Presumably many drama-oriented filmmakers would already have been cheerfully inspired by the events unfolding in Kolkata over the last couple of days. It’s like almost the content of their next script has been served to them on a platter free of charge. Not many would refute in recent political history, Arvind Kejriwal and Mamata Banerjee have been spotlighted from time to time as part of their uncanny political strategies which anyway they are entitled to in a democracy! While the circumstances for both the CMs may have been different for resorting to “Dharna politics” yet the meeting point has been antipathy to the current central dispensation. In other words, intolerance to an NDA government led by a person who happens to be a fellow CM just before his current role. Among various state leaders, the element of un-acceptability for Narendra Modi to become the PM led to several unprecedented outbursts and in the process, many got exposed who refused to behave incompatibility with our constitutional traditions. A few of them like Nitish Kumar reconciled with the fact and others like Chandra Babu Naidu, Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal chose to defy the convention and decorum expected in a federal structure like ours. One may rationalize this disorder as a basic human instinct to get envious of a meteoric rise of a fellow human being and more so within the same class of people. Hence its justifiable to nurture the aspiration to achieve the targets. Its rather travesty of justice that Truth is the biggest Casualty.
The case in hand is portrayed as Modi govt being aggressive using Central agencies (CBI in this case) part of its bigger plan of making an inroad into Bengal politics in order to make up the probable loss of seats in the heartland. Whereas the real issue is there has been three major chit fund scams involving so many heavyweights from TMC and Congress, alleged to have swindled a whopping forty thousand crores from gullible Bengalis. It’s unfortunate, a scam of this magnitude which is under investigation by the CBI is blocked just to score some brownie points by creating a situation where the Apex court had to intervene for smooth conclusion of the ongoing investigation. In a sense, it’s hard to believe an investigation is being carried out through the process of litigation just for political reasons.
It’s important to remember Mamata Banerjee is a master in making political capital out of such matters and her career journey suggests she did not rise to fame out of sagacity instead she was smart enough to seize the opportunity of this kind as it came through. No one can deny she was the part of main reason how Bengal got a break from a 34-year-old communist rule, probably the world’s longest-serving democratically elected communist government. She may not be known for speaking Biryani English yet has managed to secure many First to various positions she held. Such as the first female to become the CM of West Bengal, union minister for Railways and Coal. Her academic background includes being a scholar of Islamic history which itself is a testimony to her inclination towards a particular kind of politics she was destined to indulge in. She became one of India’s youngest parliamentarians ever, defeating veteran Communist politician Somnath Chatterjee, to win the Jadavpur parliamentary Constituency in West Bengal. She rose to prominence after opposing the erstwhile land acquisition policies for industrialization of the Communist government in West Bengal for Special Economic Zones at the cost of agriculturalists and farmers at Singur. In 2011 Banerjee pulled off a landslide victory for the TMC Congress alliance in West Bengal, unsettling the deep-rooted left front government of more than three decades. Throughout her political life, Banerjee has maintained a publicly austere lifestyle, dressing in simple traditional Bengali clothes and avoiding luxuries. All these positive gestures do not really resonate with the political agenda she propagates. If she has nothing to conceal in the case, what was the need for such an emotionally charged high drama akin to a volcanic eruption manifested in the sudden sit-in, holding cabinet there at!
Was it to insulate a person summoned by the CBI in many occasions who is willfully not cooperating in spite of being an officer of IPS cadre covered under All India Service Rules or it’s a camouflaged tactic by someone who quickly rose in the ranks within Congress party by adopting street plays of this kind. Some argue innocuously, it’s an irony we do not have federal crimes, but we have federal agencies. Few says CBI was formed under a Special Police Establishment Act and its jurisdictions are not absolute so on and so forth. In fact, on a separate note, it may be seen as her trick to downplay Priyanka Gandhi’s assuming charge as General Secretary of Congress party by hijacking the entire media attention and effectively bringing the anti-Modi-Shah wave to Kolkata. Her ambition to become the PM is not hidden anymore and best wishes for her endeavors in that direction.
It’s amusing to see how Congress leaders imprudently playing into her hands and showing solidarity with her when she is at her peak of this season of drama without realizing she is actually causing further damage to the oppositions collectively and severally. Senior advocates from the Congress party are advising, appearing for Didi thinking she would be a strategic asset to them in stopping Modi in Bengal. The so-called like-minded political parties are pretending to share common ideologies in sharp oppositions to that of BJP which are perfectly fine.
But what is most disturbing the way every action or inaction of the government has been maligned in an utterly misleading way just to distract from the real issue. Mamata Banerjee needs to be rightly advised she is addressing rather the millennials and not a generation of the 18th century who used to get carried away by the self-serving political stunts played then. They are much more informed with ample clarity about their requirement and the glide path to our country’s growth. It reminds the famous quote of Napoleon Bonaparte “It is the cause, not the death that makes the martyr”! Hope at last good sense prevails and experienced leader like Didi stops believing in such an unsustainable model of statesmanship. By the way Dharna as a concept I am not opposed to.
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