Mamata misjudges voter mandate

Kolkata: A year ago, the firebrand mass leader of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, created history by ending the 34-year rule of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), thereby etching a permanent space for herself in the contemporary history of independent India.

Her journey to power from her humble beginnings has not been easy. Along the way, she not only had to break the glass ceiling but also ensure that her 10-year-old party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), could defeat a monolithic, structured party like the CPI(M).

Crucial to her victory was an old political axiom of ‘change' that suddenly caught the imagination of the people of the state. They woke up to see virtues in the woman. Her personal image of being an honest, down to earth leader gave hope to millions of Bengalis who started to believe that Mamata was the panacea to West Bengal's problems.

Hence, the slogan for change, ‘Paribartan chai' (We want change), was initiated against the CPI(M) by the intelligentsia of Bengal — who hoped that Mamata could get things moving and remove the inertia that had enveloped the state during the Communist rule.

Twelve months on, their buoyancy has faded away. The thought of crisis has started to haunt the voters' consciousness. Magsaysay Award winner Mahasweta Devi, a staunch supporter of Mamata's 21-day hunger strike against the then state government's move to acquire land at Singur, now calls her government "fascist".

Alternative governance

At the heart of this disillusionment is the fact that Mamata is undoubtedly misjudging the mandate the people of West Bengal gave her a year ago. Blaming the CPI(M) for all wrong that happens in the state and then indirectly following their footsteps by committing the same mistakes will certainly not satiate the people who voted for alternative governance.

Mamata still believes that her government has performed brilliantly with a "100 per cent success" and claims that all incidents that have occurred in the state during her governance are "fabricated". She even charges that people who commit such crimes, or worse, the victims of such atrocities, report it with the sole purpose of discrediting her government — whether these be train accidents, infant deaths in hospitals, or the rape of innocent women.

Spineless bureaucracy

Her strategy of defiance has eroded her credibility even further and her autocratic attitude of booting out anyone who fails to kowtow her belief has led to the creation of a bureaucracy and a police force that can at best be described as spineless.

"We supported her since we believed that she will not do what the CPI(M) had done. One year on, we find she is following their exact footsteps," Mahasweta Devi said.

Speaking about her government's achievements, Mamata told Gulf News, "We have been working with devotion, dedication, accountability and transparency. Whatever I do, I take it as a challenge."

But some of the challenges she has undertaken are uncalled for, critics claim. "The fallout with the media and then the censorship, the idea of trying to micro-manage everything and decisions like painting the city blue and white could have been avoided. What she needs to do is to manage perceptions and that is exactly where she has gone wrong," Suman, a dissenting member of parliament, said.

"The transition from a street fighter to a head of government is not easy for anyone. For Mamata, it is more difficult as she had been at the grassroots from a very early age. But give her time, she will learn," another TMC leader said, on promise of anonymity.