Mamata goes to warfare

ON October 3, the guts of Kolkata was besieged by hundreds of Trinamool Congress (TMC) supporters decrying the alleged gang-rape and torture, and eventual dying, of a Dalit girl in Hathras, in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh, and the state equipment’s perceived apathetic dealing with of the case. Main the protest, her first in six months for the reason that Covid outbreak, was West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. Marching to the cries of “BJP Sorkar Aar Nei Dorkar (No Extra of BJP authorities)”, Mamata got here throughout as a fiery nationwide opposition chief decided to carry the ruling social gathering accountable. The BJP is the “largest pandemic” and is torturing Dalits, she declared.

Simply two weeks in the past, on September 20, when eight opposition MPs within the Rajya Sabha, together with two of the TMC, have been suspended for ‘unruly conduct’ in the course of the passage of contentious farms payments, Mamata had introduced a sustained agitation on the difficulty in Bengal, dwelling to an estimated 7 million farmers. “There’s a direct have to type an alliance towards the Centre, which has handed these controversial payments in Hitler’s type,” she mentioned. In August, Mamata had rallied behind college students when the Centre determined to carry the NEET (medical) and JEE (engineering) entrance examinations amidst the pandemic.

Be it the plight of Dalits, farmers and college students now, the alleged discrimination in central help to Bengal after Cyclone Amphan in Might, or the nationwide anti-CAA protests final December, Mamata has been latching onto each alternative to open a entrance towards the BJP, her principal opponent within the meeting election simply months away. With 213 seats within the 294-member meeting and a robust grassroots presence, the TMC arguably goes into the election because the favorite, however it’s greater than aware of the BJP’s increasing footprint on its turf. The primary indications of it got here within the 2019 Lok Sabha election when the BJP cornered 18 of Bengal’s 42 seats, solely 4 lower than the TMC, and a 40 per cent vote share (towards the TMC’s 43.3 per cent).

If this has lent the BJP a psychological edge, it’s upping the stakes additional by conjuring a imaginative and prescient of ‘Shonar Bangla’, its grand promise of restoring Bengal to its erstwhile glory, on the traces of ‘achhe din’. If Mamata had aimed to counter this with a report card of her nine-year rule, she should take care of the truth that her authorities’s perceived mishandling of the Covid and Cyclone Amphan crises could be vivid in public reminiscence.

THE BATTLE FOR ‘MA’

Mamata’s ‘Ma-Maati-Manush’ slogan, coined forward of the 2009 normal election, following the profitable farmland agitations towards the Left Entrance authorities in Nandigram and Singur, not solely catapulted the TMC from a lone-member presence within the Lok Sabha in 2004 to 19 in 2009 but in addition got here to outline the social gathering’s politics. Mamata used parts from the slogan to form the TMC’s subsequent meeting ballot campaigns. If the 2011 ballot, which ended 34 years of Left rule and introduced Mamata to energy in Bengal, was her combat for ‘Maati’, defending farmers’ land from being appropriated for business, 2016 was about ‘Manush’, individuals’s welfare.

Now, Mamata is projecting the 2021 election as a battle to avoid wasting ‘Ma’, Bengal, the motherland. “Bengal will give individuals a style of independence [again] and free them from the clutches of the BJP by defeating them within the meeting election,” Mamata just lately mentioned, on the peak of the NEET-JEE row. She has been reminding the citizens how the BJP is an “outsider” that poses grave hazard to Bengal’s liberal and vibrant tradition. Mocking Amit Shah’s ‘Ebar Bangla (Now, Bengal)’ marketing campaign, introduced in 2017 after the BJP’s successive electoral successes in Uttar Pradesh, Goa and Manipur, she has declared that “Gujarat is not going to rule Bengal; Bengal will rule Bengal”. Prasanta Ray, political analyst and professor emeritus at Kolkata’s Presidency College, explains: “By referring to ‘Gujarat rule’ repeatedly, Mamata Banerjee is cautioning concerning the risks the BJP poses to Bengal’s tradition and ethos.”

Mamata’s different gambit has been to couple Bengal’s honour with that of her personal authorities. She is fast to declare any assault on her administration as an assault on Bengal’s “asmita” or satisfaction. When the inter-ministerial central workforce visited the state in April-Might to evaluate how the federal government was dealing with the pandemic, the TMC dubbed it because the Centre’s ploy to “malign Bengal” whereas overlooking spikes in circumstances in BJP-ruled Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh. In June, when Mamata was not listed as a speaker on the PM’s video convention with CMs on Covid, her authorities cried discrimination.

Mamata’s concentrate on ‘Ma’ in her ‘Ma-Maati-Manush’ slogan for this election additionally segues into her pitch about Bengal’s distinctive Hindu non secular custom and follow of worshipping Shakti, within the type of Durga, Kali and different deities. In Might final 12 months, quickly after the TMC’s Lok Sabha election setback, an infuriated Mamata had stepped out of her automobile in North 24 Parganas to confront ‘Jai Shri Ram’-chanting males making an attempt to accost the chief minister’s convoy. On Mamata’s directions, the police took down their names and booked them. Defending her motion, she had mentioned: “Why ought to we chant Jai Shri Ram? We are going to say Joi Ma Kali, Joi Ma Durga.”

The comment was learn as her purple flag towards alleged makes an attempt to saffronise Bengal’s faith and tradition. “On the one hand, Mamata is invoking mainstream goddesses like Durga and Kali and, on the opposite, she’s specializing in subaltern politics and animistic id by the worship of native deities, akin to Bon Bibi and Dakshin Ray (within the Sundarbans) and Marang Buru (amongst adivasis),” says Imankalyan Lahiri, professor of worldwide relations at Jadavpur College, Kolkata.

Throughout the avenue protest towards the Hathras gang-rape, Mamata had mentioned: “At this time I’m not a Hindu, I’m a Dalit.” Analysts see it as her overt outreach to Bengal’s 28.5 per cent Scheduled Caste/ Scheduled Tribe inhabitants, which is drifting in the direction of the BJP.

Mamata toned down her disdain for something to do with the Hindi heartland, a area she had come to affiliate with the BJP, when election strategist Prashant Kishor satisfied her that she was solely serving to her political rival by alienating an estimated 15 million non-Bengali voters. On Hindi Diwas (September 14) this 12 months, Mamata introduced the launch of a restructured Hindi cell of the TMC and a revamped Hindi academy within the state.

PLAYING THE HINDU CARD

By stoking provincial linguistic sentiments and Bengali satisfaction, Mamata could also be making an attempt to interrupt the Hindu consolidation tried by the BJP. “The try to arouse native linguistic satisfaction, like in Assam or in southern India, won’t be as efficient in Bengal, however it’s definitely a aware counter-strategy by Mamata to weaken the Hindu consolidation [of votes],” says Lahiri.

Bengal has 99 Muslim-majority meeting seats, near half of them positioned within the Malda and Murshidabad districts. The BJP has at all times sought to taint the Mamata authorities with the slur of ‘minority appeasement’. Even just lately, central advisories have scolded the Bengal authorities for not strictly imposing the lockdown in Kolkata’s Muslim-dominated areas and for not coming clear on the Covid standing of Tablighi Jamaat members who returned from New Delhi in March. In response, Mamata accused the BJP of spreading the “communal virus”. On the identical time, she has been flaunting her Hindu credentials, akin to difficult PM Modi and Shah in the course of the Lok Sabha election marketing campaign to match her proficiency in reciting Sanskrit shlokas and her speak of rising up in a Bengali Brahmin household steeped in Hindu ritual.

If allowances for Muslim clerics in 2013 had invited accusations of appeasement, Mamata, this September, prolonged the favour to Hindu monks. The state authorities introduced a month-to-month

Rs 1,000 honorarium and a home underneath the Banglar Awas Yojana for some 8,000 monks. The annual dole for 37,000 group Durga puja golf equipment within the state was additionally doubled to Rs 50,000.

Mamata’s silence on the courtroom acquittal of all accused within the Babri Masjid demolition case has raised eyebrows. Identified to tweet on the drop of a hat, she had TMC MP Sougata Ray challenge an evasive assertion: “It’s a courtroom judgment, so we can not simply say we oppose or assist it.”

POLITICS OF DOLE

Governance might not be Mamata’s strongest level on this election. Accusations of loot and discriminatory allotment of rations have marred the Amphan reduction distribution. However analysts additionally level out that Mamata is a grasp of dole politics. They are saying the TMC’s landslide win in 2016 within the face of allegations of corruption was partly as a result of Mamata had sustained welfare schemes regardless of the state’s precarious funds.

Even now, Mamata is rolling out doles to create a vote financial institution of beneficiaries throughout communities, castes and financial backgrounds. A month-to-month Rs 1,000 old-age pension scheme, costing about Rs 3,000 crore, was launched in March for two.5 million SC/ ST households; Rs 2 lakh value of soppy loans (Rs 500 crore) have been prolonged to 100,000 unemployed youths in August-September; whereas the dole for Durga puja golf equipment will value the exchequer Rs 185 crore (see Welfare within the Time of Polls).

Whereas Bengal’s month-to-month revenues of about Rs 5,500 crore have dropped by half in the course of the pandemic, Mamata has instructed the state finance secretary to not block funds for welfare schemes and in addition to make sure that the 1 million authorities workers and pensioners get their salaries on time. The federal government wants roughly

Rs 6,500 crore to satisfy its month-to-month bills, together with salaries, and an extra Rs 12,000 crore yearly to fund welfare programmes.

Regardless of the crunch, flash bulletins proceed. On June 30, after PM Modi prolonged the provision of free grains underneath the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana until November, Mamata introduced free rations for the poor until June 2021, properly past the meeting election. Her authorities says it has spent Rs 8,500 crore on Amphan and Covid reduction whereas dues value Rs 52,000 crore, together with grants and GST compensation, are pending from the Centre.

“Policymakers are recognized to behave with short-term objectives. And when a authorities is ending its time period, these objectives usually turn into all of the extra quick time period,” says Prof. Abhirup Sarkar of the social sciences division on the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.

PARTY PRESSURES

Confronted with the prospect of extra defections to the BJP after the primary wave in 2019, the TMC has been planning its counter-strategy. Apparently, some outdated circumstances towards BJP nationwide vice-president Mukul Roy, who left the TMC in 2017, have sprung up. Final December, Roy was named as a ‘provocateur’ in a brand new charge-sheet filed in a decade-old case of three murders in Birbhum. “Over 40 false circumstances, together with of homicide, fraud and dishonest, have been slapped towards Roy,” claims BJP chief Jay Prakash Majumdar.

Equally, Suvendu Adhikari, the TMC minister who was rumoured to be considering defection, is being hounded with allegations of land-grabbing and extortion from his days as chief of the Haldia Improvement Authority. “There’s an try to cease the exit of social gathering heavyweights by digging up their outdated circumstances,” claims a TMC chief. “Others are being placated with social gathering posts and appointments to companies and boards.”

In Purulia district, the TMC has 80 members however 104 post-holders, a boss, 18 vice-presidents, 33 normal secretaries, 49 secretaries and three coordinators. Every of the 23 blocks within the district has a president and a vice-president. “The social gathering is so high heavy that the bottom itself has slipped beneath,” jokes a TMC MLA from Bankura.

Certainly, the stakes are very excessive for Mamata within the upcoming election. However the vanquisher of the once-undefeatable Left has proven up to now that she possesses the acumen to rise to such challenges. But, this time, the nervousness is clear, in Mamata’s ardent appeals and tall guarantees. Like on July 21, when she instructed the individuals of Bengal: “Elect me once more and I offers you free ration, schooling and healthcare to your lifetime. That is my promise.”

Edited By:

Iram Ara Ibrahim

Printed On:

Oct 10, 2020

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