In September 2018, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres coined a name for a disease that he said was sweeping the world: Trust Deficit Disorder or TDD. “Our world is suffering from a bad case of Trust Deficit Disorder,” he said. “People are feeling troubled and insecure. Trust is at a breaking point…People are losing faith in political establishments; polarisation is on the rise and populism is on the march.”
Today, Kolkata is definitely showing symptoms of a severe TDD epidemic. And this disorder is casting a long, dark shadow on Mamata Banerjee’s chief ministership, perhaps longer and darker than any other in her 13 years in power.
This disorder has sprung from the horrific, tragic, shocking case of the rape and murder of a 31-year-old doctor at the state government-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata. And from the state’s efforts — the absence of it, the opposition parties say — to get to the bottom of it.
The TDD became glaringly evident when thousands of people spilled out on the streets of Kolkata at the stroke of midnight on 14 August in a display of the most spontaneous and unusual celebration of Independence Day that we have perhaps seen since 1947. Social media labelled it ‘reclaim the night’ – a vigil often dismissed as an ephemeral urban phenomenon. But not this time. People poured out in distant district towns. United in shock at the doctor’s fate and in the demand for justice.
The unique statewide movement was overshadowed in news headlines by a midnight assault on RG Kar Hospital. But the spirit of the movement appears to have survived.
On Friday, Mamata Banerjee took to the streets with a march to demand the death sentence for the culprit. Many saw in the move an attempt to fend off criticism of her administration’s handling of the case and set the narrative by blaming the BJP and CPM for the whole situation.
Many seem to have tired of that narrative. Parallel processions sprang up across the city. Many were by political parties. But there were others by civil society where among the marchers were civil society members known as “Mamata-friendly”.
Since Independence Day eve, West Bengal has seen the loudest public condemnation of the RG Kar incident and all that it stands for: the state’s failure to protect women, conduct a police probe into a crime that is convincingly transparent, hold accountable those in charge, and do away with political patronage in high places.
A fine example of political patronage was the haste with which the state appointed the RG Kar principal as the head of another medical college in the city just hours after he resigned from his post. What was the rush? His response to the crisis was questionable: He didn’t file a police complaint about the murder and the police did not bother to take his statement, though he was the institutional head of the college where the woman was killed. Students at his new posting locked his office room and barred entry. Calcutta High Court had to issue an ultimatum to the principal: Go on leave or else.
Also read: We were groped by patients, had no toilets—don’t wait for rape to care for women doctors
Not an open-and-shut case
Not just in its handling of the principal, the summary manner in which Calcutta High Court took away the RJ Kar probe from the Kolkata Police and handed it over to the CBI could also be a touch of the TDD virus. The TMC shrugged and said the chief minister was, from day one, open to the idea. So, what’s the big deal?
It is a big deal because the holes that the Calcutta High Court’s order punched into the version of the incident that the state has tried to tout only worsened the TDD statewide. Then suddenly came reports the hospital authorities had begun “renovation work” near the crime scene to build a rest area. No one could pinpoint whose orders and red flags went up: Was it an attempt to destroy evidence?
All this has done little to shore public confidence in the state and stop the TDD from snowballing into an avalanche of distrust in anything the government does.
The Calcutta High Court has taken cognisance of this distrust.
In its Tuesday order, it said cases are handed over to CBI only in “rare and exceptional cases…to instill confidence in the public mind…and where investigation by the State police lacks credibility and…when it is imperative to retain public confidence in the impartial working of the State agencies.”
Turning into a tide
This is not the first time Banerjee has been the object of TDD. The 2012 Park Street rape case that she dismissed as a “sajano ghotona” or ‘staged event’ triggered a wave of TDD then as well. That wave gathered momentum after the rape and murder of a college goer at Kamduni in 2013. It became bigger after the death of a minor who was allegedly raped and impregnated at Hanskhali two years ago. The RG Kar horror incident has now turned that wave into a full-blown TDD tsunami.
It is not that rapes and murders in the state alone are responsible for the TDD. In the last few years, other failures of the government have fanned the flames, including the series of arrests of Banerjee’s ministers and party leaders for alleged corruption in ration distribution, cattle smuggling, and education. Also, a non-stop cycle of violence — political or otherwise. Remember the dadagiri of strongmen at Chopra and Ariadaha, to name just the most recent instances?
Mamata will have to devise new ways to deal with the gathering storm. Existing strategies like blaming the opposition of fishing in troubled waters are not working. The state’s agitating doctors have kept all political parties away from their protest and ‘Reclaim the Night’ movement, too, assiduously skirted any political colour.
Can Mamata Banerjee stop this Trust Deficit Disorder from reaching its tipping point? Time is of the essence.
Monideepa Banerjie is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)