It is becoming increasingly clear that faced with a political challenge from the BJP, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is losing touch with the masses and is hurtling from blunder to blunder. Her recent show of muscle to the agitating doctors rather than showing tact and better judgement are signs that she is slipping. The BJP which was waiting for an opportunity to communalise the agitation by polarising the Hindus in its favour has been aided by Mamata describing the junior doctors who were aggrieved by disgruntled patients roughing up a junior doctor as outsiders who were out to create trouble. That inept handling by the administration has caused the agitation to spread to the rest of West Bengal from Kolkata and has now created ripples in other parts of the country too is a measure of the mismanagement of the strike.
Indeed, all that the agitating doctors were seeking was a measure of security which the administration could have readily conceded. But the police used strong-arm tactics which exacerbated the problem and gave the opposition a stick to beat the administration with. The doctors need to be heard. The Trinamool workers as well as BJP inciters need to be disciplined. The chief minister, instead of adopting a partisan attitude must lend a sobering influence and cajole doctors to return to work in the interests of hapless patients. That the patient who died and whose family and friends roughed up the doctor was a Muslim should not matter. Action must indeed be taken without fear or favour.
