West Bengal will celebrate – if that is the right word – this year’s annual Durga Puja festival in an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, impoverishment and political uncertainty. While thousands of Bengalis who have lost their savings in dishonest chit funds blame the ruling Trinamool Congress for their plight, the chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, is accused of responding to complaints with arrogant disdain while her party stalwarts flex their muscles. Meanwhile, the government, which seems to be engaged in a running battle with students, can’t ignore the challenge of the BJP, which recently won an Assembly seat for the first time in more than a decade.
Challenged on so many fronts, it’s understandable perhaps the government should feel persecuted. It’s not often that a law minister takes to the streets with a placard in her hands to demonstrate outside the Central Bureau of Investigation’s office. But that is exactly what Chandrima Bhattacharya, who is also president of the Trinamool Congress women’s wing, did recently, complaining, “The CBI is being used by the Narendra Modi Government to malign our Chief Minister.” Didi, elder sister, as the mercurial 59-year-old Banerjee is popularly called, thinks the CBI inquiry into the Saradha scam, which the Supreme Court ordered, is “politically motivated.” So does her party secretary-general, Partha Chatterjee, who is also a minister in her government.
More than 1.7 million investors — mostly from low-income families — were duped by Saradha swindlers. So far, just around 40,000 have some of their money back. The 17 lakh families waiting for some return are ready to believe the worst of the ruling party. This is only one of many crises facing Banerjee, who has been chief minister since 2011 and was named by Time magazine the following year as one the “100 Most Influential People in the World”. Bill Gates wrote in 2012 to praise her and her administration for achieving a full year without any reported cases of polio. The letter said this was a milestone not only for India but for the world.
For someone who set out with so much promise, Bengal’s chief minister seems quickly to have run into foul weather.
Some Bangladeshis accuse one of her Rajya Sabha MPs, Ahmed Hassan Imran, editor of the daily Kalom, of diverting Saradha funds to the Jamaat-e-Islami there. There are signs of Muslims who abandoned the CPI(M) to board Trinamool’s bandwagon, defecting to the BJP. There is no allegation as yet of personal malfeasance. Nor is there much sign of her popularity waning in the villages which are her main constituency. But sooner or later the rising tide of urban discontent is likely to break its city banks and spread to the countryside.
Already, the feeling is that Trinamool would not have taken such strong exception to the CBI probe if it didn’t have something to hide. Not surprisingly, the opposition parties are taking full advantage of the government’s embarrassment. Visiting West Bengal in early September, Amit Shah, the BJP president, all but accused Banerjee of complicity. “When a few thousand farmers lost their land in Singur and Nandigram, Didi fasted for days. But now that 17 lakh poor people have lost their deposits to the Saradha scam, why don’t you now feel like fasting?” he taunted her. “You are not fasting because it’s your cronies who are involved in the scam,” he alleged.
Left and Congress leaders patronised a recent protest organised by the Chit Fund Sufferers’ Association, which choked Kolkata’s roads a day after a transport workers’ rally turned almost into an unannounced strike. “Those ministers who are involved in this scam should be punished and the government should immediately refund the money of poor investors who have been victimized,” the CPI(M)’s Sujan Chakraborty told the crowd. As for the law minister demonstrating outside the CBI’s office, he said that women activists had come out only because the CBI was questioning top Trinamool leaders. “This shows they support the cheaters.” Banerjee’s stony silence only fuelled suspicion.
Over the past three months, investigators have questioned as many as five Trinamool Congress MPs, a state minister, and several other leaders of lesser rank. A suspended Trinamool leader and a retired state police chief have been arrested. While the first — Kunal Ghosh — demanded that Banerjee should also be questioned, the ex-DGP, Rajat Majumdar — a Trinamool vice-president – broke down in court and shouted that the CBI would not be able to force him to implicate either Mamata Banerjee or her close aide and former union railway minister, Mukul Roy. Earlier, Majumdar had fallen on his knees before the police in a dramatically supplicatory gesture. The CBI, which accuses him of being a “conspirator”, also questioned Rajya Sabha MP, Srinjoy Bose, editor of the Bengali newspaper Sangbad Pratidin, whose media company is believed to have entered into a Rs 20-crore deal with Sudipta Sen’s Saradha group.
Panic seems to prevail in the Trinamool ranks. They can’t forget that the new BJP MLA defeated the Trinamool candidate. They don’t know what the CBI will unearth. Apart from Chatterjee, a Lok Sabha member, Sudip Bandyopadhyay, disowned Majumdar after he was arrested, saying he was not even a member of the party. Ghosh, who is a member of the Rajya Sabha, was suspended indefinitely in September 2013, even before he was arrested in the Saradha case.
For someone who is reputed to be street smart and gifted with the common touch, Banerjee often comes across as strangely tactless and unsympathetic. Her response to the scam victims was “Ja gechey ta gechey … What’s gone is gone”. Introducing a new tobacco tax to raise money for scam victims, she urged people to smoke more. When Sudipto Gupta, a student, died in police custody, it was for Didi “a petty matter”. She dismissed a horrendous rape in fashionable Park Street as a “sajano ghatana” or put-up job. When Trinamool leaders dragged out and assaulted the principal of Raiganj College she said the culprits were only “chhoto bachchas … small children.” Actually, they were middle-aged men.
In the latest fracas, policemen stormed Jadavpur University at dead of night, switched off the lights and used the dark to attack peaceful young student protesters who wanted a fresh probe into a girl’s complaint of being sexually harassed. The chief minister thundered at a public event that her enemies were “making a mountain out of a molehill to tarnish the image of Bengal.”
That could be her last line of defence. As it is, Didi dubs anyone who asks an inconvenient question a Marxist. Her cohorts are pledged to cleanse Jadavpur University of Marxists and Maoists. Now, anyone who questions her methods is maligning the state. It may be good strategy but the embattled atmosphere promises a bleak Durga Puja.
Sunanda K Datta-Ray
