December 09, 2019
This made her a mass leader as well as an unbridled
Ms Banerjee plunges in where most fear to venture, often creating, in the
process, the most noticeable of splashes. Ms Banerjee always favoured the
downtrodden and ceaselessly championed their cause. This made her a mass leader
as well as an unbridled populist. West Bengal’s effervescent chief minister
Mamata Banerjee might have many faults but faint-heartedness is not one of them.
Like the intrepid buffalo wading unmindfully into the murkiest of waters,Ms
Banerjee plunges in where most fear to venture, often creating, in the process,
the most noticeable of splashes.As a young Congress student leader in the
mid-1970s, she is said to have shot into prominence by dancing on the bonnet of
the socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan’s car as a mark of protest.Today, she
is in national focus having become the chief opponent of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s demonetisation move.The four-decade-long journey from student leader to a
principal national Opposition figure is a huge achievement by any standards.
Today, few will deny that she is part of the national political scene, no matter
whether she is liked or abhorred.Yet, today, Ms Banerjee is also at a
crossroads: which way will her political destiny fork?While analysts might doubt
her abilities, it is unlikely that the doughty lady herself would have the
slightest reservations.
After all, it was not self-doubt that contributed to her China vacuum compressed bag
Manufacturers spectacular political rise in a Bengal once dominated by the
unrelenting shadow of the political Left.As the Congress Party in her state,
dominated by opportunistic local leaders, crumbled in the 1980s, Ms Banerjee
climbed into the vacant chair of principal Opposition leader in West Bengal.From
1984 onwards she won virtually every electoral contest she participated in and
rose rapidly in the Congress Party. In 1997, she broke away to launch her own
party, the All-India Trinamul Congress, which rapidly grew into the main
Opposition party in Left-dominated West Bengal.Ms Banerjee’s political career
too continued to soar and she came into national focus by becoming railway
minister twice and holding other important portfolios in the Central
government.Her crowning glory, and one that will be remembered for a very long
time in her home state, was her stunning electoral victory in the 2011 state
Assembly polls.The Marxists had controlled West Bengal for nearly three and a
half decades and over the years created an iron framework of corruption and
control, which was purported to be invincible. Ms Banerjee’s massive victory
demolished that myth and the CPI(M)’s political base.As a political leader, who
had risen from very difficult circumstances, Ms Banerjee always favoured the
downtrodden and ceaselessly championed their cause.
This made her a mass leader
as well as an unbridled populist.But there was a downside to it. Her destructive
type of populism resulted in West Bengal’s deindustrialisation, increase in
organised extortion and rural underemployment. Her political victory has come at
a huge cost to her state’s economic development.The country’s political stars
have, however, continued to favour Ms Banerjee. The gradual but continued
emasculation of the country’s largest political party, the Congress, has created
a vast nationwide political vacuum which the country’s fragmented and jaded
Opposition leaders are unable to fill.Ms Banerjee, on the other hand, seems to
view this as her chance and has used every opportunity to criticise, chastise
and ridicule the ruling dispensation headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a
bid to emerge as the country’s principal Opposition leader.The portents are not
good though. Her call for Opposition unity on the demonetisation issue has
largely failed and forced her to return to the umbrella offered by her erstwhile
political mentor, the Congress Party.Ms Banerjee’s claim that demonetisation is
anti-poor and an assault on the people has not been supported by any other chief
minister except Arvind Kejriwal, another incorrigible Modi-baiter.
The Janata Dal
family has largely stayed out of the debate as have most other national-level
politicians, leaving Ms Banerjee holding the bat.Her stance on the field is
somewhat shaky. She was kicked in the shin by the Marxists after she had
publicly declared she was ready to shed ideological differences with them over
the demonetisation issue. The Marxists refused to oblige, saying they would not
help her save crores in illegal funds amassed by her party.She has also earned
nationwide opprobrium by opposing the arrest of Tamil Nadu’s chief secretary who
was found with millions in unaccounted cash, gold and much more.The rising
instances of corruption charges against her ministers, her hysterical opposition
to demonetisation and her defence of the corrupt has lost her middle-class
support in her home state and rendered her a figure of much ridicule
elsewhere.At this juncture, Ms Banerjee can only hope that the trajectory of her
political career will not follow that of one-time Bihar strongman, Lalu Prasad
Yadav, who did rise to the national stage, sadly not as a statesman but as a
buffoon.
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