. Her Delhi agenda is purely that of a kingmaker who needs money to run the state. She will not sacrifice her bargaining power by entering into any pre-poll alliance but will be open to every post-poll option."
In fact, the TMC stands a realistic chance of emerging as the third-largest party in terms of MPs in the Lok Sabha polls, after the BJP and the Congress. Barring J Jayalalithaa's AIADMK which may sweep Tamil Nadu, no other party is in a position to win more than 30 seats - the minimum Mamata is expected to win this time around.
While she is reportedly in touch with Jayalalithaa, Jagan Mohan Reddy of the YSR Congress, BSP chief Mayawati and the JD(U)'s Nitish Kumar (together they are expected to win more than 100 seats) to explore post-poll possibilities, local TMC-watchers trust Mamata to side with the highest bidder for her Bengal package.
Given the economic mess that has Bengal has become, generous central aid is certainly key to Mamata's political survival - whether in the long or short term will depend on what she chooses to invest it in. Many have their doubts about whether the windfall, when it materializes, will be pumped into reviving the state economy or doled out in populist schemes in general and to networks of power centers in particular.
"The problem with [having] political beneficiaries is that the non-beneficiaries are always the majority. And however long it takes, this majority eventually turns the tables. Mamata herself came to power when the political beneficiaries of the Left Front could not gag the angry majority anymore. And yet she herself is banking on political beneficiaries who have already become her political and economic liability," says SUCI-C's Naskar.
Give me back my peace of mind,
Give me a chance at life,
Give back the green shoots of hope,
That were mine before the strife- Mamata Banerjee, Earthsong
The versatile Mamata is a best-selling author at Kolkata book fairs while her last exhibition of paintings fetched Rs 50 lakh. The poet in her yearns for peace and hope. Perhaps the politician in her knows those wishes have already been granted.
"Politically, Mamata is the country's most secure chief minister today. She swept the panchayat polls last July. In September, she won eight civic bodies. She is here to stay in Bengal," says a former Student Federation of India activist who quit politics last year to prepare for the state civil services exams. "A large segment of people strongly resents voting her to power. But do you understand the TINA [There Is No Alternative] factor?"
Indeed, there seems to be no alternative. The Left has not learnt its lessons. A day after Mamata's mammoth show of strength at Brigade, former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee owned up to the gruesome political killings at Netai village in West Midnapore district in 2011. "Our boys made a mistake, a grave mistake, at Netai and I admit it," Bhattacharjee said at a party rally in Midnapore on February 2. To many, this was a welcome sign of a change of heart, but the state committee of the CPI(M) censured him for his mea culpa a day before the party's own Brigade rally on February 9.
The fact that lakhs turned up for the Left rally at Brigade on February 9 testified to the popular disenchantment with the new government. But for an overwhelming majority of voters, the memories of excesses committed by the CPI(M) are still too fresh. "The leadership has not changed. They still speak the same language. Instead of making a clean break with the past, grey-haired comrades give the impression that they have somehow been wronged. No wonder they are getting politically irrelevant even in Bengal," says a senior chartered accountant, adding that he was a "committed CPM voter" till 2004.
Those who were looking to the BJP to ride the Modi wave and fill in the opposition space were disappointed when Modi himself showed no such ambition at his Brigade rally on February 5. "Unless we see a late swing, Mamata may well cross the 35-seat mark this election. She has beat the Left at their own game and will go unchallenged for some time to come," concedes a former colleague of hers in the Congress.
A number of people I spoke to in Kolkata said they felt betrayed by the lapsed promises of poriborton. "The branding has changed, that's all. But maybe it was worth having a new (ruling) party. If nothing else, it sent a signal that the voters cannot be taken for granted," says the chartered accountant.
I remind him that the last time, it took decades and an indomitable Mamata Banerjee to move the voters. He shuffles in his chair. "I know, this time Didi is on the wrong side."
The "larger picture" dismays director-actor Chakraborty, who blames "the long Left years for what appears to be permanent loss of character" in Bengal. "It is ironic that here the Left legacy is one of indiscipline, opportunism, corruption, what have you. Such a loss of values can't be offset by a mere regime change."
And certainly not if the new regime seeks out and thrives on that loss.
Yahoo News, 11 February, 2014
For about two years, Montu remained one of Bengal's thousands of unemployed graduates. Today, he says he is a full-time club secretary and oversees a few boys who run a small construction agency for him. It is not a "very respectable arrangement", but Montu makes enough to keep his family from complaining. "There is always some road work or something," he says.
Montu is still upset that he couldn't make it to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's mega rally in Kolkata maidan on January 31. There is only so much one's stomach can take on a generous daily diet of whiskey (Aarsi, nothing less) and chicken (fried, buttered, chilli-ed, mostly fried). "Imagine, an upset tummy on such a big day! I really missed being there. Imagine [a crowd of] 15-20 lakh people! All of us love Didi [Mamata]. She has done so much for us."
Ostensibly, that refers to numerous contracts for minor public works and financial doles to neighborhood clubs. The signs are omnipresent. Lanes and alleys are being resurfaced. Footpaths are being paved. Kerbstones are being replaced. New kiosks are coming up for traffic cops. Railings are getting fresh coats of paint.
"The CM wants the government to be visible and such low cost beautification impresses people. The work goes to party [the Trinamool Congress] functionaries who don't have the capital for bigger projects. But now they are making money because nobody is really auditing these small contracts. This is about capacity-building for corruption," says an officer in the Public Works Department.
One notch below these "party contractors" on the list of Mamata Banerjee's beneficiaries are those who control the neighborhood clubs across Bengal. Last year, in September alone, 4,395 clubs in the state received a total of Rs 63.95 crore. Each got Rs 1-2 lakh. Didi's bounty came from money raised from the market by shelling out the highest rate of interest of 9.94% for 10-year state development loans.
It's a useful handle because clubs control local youth, says a development worker with a health NGO that operates in four districts. "Unlike the Left parties that were built primarily from the grassroots, Mamata's new party when it started out did not have adequate organizational base in many areas. By drafting in clubs, she is now filling in those gaps. But, in the long run, of course, political affiliation only corrupts social institutions."
The likes of Montu, of course, do not see it that way. "Before poriborton [regime change], the local committees [of the CPI(M)] controlled everything. For all practical purposes, most clubs were extensions of party offices. You would get nothing done unless you were with them. How can you say that things have changed for worse?"
So, have things changed for the better? "Yes, for me [they have]!" Montu laughs. Then, catching my quizzical look, he blinks uncomfortably. "Others...I can't tell, really."
* * *
To understand Mamata's strategies, says a former trade union activist in Howrah, one has to understand how the degeneration of the CPI(M) came about since the 1980s. "What began as the politics of empowerment for the marginalized through land reform etc. became the politics of partisan entitlement (paiye deoar rajniti). If you were with the party, you got jobs, your children got school admission, your parents got hospital beds. As the party got primacy over people, the criminalization of politics began."
The result has been devastating for Bengal. Thousands of party-protected and mostly under-qualified candidates in government jobs led to a crippling loss of work culture. The party was entrenched in schools, colleges, the police, everywhere - compromising the quality and professionalism of the services. Any opposition, political or social, was crushed by goons protected by local committees.
At the same time, says a retired Block Development Officer (BDO) who was posted to the southern districts of Bengal in the 1980s, the focus shifted to villages where it was still easier for the politically privileged to bulldoze the rest into toeing the party line. Officials like him, he says, reported as much to the local CPI(M) functionaries as to the senior bureaucracy. From compulsory subscription to party mouthpiece Ganashakti to summary settlement of disputes at local CPI(M) offices, party control was absolute.
"Following the electoral drubbing in Kolkata after the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, the CPI(M) focused entirely on consolidating rural votes by creating local power centers. They were political keep without any ideology, and have no problem now serving Didi as long as she doesn't tighten the purse strings."
Mamata's brazen dismissal of criticism from various urban platforms stems from her confidence that the rural voter is with her. Her land agitations in Singur and Nandigram made her the darling of the farming communities, particularly the minorities among them. Once in power, she acquired the rural vote managers who abandoned the Left. The allegiance of thousands of clubs has further tightened her grip.
Tarun Naskar, a professor at Jadavpur University and the lone Socialist Unity Centre of India-Communist (SUCI-C) MLA in the Bengal Assembly, underlines this continuity of the Left and the TMC rule. "Mamata began exactly from where Buddhadeb [Bhattacharjee] had left. The result: there is still no space for political opposition. Look at the violence even in student elections. The party is still supreme, only it is called the Trinamool Congress now. If anything, the new government has taken the state to new lows."
The most prominent of these "new lows", according to Naskar, is corruption in public life. "We had not heard of horse-trading in Bengal politics till last week when the TMC got all four of its candidates elected to the Rajya Sabha despite not having the numbers. It's anybody's guess how many crores it took to break those Left and Congress MLAs. But what do you expect from a party that extorts more than Rs 5 lakh for a primary school teacher's job?"
Under the Left, sarkari jobs were mostly a reward for loyalty to the party, though reasonable donations helped one appear more loyal than the rest. Now, the highest bidders take most of the jobs. In November 2013, among the 1.07 percent candidates who cleared the Teacher Eligibility Test of the West Bengal Primary Education Board were allegedly several relatives and aides of TMC MLAs and leaders. Some even managed to get their entire family on the successful candidates' list.
At times, the lines between the two regimes merged seamlessly. "My brother had to donate Rs 60,000 to the CPI(M) local committee to get a paan shop evicted from a plot of land he purchased 11 years back. Now that he wants to build a house, he must buy construction material - cement, brick, everything - from a TMC-approved supplier," says the former BDO. "It's not just about paying exorbitant rates but he can't even object to the substandard quality of the material they supply."
* * *
Director-actor Bibhash Chakraborty was among those Left intellectuals who broke ranks to back Mamata in her fight for poriborton and is yet to give up hope. "We have to give her the full five years before taking a call. Already, she has handled contentious issues such as Jangalmahal and Gorkhaland well. In certain ways Trinamool maybe going the CPI(M)'s way but I believe we'll soon see course corrections. The early stages of change are chaotic and there may be political compulsions."
Perhaps such compulsions have led Mamata to indulge her party's criminal elements. "It is in the nature of spirited boys (daamal chhele) to get naughty once in a while," she said from her grand stage at the maidan on 31 January, dismissing charges of political and administrative inaction vis-à-vis crimes against women. Then she recalled a string of similar incidents under Left rule to defend her government's record and, perhaps unwittingly, underlined how little has really changed.
A former police commissioner of Kolkata sees the spiraling crime graph in terms of internal hierarchy in the two parties. "Once excesses take place, both the Left and Trinamool defend their cadre no matter what. But the CPI(M)'s layers of command - local, zonal, district and state committees - ensured certain checks and balances. In Trinamool, there is not even a second-rung leadership below Mamata. But she cannot possibly watch every party worker all the time."
To be fair, point out party insiders, Rajya Sabha member Mukul Roy and state minister Firhad Hakim are close confidants of Mamata and enjoy a degree of authority. But a triumvirate at the top cannot compensate for the absence of a structured organisational command necessary to enforce party discipline. Far from it, Mamata cries conspiracy every time her party workers are charged with rape or murder.
"It may not be easy at times for our boys to handle power. Especially when they have faced political oppression for so many years," admits a young TMC leader. "Didi does not want the common man to suffer but we have clear instructions not to take shit from the CPI(M) goons," he says, adding that political violence will continue till his party establishes its undisputed sway over the Opposition. "But we are getting there sooner than we had hoped."
No doubt, his unapologetic grin has Didi's blessings. At her Brigade Parade Ground rally last month, as a section of the crowd jostled with the cops to get closer to the stage, she stunned the security personnel by directing them over the microphone to let the mob break a few barriers. "I could not believe that a chief minister was instructing us to set the crowd free. Thank god, we could avoid a stampede and nobody was injured," an assistant sub-inspector recalled later during Narendra Modi's rally at the same venue on February 5.
"For her, the end always justifies the means, whatever the means. This is not political recklessness. This is politics of setting one's target and getting there at any cost. Look at her policy on minorities. She does not care how partisan it looks as long as she has 26 percent of the population behind her," says the former commissioner.
A middle-rung Congress leader who worked with Mamata in the 1990s claims that she has always known her mind. "She may be talking about poriborton in Delhi but her entire focus is on Bengal. Her Delhi agenda is purely that of a kingmaker who needs money to run the state. She will not sacrifice her bargaining power by entering into any pre-poll alliance but will be open to every post-poll option."
In fact, the TMC stands a realistic chance of emerging as the third-largest party in terms of MPs in the Lok Sabha polls, after the BJP and the Congress. Barring J Jayalalithaa's AIADMK which may sweep Tamil Nadu, no other party is in a position to win more than 30 seats - the minimum Mamata is expected to win this time around.
While she is reportedly in touch with Jayalalithaa, Jagan Mohan Reddy of the YSR Congress, BSP chief Mayawati and the JD(U)'s Nitish Kumar (together they are expected to win more than 100 seats) to explore post-poll possibilities, local TMC-watchers trust Mamata to side with the highest bidder for her Bengal package.
Given the economic mess that has Bengal has become, generous central aid is certainly key to Mamata's political survival - whether in the long or short term will depend on what she chooses to invest it in. Many have their doubts about whether the windfall, when it materializes, will be pumped into reviving the state economy or doled out in populist schemes in general and to networks of power centers in particular.
"The problem with [having] political beneficiaries is that the non-beneficiaries are always the majority. And however long it takes, this majority eventually turns the tables. Mamata herself came to power when the political beneficiaries of the Left Front could not gag the angry majority anymore. And yet she herself is banking on political beneficiaries who have already become her political and economic liability," says SUCI-C's Naskar.
* * *
Give me back my peace of mind,
Give me a chance at life,
Give back the green shoots of hope,
That were mine before the strife- Mamata Banerjee, Earthsong
The versatile Mamata is a best-selling author at Kolkata book fairs while her last exhibition of paintings fetched Rs 50 lakh. The poet in her yearns for peace and hope. Perhaps the politician in her knows those wishes have already been granted.
"Politically, Mamata is the country's most secure chief minister today. She swept the panchayat polls last July. In September, she won eight civic bodies. She is here to stay in Bengal," says a former Student Federation of India activist who quit politics last year to prepare for the state civil services exams. "A large segment of people strongly resents voting her to power. But do you understand the TINA [There Is No Alternative] factor?"
Indeed, there seems to be no alternative. The Left has not learnt its lessons. A day after Mamata's mammoth show of strength at Brigade, former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee owned up to the gruesome political killings at Netai village in West Midnapore district in 2011. "Our boys made a mistake, a grave mistake, at Netai and I admit it," Bhattacharjee said at a party rally in Midnapore on February 2. To many, this was a welcome sign of a change of heart, but the state committee of the CPI(M) censured him for his mea culpa a day before the party's own Brigade rally on February 9.
The fact that lakhs turned up for the Left rally at Brigade on February 9 testified to the popular disenchantment with the new government. But for an overwhelming majority of voters, the memories of excesses committed by the CPI(M) are still too fresh. "The leadership has not changed. They still speak the same language. Instead of making a clean break with the past, grey-haired comrades give the impression that they have somehow been wronged. No wonder they are getting politically irrelevant even in Bengal," says a senior chartered accountant, adding that he was a "committed CPM voter" till 2004.
Those who were looking to the BJP to ride the Modi wave and fill in the opposition space were disappointed when Modi himself showed no such ambition at his Brigade rally on February 5. "Unless we see a late swing, Mamata may well cross the 35-seat mark this election. She has beat the Left at their own game and will go unchallenged for some time to come," concedes a former colleague of hers in the Congress.
A number of people I spoke to in Kolkata said they felt betrayed by the lapsed promises of poriborton. "The branding has changed, that's all. But maybe it was worth having a new (ruling) party. If nothing else, it sent a signal that the voters cannot be taken for granted," says the chartered accountant.
I remind him that the last time, it took decades and an indomitable Mamata Banerjee to move the voters. He shuffles in his chair. "I know, this time Didi is on the wrong side."
The "larger picture" dismays director-actor Chakraborty, who blames "the long Left years for what appears to be permanent loss of character" in Bengal. "It is ironic that here the Left legacy is one of indiscipline, opportunism, corruption, what have you. Such a loss of values can't be offset by a mere regime change."
And certainly not if the new regime seeks out and thrives on that loss.
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