Mamata Banerjee and her ten months of maverick politics

10 months completed at the Writer’s Building and the people in Bengal who once came out in huge numbers to elect Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) in hope of some relief from the 34 years of CPI(M) misrule, are already relenting this change. It’s a pity that the youth who campaigned for the TMC some 11 months back wants re-election so that they can vote for the CPI(M) led Left Front not because they are good but because they are the lesser evil, or at least that is what they hope now. Because life for them has not really left them with any other alternative rather than to hope against another political hope. So let’s try and look into some of the news that have making headlines lately and the entire hollowness behind what was once hailed as an historical change.

To start with the government of West Bengal has managed to rewrite the High School syllabus with a definite political motive which has seen most of the history chapters on the Russian Revolution and Marxism disappear. The attempt is a clear drive to brush off any possibility of the youth of Bengal taking interest in the ideas of Marxism. But what the rulers fail to appreciate is this insecurity within themselves and the crisis of capitalism that has made them rewrite history textbooks in an fruitless effort to wipe out an idea.

Next came the imposition of severe punishments to holders of dissenting opinions and political opponents. A professor, an academic, whose only crime was daring to circulate a cartoon of the Chief Minister of Pashchim Banga (formerly West Bengal). The cartoon depicted Mamata Banerjee as a looter of public money in collaboration with her present Union Railway Minister – Mukul Roy. And as a result the professor was arrested under a provision of law which was never meant for it. Before he was put inside the bar, he was beaten up in broad daylight by some local Trinamool party goons in the presence of local police officials, who were reduced to mere spectators in the whole drama.

In fact her ignorance towards the issues faced by the ordinary working people on the ground has been a talking point for some time now. Mamata Banerjee went to the extent of blaming a rape victim for getting raped only to conspire against her government! Many women’ organizations and activists across the country started rallying against her callousness. But till date the culprits have not been brought to books. In fact the brother of the alleged rapist is a local financier of the party. And that is not all. The police officer who defied Mamata and went on to investigate the rape charges was soon transferred elsewhere. The culprits remain at large and the memory of the rape has been lost to the IPL frenzy.

A few news papers who had occasionally criticized Mamata Banerjee’s rule have also been the target of her ire, so much so that, the state sponsored libraries were directed not to renew their subscriptions under a new law which sought to regulate which papers will be allowed in the libraries. The ones that have been kept out are the ones Ms Banerjee herself has been openly been naming in public as being critical of her.

And more recently came the senseless move by the state government to evict slum dwellers at Nonadanga to be given away to corporate MNC’s. A slum full of refugees and job seeking youth from rural Bengal had come and settled in this locality with an ambition to start a new life with a new job. Nonadanga is what they have been calling home since the time they stepped into the city. A tin roof supported by those loosely held bamboo sticks was all that protected them from the vagaries of the weather.

But on the afternoon of an unfaithful April sun, some municipality bulldozers crushed them to dust while the crying mob was being beaten up by the men in uniform. Even pregnant women were not spared. When it comes to state sponsored terrorism, Mamata Banerjee’s government truly has never discriminated against any caste or creed.

In a recently held public meeting, Ms. Banerjee had the audacity to face thousands of people and proclaimed that her government deserves a 9 out of 10 if evaluated by the sane. Notwithstanding the insanities of her own government, the point is why would people have to dissent if everything is fine as she claims them to be.

The fact remains that people have already become tired of all her boastful lies and fake promises. In a recent move, she has promised to start paying a salary to all maulavis in the state. This did not quite go down well even with her own supporters as the last thing they wanted in the name of change is the same old vote bank politics. Not only does this move goes against all notions of secularism, worse still it comes at the cost of public money in a state that is reeling under a Rs. 2 lakh crore debt.

Besides the infighting between the Congress and the Trinamool has reached new heights and how long this partnership will continue is a question mark. People are definitely fed up of the Bhattacharyas and the Banerjees who are the by-products of the same old tyrannical system based on capitalism and landlordism. What the people of West Bengal really want is a genuine political alternative that stand for the oppressed and the working people of the state.

Saptarshi Banerjee

Kolkata