The Battle for Bengal will be Between Neo-Marxist CM and Right-wing Leftist PM
The spotlight has always shone on West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee. Hers is the Janus face of confrontation, which sees hardly any difference between a ruler and an opponent. Last week, she was in New Delhi to add fuel to the Opposition’s fire against the Modi government. Ostensibly, she came to call on President Pranab Mukherjee, who was recuperating after a minor angioplasty. But she spent the next 40 hours trying to neutralise the most vicious campaign ever unleashed against her and her government by the BJP and Left. As a loner negotiating the labyrinthine world of conspiracy-infested politics, West Bengal’s small and frail-looking first female CM looked distressed. Under attack for her inept handling of terror activities in her state and the involvement of key aides in the Saradha scam, Banerjee chose offence as her best defence. Though all other non-NDA CMs have chosen a wait-and-watch policy on the PM, Didi is the most vocal critic of the style and substance of the seven-month-old Modi-led dispensation.
In West
Bengal, the conflict is between Banerjee and the rest. And this twin
formation is precisely what she has been aiming for. By forcing the Left
to be perceived as a comrade of the saffron party and Congress, she is
trying to project herself as the sole victim of a class coalition, whose
only objective is to topple a simple, lower middle class woman. For the
past three years, she has been lording over West Bengal, which among
India’s states is the sixth largest economy with an annual GSDP of over
$1.20 billion. Though she is yet to deliver any results credible with
her slogan ‘Ma, Mati, Manush’, Banerjee is dependent on political
engineering to achieve her objectives. Ironically, she sees her own
Marxist model as most effective to retain power. For 35 years, the Left
government never accomplished economic reform. When they started
flirting with corporates, they lost the elections. Now, Banerjee, in her
neo-Marxist version, has charted a mission, which will make both
Marxism and leftover Marxists irrelevant. Her propaganda espouses the
cause of minorities, labour, farmers and Dalits.
Confident of
winning her war solo, Banerjee’s struggle against the Centre has
acquired an ideological veneer. Predictably, she has attacked the CBI
for defaming and destabilising her government. But her political tone
reflects her resolve to decimate the Left in Bengal and convert the
political tussle as one between the Sangh Parivar and her. She has been
the only genuine rival of the Marxists in her state, after decades.
While the state Congress was perceived as B-team of the Marxist
government, Didi was ploughing a lonely furrow from her humble abode in
Kolkata, where she still spends most of her time. Not only had she
dislodged the Left government in 2012, but also crushed the Communists
in 2014 by winning a record 33 Lok Sabha seats.
But now, her fresh
battle is not against her traditional enemy, the Left, which still
controls the second largest chunk of votes in Bengal. The BJP, under its
President Amit Shah, is on the prowl and has made terror and bad
governance its main artillery to weaken the feisty CM’s besieged
citadel. The Marxists are still not in a position to decide which issue
they should adopt—terror or the minorities. Banerjee has decided to back
the Muslims while letting the investigative agencies do their job of
tackling terrorists.
For the past few months, Didi and Trinamool
Congress (TMC) have chosen to use violence and muscle power to counter
the aggressive posturing of her opponents. For political survival, she
is mimicking the tactics used by the Congress and Communists during the
early 70s to 2012. For almost three decades, political pogroms were used
as the only effective strategy to win an election. The liberals in the
state charged the Communist regime of resorting to force to eliminate
foes. In an article in the Left-leaning magazine Mainstream, it was
noted that “to come to a reliable figure of murders between 1997 and
2009, we have taken the annual average of 2,284 to come to a total
figure of 27,408. Thus, between 1977 and 2009, the total number of
murders was 28,000+27,408=55,408. It means a yearly average of 1,787, a
monthly average of 149 and a daily average of five. In other words, in
every four hours and 50 minutes, one person was being killed for
political reasons in West Bengal. The CPI(M) can claim credit that
instead of a murder an hour, they could limit it to four hour and 50
minutes per murder. What an achievement”.
According to an issue of
the Economic and Political Weekly in 1997, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had
stated in the Assembly that between 1977 (when they came to power) and
1996, 28,000 political murders were committed. This sotto voce statement
does not convey the enormity of CPI(M)’s crimes. It meant on an
average, 125.7 murders happened in a month. The daily rate of murder was
four, which means one every six hours for 19 years. Could any member of
the Opposition feel safe in such a “haven of peace”? Thirty-eight years
later, the same question on the safety of the people is being raised by
both the CPI(M) and BJP. In private, all parties have realised that
only violence can establish political supremacy in West Bengal. The
Marxists claim that over 160 CPI(M) and Left Front leaders have been
murdered between May 2011 and June 2014. The BJP has gone a step
further. Its state president Rahul Sinha has written to the Election
Commission that the TMC should be declared a terrorist party.
As
the countdown for the 2016 state elections begins, Banerjee has captured
the middle space vacated by the Congress. She has also eaten into the
minority and labour class base of the Marxists by adopting their own
techniques. The BJP’s rise is a bubbling broth of both good and bad news
for Banerjee. Since the Modi-Shah team has chosen the state as the next
fort to conquer, she expects a major polarisation to happen, which
would marginalise the Congress. With 25 per cent minority votes and over
40 per cent BPL families in the state, the little lady habitually clad
in a cheap cotton sari projects herself as the only symbol that can stop
Modi’s war machine from capturing the east. West Bengal is headed for a
conclusive confrontation between the neo-Marxist CM and India’s
right-wing Leftist PM.
prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com; Follow me on Twitter @PrabhuChawla
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