By Ashis Biswas
Under increasing pressure from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in Bengal is yet to formulate an effective counter strategy. TMC supremo, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has met election strategist Mr. Prashant Kishore seeking expert advice several times, as a rare ‘first’. Significantly, only Abhishek, her MP nephew, attended these talks. More senior leaders were kept out, fuelling speculation within TMC ranks. In terms of tangible outcome, except for two programmes that involved amass mobilisation of supporters, nothing has followed.
First, there was TMC’s July 21 Shahid Dibas (Martyrs’ day) annual programme. The Bengal Chief Minister called for a state-wide campaign against the black money culture in politics, targeting the BJP.
Neither the annual meet, nor the proposed follow up programme came across as a rallying point for a ruling party currently under siege. There was no ringing call on July 21to the confused ranks of demoralised supporters to launch an all out attack against their saffron party challengers. Unlike past years, a different, subdued TMC was on public display on July 21, a party forced to fight for political space in its only stronghold. The crowd was noticeably smaller, for which TMC leaders blamed the unusually long summer.
Vitriolic references to the BJP accounted for 50out of Ms Banerjee’s rambling 55-minute long speech. Her rhetoric was predictably shrill and relentlessly repetitive, a continuation of her Lok Sabha election campaign ‘speeches’.
Her call to attack the BJP by launching a ‘recover black money programme’ left even her loyalists mystified. Eventually, what was announced as a ‘statewide anti-BJP campaign’, ended in two so-so processions in Northeast Kolkata and a few desultory ‘marches’ in two or three districts. There was little enthusiasm and hardly any media coverage.
This new political offensive targeting the BJP came in the wake of scores of anti-TMC public demonstrations and rallies in Bengal by common people in recent weeks. They have been strongly protesting against the much maligned ‘cut money culture’ of the ruling party at most levels of the Bengal administration. As admitted by Ms Banerjee herself rather late in the day, TMC panchayat, local civic body members, councillors and MLAs had been taking illegal ‘cuts’ or commission from millions of beneficiaries of welfare schemes, since 2011. For each free cycle distributed, each ration card renewed, before paying people their daily wages for having participated in the 100 days work schemes, TMC leaders took a 25-30% cut.
As thousands of victims protested spontaneously, opposition parties gleefully joined the great bash-the-TMC party. The public support behind the mostly unplanned demos forced the state police to act with caution. Too late, small time district and village TMC leaders finally understood that the police could not—or would not —protect them no matter what.
Some returned the money they had taken. A few held out, denying any corruption, while others simply left their homes! As a result, rural administration came to a near standstill.
Observers contend that losing control over the administration, Ms Banerjee was forced to divert public attention through her new but not particularly convincing, crusade against black money. What went against the TMC was the public perception that party leaders had known about the ‘cut money culture’ at all levels. But they but did not stop the corruption because the leaders themselves received a share of the hundreds of crores of rupees that was taken from common people as an unofficial tax.
Evidence of this: Ms Banerjee had in 2017 publicly instructed TMC leaders in Hooghly to keep personally25% of the money they collected illegally, and hand over 75% to the party! As Congress leader Abdul Mannan said: “Her present campaigns —whether against cut money or black money — is yet another move by the Chief Minister to dissociate herself from the massive corruption carried out by her party, top reserve her own so-called ‘honest’ image. Since this so-called purification campaign comes on the heels of the Saradha chit fund and the Narada bribery schemes, I do not think too many people will respond to her gimmicks.”
Dilip Ghosh, West Bengal BJP president and MP, explained: “Black money is an issue for the income tax and other authorities to sort out. Most people pay income tax and GST dues anyway. Under BJP rule, the tax base has been widened. How can a party like the TMC muscle its way into official departmental work?”
The obvious lack of public enthusiasm for the TMC’s new campaigns confirm rather than negate, the views of Mr Mannan and Mr Ghosh.
On July 27, there was a crowning irony. The TMC organised ‘BJP Dhikkar Dibas’ over recent attacks launched by the saffron brigade, against the TMC, for the first time in nine years! For the past eight years, the state police acted, from all accounts, as an extension of the TMC.All three opposition parties — the BJP, the CPI(M) and the Congress — are unanimous on this. “This Dhikkar Dibasis an admission on part of the TMC of its own weakness against the new Opposition alignment in Bengal. If the TMC had succeeded in getting the Congress and the Left parties to join it in an anti-BJP consolidation, it would have been in a comfortable position. But its relentless drive to create ‘an opposition-free West Bengal’, a favourite slogan of Abhishek Banerjee and the Chief Minister herself, and the blatant use of the administrative machinery to drive all opposition into the ground, has cost it dearly,” says an analyst.
The Chief Minister has recently asked party leaders not to rely on the police too much after her talks with Mr. Kishore. The police is noticeably less enthused than before to rush to help the TMC in group clashes. The number of arrests in outbreaks of violence now appears more balanced. The plight of Mr. Rajiv Kumar, former Kolkata police Commissioner, senior officers like Mr. Arnab Ghosh and others, is a clear example of how the TMC eventually cannot permanently protect its ‘loyal’ officers from prolonged questioning from the CBI, the ED and other central investigating agencies.
Net outcome: the opposition has lost its earlier fear of the TMC and the state police. The BJP has systematically resisted armed TMC onslaughts against its workers at North 24 Parganas, north Bengal, Bankura and Pururlia. Demoralised Left and Congress workers have joined them. Worse, inner fights within the TMC continue as before, involving fresh violence, confusing the police. Against this backdrop analysts describe the new agitations sponsored by the TMC as old wine in old bottle. (IPA Service)
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