The pandals are up, the idols are in place in almost all of them, shopping is at a peak, and the setting is nearly flawless for a perfect Durga Puja in Kolkata and the rest of West Bengal.
But something is off—even as health, home and chief minister Mamata Banerjee is hopping from one pandal to another armed with a pair of scissors and snipping ribbons to welcome Goddess Durga and kick off celebrations. There is a hollow ring to it all.
Kolkata is on edge.
And not just Kolkata.
In the city, on the last weekend before the Durga Pujas, junior doctors from medical colleges across the state went on dharna and threatened a hunger strike to protest the rape and murder of the 31-year-old medic at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.
Around 50 km away, in the rural belt of Joynagar, villagers ransacked a police outpost and set it on fire to protest an identical crime: the rape and murder of a local pre-teen girl. Police had to use tear gas and lathi charges to control the crowds that gathered to protest.
A political tamasha ensued. TMC MLA Ganesh Mondal was chased out of the village, according to a video of the incident that went viral. TMC MP Pratima Mondal ran into a wall of ‘go back’ slogans when she tried to meet the victim’s family at the local hospital where the body was kept for post-mortem. BJP MLA Agnimitra Paul sat on dharna at the hospital to demand the post-mortem be done at a different hospital. CPI(M)’s Minakshi Mukherjee was barred from meeting the victim’s family. Chaos reigned.
No sign of the pujo spirit at Joynagar. Nor in swathes across West Bengal.
The state is dressed up and ready to welcome its daughter home for the holidays, but the family is unable to keep the deep-rooted discord within from spilling out somewhere or the other.
As head of this troubled family, Mamata Banerjee must wake up and smell the coffee. And course correct.
If there were any lingering doubts about links between the crime at RG Kar and her Trinamool Congress party (TMC), they have been dispelled with the arrest of Dr Ashish Pandey, a Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad leader at RG Kar. He has been arrested in connection with corruption. Junior doctors claim he is the key perpetrator of what they call the threat culture on campus.
The two others arrested by CBI for alleged destruction of evidence of the rape and murder of the doctor—the former principal Sandip Ghosh and officer-in-charge of Tala station Abhijit Mondal—have no direct link with TMC. But Pandey does and TMC has neither sacked him, suspended him from the party nor disowned him as yet.
Mamata’s silence about TMC leaders of all shades and seniority who continue to rudely mock the junior doctors and others in protest mode is as disgraceful as the comments made.
Also read: Mamata’s brush with protesting doctors serves a lesson. She’s now a failed Chief Minister
Questions for the doctors
In the middle of this turbulence, questions are cropping up that the junior doctors must face. Key among this is—is their movement for justice for Abhaya, the name given to the murdered junior doctor, and for security measures for health workers at all hospitals still on track? Or is it going off the rails? Losing direction? From five, in the early days of the junior doctors’ movement, the number of demands today has risen to 10. It’s drawing the charge that junior doctors are constantly changing the goalposts.
There is no doubt that their movement and the backing it received from civil society has shaken up the administration as nothing else has in recent times. But by prolonging their protests, are they risking the thinning of public support?
There has clearly been introspection, which prompted the junior doctors to call off their ‘cease work’ protest from Friday night. But should they have diluted that step with a dharna at Dharmatala, more deadlines and threats of a hunger strike in the coming days?
No one is about to forget or forgive the horrific tragedy that befell the 31-year-old trainee doctor. For her family, the Durga Puja spirit is lost. And many thoughts and prayers will be with them through the festive season and beyond.
But it is time for both Mamata Banerjee and junior doctors to wake up and smell the coffee.
The junior doctors should remember a Kafka quote and treat it as a warning to steer their movement safely away from such an eventuality— ‘Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.‘
And Mamata Banerjee should not bank on voter amnesia a year and a half from now when West Bengal will elect a new state Assembly.
Monideepa Banerjie is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)