Hazare trying hard not to be pushed into oblivion.
By Rajiv Theodore
NEW DELHI: Mamata Banerjee is in the news these days and surprisingly, all for the right reasons.
‘Didi’, who came to power in the communist bastion of West Bengal after breaking away from the parent Congress party, was assured of an avuncular support from none other than Anna Hazare, the aging activist.
Hazare pledged his backing for the West Bengal Chief Minister’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) during her campaign and has projected her as the Prime Minister-designate too. Her party hopes Hazare’s support would pitchfork the largely regional party into the national fold.
Hazare on his part said that Banerjee is one of the few politicians who is ostentatious and simple in her personal life and is the only one who responded positively to his 17-point economic charter which he had given to all the other Chief Ministers too.
But the real reason to woo support from Bengal could be his recent rankling with his protégé Arvind Kejriwal. Hazare has been hurling all kinds of allegations against the younger leader who grew beyond activism and formed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which posted stunning victories in its maiden venture in the Delhi assembly elections.
The national and world-wide fame that AAP got after it formed the government in Delhi and Kejriwal as its Chief Minister has not gone down well with the septuagenarian and it is implied by his ranting that he was howling for a slice under the sun and was trying his best not to be pushed into oblivion.
However, in his desperation to keep himself afloat, Hazare has overlooked several facts about the present day West Bengal which is today infested with incidents of rapes, molestations and police apathy. In a recent incident, the police asked a rape victim in the state of her party affiliation. The infiltration of Bangladeshis from across the border has created a demographic tinder box in the state, and it is ready to implode. In such a context, Hazare’s move to support Didi lacks rationality. But Mamata isn’t complaining.
Why should she anyways? She is getting all the attention she can these days. Next in line is the US Ambassador to India, Nancy Powell, who had been almost declaredpersona non grata after the Khobragade incident. She is scheduled to meet Mamata anytime over the next 24-hours. The proposed meeting is part of the US’ ‘outreach’ program to meet India’s senior political leaders, and comes after Powell met Modi on February 13.
In November, British Prime Minister David Cameron had also met Mamata for proposed investments in the state and it seems that Powell is also on the same quest since US is still India’s largest trading partner.
Although she made history after ousting the communist party which ruled the state for 34 years, Mamata in her three years of governance had many flip flops to her credit. Her reactions many times smacked of desperation. She looks at any criticism from a conspiracy angle – blaming the Left, the Congress or the Maoists – and has walked out of TV shows and debates.
She has even got journalists arrested for being critical. The industrial status of the state was hit when Tatas took flight to Gujarat, to bring out the Nano car owing to her doggedness and political ambitions. She was anti-retail and against bringing foreign investment into the aviation sector which then reached a flashpoint, whereby the center severed ties with the TMC.
Then there was this shocking recent incident that shamed everyone. A tribal woman was ordered by a kangaroo court to be gang-raped. The incident prompted the Supreme Court to issue notice to the Mamata Banerjee government for a probe.
Today, West Bengal longs for a change for the better, a ‘poriborton’ that would lift the hopes of the people still shackled by poverty and backwardness. Didi knows this too well to ignore these cold facts and unless she succeeds in alleviating the state from the morass, the Mamata moment may never come.
(Rajiv Theodore is India Bureau Chief, The American Bazaar.)
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