In the reasoning of most right thinking people who are alarmed at the direction in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is taking the country the primary validity and defendability of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in West Bengal stems from its proven ability to keep the BJP at bay in that state. Mamata Banerjee has done this for the last ten years, with a tenacity and courage no other chief minister has demonstrated, with remarkable success, humbling the saffron party (and the prime minister personally) time and again. In the process, however, she has been literally playing with fire, inching ever closer to the red lines of constitutional permissibility, skirting the boundaries of what is, or is not, permissible in a liberal democracy.
Granted that the BJP government at the centre has been relentless in its assault on the federal structure of the country, in particular on Bengal. Granted also that it takes an anti-venom to fight the venom, a controlled fire to combat the forest fire. But these counter measures have to be carefully calibrated in order to ensure that the medicine does not become worse than the disease itself. Ms Banerjee, unfortunately, appears to lack this administrative skill and does not know when to stop or to change course. Her failure is gradually erasing the difference between her and the BJP, she is proving true someone’s remark that “Mamata is simply Modi in a saree”. Her irrepressible confrontationist attitude and recalcitrance, the inability to evolve a working relationship with the central government (which other Opposition chief ministers have been able to do, to some extent, at least) is having an adverse effect on the finances and economy of the state, which can only be counter-productive for her development manifesto. Her pugnacious attitude on politicisation of the police is reducing their credibility and effectiveness, the confrontationist posture vis-a-vis the judiciary eroding the rule of law. She is slowly but surely bringing Bengal to its knees, to the point of anarchy.
One dimension of this is the scams that have been regularly surfacing during her tenure — the Saradha and Naradha chit-fund cases, Rose Valley, Ration card scam, teachers’ recruitment, land grabbing by the accused robber baron in Sandeshkhali, the film city case in Chandrakona of Midnapore district; in most of these many of her party leaders are in jail and many more are being investigated. This is no different from the cronyism the BJP is known for. Then there are the alleged TMC controlled “syndicates” that are rumoured to levy fees for various commercial activities including even house construction. There are many more which friends and contacts in Kolkata tell me are running rampant with full govt. blessings. If true, the intention is clearly to provide a regular source of income to the party cadres in order to retain their loyalty. Which raises the question: how are these cadres then any different from the CPI and CPM cadres which she had displaced or the sanghi militias which she (rightly) criticises?
Also read: Mamata’s Handling of the R.G. Kar Hospital Case Could Prove to Be Her Hour of Reckoning
It is no different when it comes to the bureaucracy and the police. Like the BJP at the center and states where it rules, she expects complete loyalty from the state apparatus, over and above their commitment to the Constitution. The West Bengal police function in the same “controlled” mode as do the CBI and ED and the police in BJP states, as numerous instances in the past have shown: she even went on a dharna once to show support for a Commissioner of Police, a first in the history of this country! How then is she different from Modi?
Again, like the Modi-Shah duo, she appears to have no empathy or compassion for the victims of state, state sponsored or even random violence. Every incident is weighed on the scales of political expediency and advantage- it was so in the Sandeshkhali incidents and it is so again in the latest rape/ murder of a young medical intern at the RG Kar hospital. The public perception in all such cases has been that, for her, the political fall-out is always more important than any attempt to punish the guilty or to reform the system. Once again, the lines between her and the BJP get blurred.
All these elements and fragments of a dysfunctional state have now come to a head in the RG Kar rape and murder case, as was inevitable sooner or later. Our concern should not be just with the crime itself, horrific as it is, as a chief minister certainly cannot be held accountable for such a crime. But she can certainly be asked to account for, and explain, the circumstances leading up to the heinous crime and the government’s actions thereafter. Both are profoundly disturbing, because they have a bearing on the conditions which made such a crime possible, the dubious manner in which it was being investigated, and on the efforts to fix accountability for the same.
We have to question the political clout of the principal/director of the RG Kar Hospital who reportedly managed to get his transfer cancelled at least twice previously, why he was allowed to run the institution like his personal fiefdom, why no note was taken of the alleged large scale corruption which was rampant in the hospital (cases have been belatedly files against him only now, after a public outcry). The incident has also brought to light one of the most pernicious and illegitimate policies of this TMC govt.- the recruitment of tens of thousands of persons as “civic volunteers”, without any rule-based or examination-based process of selection, to “assist” the police on a handsome monthly salary. It is alleged by the opposition parties that this is a device to employ TMC cadres at govt. expense. The primary accused (who has been arrested) was one such volunteer and reportedly ran a flourishing “hafta” and admission racket in the hospital. It is possible that this preferred treatment and quasi-constabulary status is what gave him the feeling of immunity and impunity which could have led to his assault on the lady doctor. How is this force any different from the militias and goons of other parties? No doubt the CBI will be probing these precedent conditions of the rape and murder and to what extent they have contributed to their commission. They do not reflect well on the image of the chief minister herself.
The state govt’s actions AFTER the discovery of the crime and the body engender further doubts and scepticism about Ms Banerjee’s intentions and capability to secure full justice in the matter. It appears that she is more interested in damage control and political opportunism than in trying to honestly implement the law and correct the wrongs that have clearly taken place. Suspicions have also been voiced by a huge cross-section of people that she may even be trying to protect someone. There is no evidence of this yet, but the govt’s actions so far certainly do not inspire confidence that the truth will be exhumed. How else can a citizen view the following?:
The repeated flip-flops in terming the death first as suicide, then unnatural death, then admitting to murder; removing the principal and then reinstating him just hours later in an even more senior position; the inordinate delay in registering the F.I.R; the completely unacceptable and inhumane treatment of the parents of the poor girl; the abject failure of the police in anticipating, preventing and controlling the mob violence on the night of the 14th-15th August which was clearly intended to suppress the protests; the impotence of the police to prevent the vandalisation of the hospital by the same mob?
Even worse, instead of trying to understand the huge public outrage and anger, making allowances for it, and quickly course-correcting, the state government has made a bad situation worse by trying to intimidate and coerce its critics, protesters, doctors, and voices on social media — till last count the police had issued notices to 280 persons and even arrested a few. By all means, discourage dissemination of false news, but accept the criticism. Even the Supreme Court has castigated the government for its attempts at muzzling the protesters. This has all the hallmarks of the Delhi, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh police. Will they be sending in the bulldozers next?
Incidentally, all these issues and shortcomings have been noted by the Supreme Court too on the 20th of this month.
The RG Kar incident has showcased, in one conflation point, all that is wrong with Mamata Banerjee’s government and which has made it indistinguishable from the BJP. This episode can be either her Kalinga or her Waterloo- she can change course or perish. Come 2026 and the citizens of Bengal may well decide that they have had enough of this smorgasbord of corruption, nepotism, violence, confrontation and near anarchy. They will then have to make a Hobson’s choice — vote for continued anarchy, bankruptcy and the growing kakistrocacy in Nabanna, or give a chance to the established kakistrocacy experts in Delhi and reap the benefits of a “double engine” sarkar. It’s all up to the lady in the sari if she can reinvent herself and her politics. She still has time, but it’s running out-fast.
This article was originally published on the author’s blog, View from [Greater] Kailash. It has been edited slightly for style.
