The conflicts and contradictions of Mamata Banerjee

Banerjee is not able to handle the contradictions that mark her politics and has instead ended up creating more battle zones. Her clashes with junior doctors is one such example

When a piece of harmless looking stone felled Paribaha Mukherjee, a resident doctor in his mid-twenties at Kolkata's Nil Ratan Sarkar Medical College and Hospital (NRS), he didn't have time to think before losing consciousness. But his associates could see that the stone had dented his frontal bone and may have affected his brain. Now, Mukherjee's doctors say that his eyesight may be permanently impaired. He may not be able to fulfil his dream of becoming a surgeon.

A well-nurtured rage against the educated, well-dressed and well-fed young men and women burst out that hot and humid Saturday night in central Kolkata and once again opened an old wound. After each such incidence of violence in hospitals ‒ and there have been many ‒ the political establishment has preferred to brush them aside with insincere assurances and toothless police action. The truth, especially in Mamata Banerjee's Bengal, is not pleasant.

Incidents of violence in hospitals in Bengal are quite regular, but the attacks in Kolkata take a different twist. While poor infrastructure and absence of doctors and medicines trigger violence in rural areas, a close look at the Kolkata incidents reveals that it's largely the middle class 'consumer's' protest against excessive billing and indifferent treatment at private hospitals. But in government-run hospitals, the anger of the poor ‒ mishandled, disrespected and dehumanised ‒ bursts out at regular intervals. And the softest target within reach is always the junior doctor, who is the face of not only the ill-equipped hospitals but also the indifferent political establishment that never bothers about the poor.

The violence at NRS or any other government hospital in Kolkata has another angle. Most of these hospitals were built and developed in the central part of the city during the colonial rule. And, incidentally, these localities are now mostly dominated by Urdu-speaking people who are still a sad reminder of the so-called two-nation theory of the Muslim League and the painful partition of India that Bengal had to suffer so much for.

Hospital violence is by no means an expression of the class struggle of the fringe dwellers of Kolkata, as some would like to say when explaining the outbursts. It's actually an expression of hopelessness and class jealousy of a section of people, whom neither the government nor civil society has ever tried to bring into the mainstream. And these people, mainly Urdu speakers, many of whom had left for East Pakistan in 1947 as Muhajirs and were forced back to West Bengal after the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, are still outsiders in a city that does not have a connect with them any longer. Most do menial jobs and many are into petty crime and feel safe and comfortable in their ghettos ‒ mostly in and around central Kolkata where most of the hospitals are located.

Even Bengal's Muslim society has never tried to help these fringe-dwellers. The reason apparently is their inherited ideology of Islamic supremacy and an in-built disrespect for Bengalis who have a tradition of diluting ‒ if not disregarding ‒ mainstream religious beliefs. So, the assaulters come from a community that keeps to itself and are oblivious to the society outside their ghettos. And there glides in Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee and her politics of playing the messiah to the people living on the edge.

She knew from the beginning of her political career that it was the only way to create her own audience as the Congress had immense influence over the landed gentry and the moneyed classes while the communist party had a total sway over factory workers, poor farmers and the urban middle class. In fact, the fringe was ready for a leader when she decided to quit the Congress. Even now, she is convinced that a ruffian ‒ preferably abandoned by his family ‒ is much better than a so-called Bhalo Chhele (good boy). She said so in a recent interview with a local television channel.

Another aspect of Banerjee's politics is that she never allows her opponents the luxury of staying in their comfort zone. She, instead, lures and sometimes forces her opponent to come out and fight at a venue of her choice. She marks the territory, lays the trap and springs it when the opponent least expects it. That's how she surprised the Left in Singur and Nandigram and vanquished the Goliath. But after coming to power, it has become a different ball game since both the perspective and the battlefields have changed for her.

She still tries to set the agenda for political engagements and hardly ever goes out of her comfort zone. But an Opposition leader's politics does not always suit a chief minister, since she has to acknowledge that she, as the chief minister, belongs to everybody irrespective of language, religion or politics.

She didn't change her stance even after the bloody Trinamool-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) clashes in Sandeshkhali, a small hamlet about 75 km off Kolkata, on 8 June, which saw goons attack villages in broad daylight and chase people away to a spot outside the village and shoot them. The day's event ended with the death of one TMC worker and officially two BJP workers. At least four BJP supporters are still missing. This is what the chief minister has to say: The BJP first attacked the TMC and killed one guy. And the TMC killed those BJP men only in retaliation.

Banerjee has treated the role of the Governor and the central government trivially, sending her education minister to meet Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi on the Sandeshkhali incident. Now she politicises the sending of advisories to the state from the Union home ministry. Her logic: Law and order is a state subject and the central government has no right to interfere in the state.

A former party colleague once known to have been close to Banerjee, says on condition of anonymity, that the only option she has now is to play the victim card. Her moves and countermoves also indicate that she is trying to lure or force the Centre to impose President's Rule in Bengal. That will give her immense dividend in the next Assembly elections. But will the BJP walk into the trap? Both senior leader Mukul Roy and BJP state president, Dilip Ghosh, said the Centre had no such plans.

What is the game plan of the BJP? Party insiders say that Mamata Banerjee's system of governance will finally go against her. Her masterstroke of taking over all the powers of her party's Parliament and Assembly members and empowering, instead, Panchayat members in villages, and councillors in small towns and cities served her well in the initial years of the TMC government. But unchecked corruption gave rise to such an extent of greed that the TMC is getting eaten away very fast at the grassroots level. Small-time TMC leaders are joining the BJP in hordes either on the assurance of money or simply for protection after the Assembly polls.

These contradictions are becoming visible every day, and Banerjee is not able to handle them effectively. Instead, she is creating more battle zones beyond her areas of control. Her clashes with junior doctors ‒ and eventually the whole medical fraternity ‒ after the latest NRS Hospital attack is one such example. When a simple meeting and a few words of compassion would have done the job, her personal apathy to the educated middle class ‒ who, she suspects, have never accepted her leadership ‒ and her bias towards fringe dwellers made things even more complex.

So much so that she defied all logic and even refused to visit Paribaha Mukherjee at the hospital. She simply said, "Nobody can give me orders on where I have to go." Thus, the statements she issued and the irritation she expressed towards the striking doctors showed her in a poor light, which even her party colleagues and some senior ministers are not sure whether she can afford at this point. For, they cannot. From Firhad Hakim, an important minister and Kolkata mayor, and his doctor daughter to Bengali cinema icon and MP Dipak Adhikary and her own nephew, a doctor himself, have all issued statements condemning the attack on Paribaha Mukherjee.

Apparently and for now, Mamata Banerjee still prefers to stick to the three areas of conflict with the BJP that she had decided on before her poor show in the 2019 general elections ‒ religion, language and education. And, of course, class jealousy.

(Debjyoti Chakraborty is a senior journalist)

The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.