Madhabi in row over remarks

The Trinamool Congress party's nominee, Madhabi Mukherjee, who is pitted against the Left Front's chief ministerial candidate Buddhadev Bhattacharya in Jadavpur assembly seat in south Kolkata finds herself in the midst of an unseemly controversy after she made certain remarks about West Bengal's rural womenfolk during a television debate last Sunday.

One of the regional Bengali channels beamed the debate in which Madhabi, a well known film actress and a former national award winner, participated. Madhabi is best known for her role in Satyajit Ray's legendary productions Mahanagar and Charulata. Taking part against her in the debate was Ajit Pande, a leftist singer who is also a sitting MLA and a contestant from Bowbazar assembly seat.

In the course of the debate, Pande charged Madhabi with accepting the Trinamool nomination since she was a votary of the Left Front during the last elections. Pande reminded Mukherjee of having recorded a comment in a Left Front sponsored election campaign cassette in which she had said that rural people have stopped migrating to the city of Kolkata because of rapid development in the countryside during the left regime.

Madhabi protested. She clarified that what she actually meant was that the rural womenfolk have now become lazy. They don't want to earn through hard labour. "They come to the city to spend a night and go back with substantial earnings." A visibly shaken Pande asked: "What are you saying?" Madhabi replied: "I mean what I say."

The Marxists could not have expected better ammunition to attack the Trinamool camp. Women's organisations are crying foul against such a remark that sought to disrespect Bengal's rural womenfolk. The Democratic Women's Organization, the CPM's women front has threatened to take the matter to court while other feminist lobbies scoff at "Madhabi's ignorance of the rural womenfolk and their sense of self respect".

The criticism apart, the comments undoubtedly cast a shadow on Madhabi's chances of putting up a semblance of a fight against the Communist Party of India (Marxist) heavyweight like Chief Minister Bhattacharya. In fact, right from the moment the Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee declared her list of contesting candidates for this assembly polls different quarters questioned her logic behind certain nominations.

To field Madhabi Mukherjee against Buddhadev was certainly one. The nomination of a former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer with no political track record or social standing against the state's finance minister Asim Dasgupta was yet another surprise.