Is Bengal paying too high a price for keeping the BJP out?

In the reasoning of most right thinking people who are alarmed at the direction in which the BJP is taking the country, the primary validity and defendability of the TMC (Trinamool Congress) government in West Bengal stems from its proven ability to keep the BJP at bay in the state.

Mamata Banerjee has done this for the last 10 years, with a tenacity and courage no other chief minister has demonstrated, with remarkable success, humbling the saffron party (and the prime minister personally) time and again. In the process, however, she has been literally playing with fire, inching ever closer to the red lines of Constitutional permissibility, skirting the boundaries of what is, or is not, permissible in a liberal democracy.

Granted that the BJP government at the Centre has been relentless in its assault on the federal structure of the country, in particular on Bengal. Granted also that it takes anti-venom to fight venom, a controlled fire to combat a forest fire. But these counter measures have to be carefully calibrated to ensure that the medicine does not become worse than the disease itself.

Ms Banerjee, unfortunately, appears to lack this administrative skill and does not know when to stop or to change course. Her failure is gradually erasing the difference between her and the BJP, she is proving true someone's remark that "Mamata is simply Modi in a saree".

Her irrepressible confrontationist attitude and recalcitrance, the inability to evolve a working relationship with the Central government (which other Opposition chief ministers have been able to do, to some extent) is having an adverse effect on the finances and economy of the state, which can only be counter-productive for her development manifesto.

Her pugnacious attitude on politicisation of the police is reducing its credibility and effectiveness, her confrontationist posture vis-a-vis the judiciary eroding the rule of law. She is slowly but surely bringing Bengal to its knees, to the point of anarchy.

One dimension of this is the scams that have been regularly surfacing during her tenure — the Saradha and Naradha chit-fund cases, Rose Valley, ration card scam, teachers' recruitment, land grabbing by an accused robber baron in Sandeshkhali, the film city case in Chandrakona in Midnapore district. In most of these, many of her party leaders are in jail and many more are being investigated. This is no different from the cronyism the BJP is known for.

Then there are the alleged TMC controlled "syndicates" that are rumoured to levy fees for various commercial activities, including even house construction. There are many more which friends and contacts in Kolkata tell me are running rampant with full government blessings. If true, the intention is clearly to provide a regular source of income to the party cadres in order to retain their loyalty. Which raises the question: how are these cadres any different from the CPI and CPI(M) cadres which she displaced, or the sanghi militia which she (rightly) criticises?

It is no different when it comes to the bureaucracy and the police. Like the BJP at the Centre and states where it rules, she expects complete loyalty from the state apparatus, over and above their commitment to the Constitution. The West Bengal police functions in the same "controlled" mode as do the CBI and ED and the police in BJP states, as numerous instances in the past have shown: she even went on a dharna once to show support for a commissioner of police, a first in the history of this country! How then is she different from Modi?

Again, like the Modi-Shah duo, she appears to have no empathy or compassion for the victims of state, state-sponsored, or even random violence. Every incident is weighed on the scales of political expediency and advantage — it was so in the Sandeshkhali incidents and it is so again in the alleged rape-murder of a young medical intern at R.G. Kar Hospital.

The public perception in all such cases has been that, for her, the political fallout is always more important than any attempt to punish the guilty or to reform the system. Once again, the lines between her and the BJP get blurred. 

All these elements and fragments of a dysfunctional state have now come to a head in the R.G. Kar rape and murder case, as was inevitable sooner or later. Our concern should not be just with the crime itself, horrific as it is, as a chief minister certainly cannot be held accountable for such a crime. But she can certainly be asked to account for, and explain, the circumstances leading up to the heinous crime and the government's actions thereafter.

Both are profoundly disturbing, because they have a bearing on the conditions which made such a crime possible, the dubious manner in which it was being investigated, and on the efforts to fix accountability for the same.

We have to question the political clout of the former principal of R.G. Kar Hospital, who reportedly managed to get his transfer cancelled at least twice previously, and ask why he was allowed to run the institution like his personal fiefdom, why no note was taken of the alleged large-scale corruption which was rampant in the hospital (cases have been belatedly files against him only now, after a public outcry).

The incident has also brought to light one of the most pernicious and illegitimate policies of this TMC government — the recruitment of tens of thousands of persons as "civic volunteers", without any rule-based or examination-based process of selection, to "assist" the police on a monthly salary.

It is alleged by opposition parties that this is a device to employ TMC cadres at government expense. The primary accused (who has been arrested) was one such volunteer and reportedly ran a flourishing hafta and admission racket in the hospital. It is possible that this preferred treatment and quasi-constabulary status is what gave him the feeling of immunity and impunity which could have led to his assault on the lady doctor.

How is this force any different from the militias and goons of other parties? No doubt the CBI will be probing these precedent conditions of the alleged rape and murder and to what extent they have contributed to their commission. They do not reflect well on the image of the chief minister herself.

The state govt's actions AFTER the discovery of the crime and the body engender further doubts and scepticism about Ms Banerjee's intentions and capability to secure full justice in the matter. It appears that she is more interested in damage control and political opportunism than trying to honestly implement the law and correct the wrongs that have clearly taken place.

Suspicions have also been voiced by a huge cross-section of people that she may even be trying to protect someone. There is no evidence of this yet, but the government's actions so far certainly do not inspire confidence that the truth will be exhumed. How else can a citizen view the following?

The repeated flip-flops in terming the death first as suicide, then unnatural death, then admitting to murder; removing the principal and then reinstating him just hours later in an even more senior position; the inordinate delay in registering the FIR; the completely unacceptable and inhumane treatment of the parents of the poor girl; the abject failure of the police in anticipating, preventing and controlling the mob violence on the night of 14-15 August which was clearly intended to suppress the protests; the impotence of the police in preventing the vandalisation of the hospital by the same mob?

Even worse, instead of trying to understand the huge public outrage and anger, making allowances for it, and quickly course-correcting, the state government has made a bad situation worse by trying to intimidate and coerce its critics, protesters, doctors, and voices on social media — at last count, the police had issued notices to 280 persons and even arrested a few.

By all means, discourage dissemination of false news, but accept the criticism. Even the Supreme Court has castigated the government for its attempts to muzzle the protesters. This has all the hallmarks of the Delhi, Uttarakhand and UP police. Will they be sending in the bulldozers next?

Incidentally, all these issues and shortcomings have been noted by the Supreme Court too on the 20th of this month.

The R.G. Kar incident has showcased, in one conflation point, all that is wrong with Mamata Banerjee's government and which has made it indistinguishable from the BJP. This episode can be either her Kalinga or her Waterloo — she can change course or perish.

Come 2026, and the citizens of Bengal may well decide that they have had enough of this smorgasbord of corruption, nepotism, violence, confrontation and near anarchy. They will then have to make a Hobson's choice — vote for continued anarchy, bankruptcy and the growing kakistrocacy in Nabanna, or give a chance to the established kakistrocacy experts in Delhi and reap the benefits of a 'double engine sarkar'. 

It's all up to the lady in the saree if she can reinvent herself and her politics. She still has time, but it's running out fast.

Views are personal

Avay Shukla is a retired IAS officer and the author of Disappearing Democracy: Dismantling of a Nation and other works. He blogs at avayshukla.blogspot.com