The votecatcher

Arindam Sarkar

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is on a victory run in the 2015 Bengal civic polls. Trinamool Congress swept the panchayat and parliamentary elections in 2013 and 2014; and now led by Mamata the party is confident of retaining the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and winning majority of the 97-odd municipalities that is going to the polls in April 2015 in Bengal.

The heat was agonizing. Two cops fainted and the scorching sun forced the tribal to take shelter under the trees. The soaring temperature and the looming uncertainty of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s political fortunes in the panchayat polls 2013 created a furnace in Junglemahal as she drove in to campaign. Odds were heavily staked against her.

Barely had the crowd-puller, attired in her signature crushed-cotton, white and blue-border sari, taken the microphone the crowds began to swell. Fifty minutes later, when she left with Tomay Hrid Majhare Rakhbo, Chere Debo Na…echoing in the air, the Didi of Hearts had cast her magic.

The small-eating, tread-milling, doodling and music-loving CM logged thousands of miles on road to traverse the length and breadth of Bengal. And it took three weeks and 80 public meetings for Mamata to repeat her 2011 Assembly elections performance. In July 2013, Mamata’s Trinamool Congress captured 13 out of the 17 Zilla Parishads and decimated the CPI(M)-led Left Front and the Congress in rural Bengal. And in September, Trinamool whitewashed the Opposition and captured 8 out of the 12 municipalities that went to the polls.  

“Two years is very little time to judge a government. We have done more for the people in this short time what the Left Front couldn’t do in 34 years,” said a sun burnt Mamata before briefing her 19 MPs to prepare for mid-2014 Lok Sabha elections at Writers’ Buildings. Mamata looked looking for a kill in 42 constituencies in the parliamentary polls.

During the panchayat campaign, Darjeeling began to tremor with the demand for a separate Statehood. With Mamata roaring in rural polls, the administration and the party kept her posted about Darjeeling on mobile. Polls over, a furious CM trained her guns at Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) chief Bimal Gurung, who had paralysed the Hills. An acerbic Mamata attacked UPA Government and GJM for instigating crisis and said she was against Balkanisation of India. “If they think Darjeeling will be a Telengana, they are wrong,” thundered Mamata. She rushed to the Hills, doled out goodies to the Lepchas and took the steam out of the Gorkha Movement.

Soon normalcy returned to Darjeeling. Gorkhaland Territorial Administration was back to work and  Bimal Gurung has fallen in line. Mamata has conveyed that she wants the new GTA team to work for the development of the Hill people. “She is a fighter and a vitriolic Mamata is a dangerous political element,” said Trinamool MP Sultan Ahmed. “Whether it is the Muslims, the SC and ST or Hill people, the minorities trust the CM. She will oppose all divisive forces in Bengal.”

Mamata is vehemently against central intervention in State matters and if ignored, she can upset the central applecart. The scuttling of the Indo-Bangla Teesta Sharing Agreement and the Indo-Bangla Land Border Agreement in 2011 is a classical example. “CM is not against these treaties. But how can the Centre ignore Bengal in a federal structure when both land and water are State subjects. By ignoring the CM on these issues, the UPA messed it up,” added Sultan Ahmed.

Rule her out and she will bounce back. In 2006 Assembly polls Mamata’s stocks plummeted to the pits. Trinamool was washed-out by the CPI(M). And when media was writing her political obituary, Mamata made a virtue of her political necessity and grabbed the land movements of Singur and Nandigram, where the Left Front Government forcibly tried to acquire lands for industries, to emerge as the messiah of the downtrodden farmers.

Three years later, Trinamool made deep inroads in the rural belt and shocked the CPI(M) by capturing 19 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2009 parliamentary elections. Mamata supported the UPA Government at the Centre and clinched the railway ministry for her and six Union Ministers of State berths. Soon she left the Cabinet to concentrate on 2011 Assembly polls.

Dinesh Trivedi and Mukul Roy succeeded Mamata in the railways. Relations between Mamata and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh soured fast because Trinamool was ignored in the Cabinet; not given an office in the Parliament; forced to raise rail fares; not consulted before hiking the prices of LPG, diesel and petrol; and she was continuously slammed by the Bengal Congress leaders.

But Mamata’s popularity was on the rise. Getting a wind of this, AICC president Sonia Gandhi made the Congress strike an electoral alliance with Mamata for the 2011 Assembly polls. It paid off. Trinamool got a single majority by winning 185 seats, Congress won 42 and the Left Front got 60 out of the 294 seats at fray.

Congress joined Mamata government in Bengal with six ministries. But Mamata-UPA relations dipped and in September 2012, Mamata left the UPA. Reason: FDI in multi-brand Retail, Pension Bill, Land Bill and inability to get a special financial package for Bengal to overcome Rs 2 lakh crore debt burden. In response, the Congress ministers resigned from Mamata government.

“Nobody can blame us for leaving the UPA. We were pushed to the wall. We cannot go back on our promises made to the people. We will go alone,” said Mamata during poll campaign. And she did drive home the point during the rural polls.

The Congress believed, Mamata on her own would be beaten hollow by the Marxists in the rural turf. They were wrong. Even the Sharada ponzy scam couldn’t stop the Mamata tsunami. The Congress and the Left Front managed to win only two Zilla Parishads each. “This mandate is for Paribarton. Rural Bengal has shifted their allegiance from the CPI(M) to Mamata,” claimed State Panchayat Minister Subrata Mukherjee.

A peeved Mamata is still smarting under the humiliation of being denied financial assistance by the UPA. No wonder, when Manmohan Singh recently asked his old political ally to return to the UPA fold, Mamata said `no’. “We will fight the Lok Sabha polls alone,” said MP Derek O Brian.

Every Chief Minister have their own style of operation and Mamata, ministers say, is very fast in taking decisions and maintains several levels of information channel from grassroots to the Writers’ Buildings to keep a tap on the administration and the party. Many say, she is that Bengal CM who has made the government people-centric and taken the Writers’ Buildings to the districts to announce projects, do review, monitor works and ensure its execution and completion.

The CM’s antechamber is stacked with her canvas, brushes and paints. In her side-bag, an Apple iPod loaded with her favorite songs and a picture of Goddess Kali of Adyapith are must-carry. If Mamata’s nubile fingers elegantly move on her mobile, Casio synthesizer and iPad keys, strangely though the fiery CM gets frightened and her fingers stiffen if her aircraft hits air pockets mid-flight.

Mamata has struck a balance as CM and Trinamool chairperson. From 10 am to 9 pm, the CM works and after 9 pm to wee hours, the party boss takes over. So her ministers and leaders stay glued to mobiles, for they never know when the boss would call. Though many say she is a dictator as a CM and party chief, most agree they only face her ire if they fail to deliver.

Before Cabinet meetings, an agenda note goes to the ministers and they are asked to give their opinion before she takes a decision. She keenly follows the work of her ministers and bureaucrats and has told them if they can’t perform they would perish. Every three months, performance of ministers and MPs are evaluated. “She confirms reports by talking directly right from the chief secretary and police commissioner to the level of BDO and OC of a police station,” said State Horticulture Minister Krishnendu Chowdhury.

“People’s representatives are accountable to her. She constantly travels, meets people and instructs the administration to alleviate their problems. She also guides MPs during the Parliament session,” said MP Suvendu Adhikari. “We have been told we were not born to be ministers, we must work for the people who made us one. Party factionalism and non-performance means exit,” added Krishnendu Chowdhury.

Mamata has identified power, health, education, law and order, rural development and industry as primary sectors in her first term. Her New Industrial Policy, creating land bank for industries, opening of fair price medicine shops, building multi-specialty hospitals and neonatal units, improving the education system and creating employment to stop brain drain from the State, expanding rural electrification and development – without forcibly acquiring lands for industries and launching Krishak Bazars to give good price to the farmers for their produce – indicate her roadmap.

At times, she has been criticized for intolerance, shooting verbal missiles and taking harsh steps against opponents and officers, but in spite of that people vote for her sincerity and honesty. “Administration was demoralized in the Left’s 34 years. The work culture has to improve,” insists Mamata.

In the summer of 2014, Mamata again raised the crescendo to hit out against the CPI(M) and BJP in the Lok Sabha poll campaign. At the end of a gruelling two-month campaign, unaffected by the Narendra Modi wave that hit the country, Mamata created a record when the Trinamool won 34 out of the 42 parliamentary seats in Bengal. But today with ponzi scam haunting her government, former lieutenant and Rajya Sabha MP Mukul Roy sidelined in the party and the failure of the government to bring industry in Bengal, Mamata is disheartened.

So what lies ahead for the seven-time MP, five-time Union Cabinet minister and the debutant CM? Apart from putting thrust on development, wooing industries and generating funds to fill the cash-strapped State exchequer, Mamata is now ferociously eyeing a sweeping majority in the 2016 Assembly elections in Bengal.

Unpredictability is her style. Intolerance is her mask. India’s undisputed mass leader Mamata Banerjee has proved she is a sure mascot for catching votes. But Mamata will now have to prove she is as much a good administrator as she is a poll-winner.