The outrage over the horrific rape and murder of a young doctor at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata raises a troubling question. Can Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress come out of it unscathed and keep winning elections in West Bengal just as they did in the past?
People are neither insensitive nor ignorant of the TMC’s misgovernance and rampant depredations. They are cognisant about the rot in the system. But when it comes to voting, these seem to be not a decisive factor. There are a few most probable reasons for the TMC’s continuing political success.
Firstly, people trade ethics. In other words, the ethical considerations that give rise to conscience are like most other things in the public arena for exchange with valuable goods required for living. I know that my boss is corrupt, or that my colleague is a fraud who lives by graft, but I am reluctant to out that person, for by keeping quiet, I get access to what I want. Since what I want is liked by others as well and therefore is scarce, I am pitted in a battle where finite resources are sought by infinite wants coming from fellow citizens. In this situation, my first instinct is to maximise my happiness even if that means that others are deprived by my actions. This may sound vulgar, but a great majority also believe, not unreasonably, that the good is achieved by material accumulation and therefore by extension, happiness. There is, of course, a higher understanding of ‘good’ and ‘happiness’, where people identify the good with honour, but the number of those who can think along these lines is in the minority. This is so since the macro structures of the economy which in a neo-liberal society seduces people to think of happiness as extremely private and material, places a premium on ignoring the plight of others. Ideally, democracy requires us to think of the common good and place it at a level higher than one's immediate concerns. The material conditions created by the ruling ideology, however, are to the contrary.
Secondly, the TMC is seen as an anti-BJP party and therefore by extension a part of the bulwark against the communal Right. Many politically savvy people see the TMC as the ‘lesser evil’ and therefore acceptable to keep the ‘greater evil’ BJP away. We will never know what the reaction to the allegations of corruption would be if the BJP was not in the political fray in the state. Given that the TMC has organisational clout and is in power, the minority community and those who are not swayed by communal overtones see it as a force that would hold the syncretic culture of West Bengal together. The BJP is yet to weave along the political symbolism that would marry its Hindutva agenda with West Bengal’s sentiments. But for many people, it represents an alien political culture that portends riots, misery, and a general disruption of life that the state is not used to. With the minority community constituting nearly 30% of the population with close cultural ties with the majority community in rural Bengal, the continuation of the TMC in power can be partly explained.
Thirdly, the present ruling party came to power in the wake of a de-politicised space. Class-based struggles, unionised actions, and such were seen as impediments to the ‘development’ of a robust economy. The Left Front under the leadership of the CPI (M) informally touted the oft-repeated TINA (There is No Alternative) factor when it came to plans for energising a flagging economy underpinned by an overwhelming dependence on agriculture. That it did not take off is known to us but what we did not notice was the simultaneous failure of the primary industries, the big employers of labour, and the quickening pace of the decline of workers politics. The successor government in 2011 could neither open large industries nor create job opportunities in the required number. The proletariat was replaced by the precariat and the large pool of unemployed and some may argue that unemployable surplus labour could only hope to migrate out in search of jobs or hang on to the coattails of the ruling party that promised some welfare benefits.
This is not to argue that the TMC’s invincibility will be in perpetuity. But the reversal of this inertia would require a political will that at this moment seems to be missing. The opposition comprising the Congress, and the CPI(M) has not fared well at the hustings. Opposition politics lacks an agenda and leaders who can match the TMC and counter the ‘lesser evil’ narrative that is essentially advanced by the disgruntled Left who were once with the CPI(M). The TMC is a platform party, much like the Congress. It has accommodated the extreme leftists, former CPI(M) and Congress supporters, and of course, the political opportunists, who much like bounty hunters of the Wild West, have all come together not because they know where they are going, but precisely because they are yet to understand what next to achieve. Thus, the possibility of a change will not emerge from delving into the nuances of political morality but perhaps from an acephalous upsurge that will catch all political establishments off-guard.
(The author is Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Sister Nivedita University, Kolkata)