Partial or not, the roll-back of the junior doctors’ six-week cease work in West Bengal must come as a huge relief to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. With 7,000 doctors on dharna for 42 days, corruption charges flying thick and fast and healthcare services hit, she was starting to look like a failed administrator, negotiator and leader.
But neither Banerjee nor the Trinamool Congress (TMC) should, for a moment, believe that the rollback was a result of her legendary skills of manipulative politics. Those skills peaked in 2021 when she outsmarted the double-engine poll juggernaut of Amit Shah and Narendra Modi from a wheelchair to decisively defeat the BJP in the West Bengal Assembly elections.
Unfortunately for her, this time, her razor-sharp political instincts have collided head-on with an immovable wall of righteous earnestness, a hallmark of the junior doctors’ agitation as they seek nothing but justice for their raped and murdered colleague and demand enhanced security in hospitals and medical colleges. Mamata has, over the past week, managed to humiliate the protesting doctors, manipulating them into rolling back many of their demands, while conceding almost nothing in return.
Yet, she has not managed to break their spirit.
The junior doctors may have emerged from their recent face-offs with Mamata looking like wet-behind-the-ears political novices, even foolish. But braving the might of the state, the 7,000-odd junior doctor have forged ahead with their cease-work for 42 days and now rolled back on their own terms.
Threat culture
Among the many factors that have enabled the doctors to hang in there is the “threat culture” on their college campuses. This term came up repeatedly in the Supreme Court on 17 September, when Indira Jaisingh, representing junior doctors gave the bench a sealed envelope with names of 40 perpetrators. She argued that many of the perpetrators of this “threat culture” were roaming the college campus, making the striking doctors feel unsafe.
Sources say that these names submitted to court are MBBS students, interns, house staff and senior resident doctors of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, part of a cabal of mostly TMC Chhatra Parishad members who swore by the now-arrested former principal, Sandip Ghosh. (Incidentally, Ghosh has just lost his medical registration and cannot practice medicine unless it is restored)
The 40 names are among 51 hospital staff against whom RG Kar students and resident doctors had filed complaints before a recently constituted special college council to look into allegations of “threat culture”. The council had ordered all 51 to vacate their hostel rooms and not enter the college campus unless summoned.
Some of these 40 names are already in the public domain. The CBI summoned one of them, house staff and TMCP leader Abhishek Pandey, for questioning on Thursday. He had been seen in photographs, present among the crowds that gathered inside the seminar room after the body of the slain doctor was found. Later in the day, he had checked into a hotel at Kolkata’s residential township of Salt Lake, reportedly with a woman, only to check out the next day. The CBI wants to know why.
How was the “threat culture” created on campus? According to several junior doctors and students I spoke to, many students who did not toe the line were actually failed. Threats culture could also mean being made the fall guy in a crisis involving a patient, especially if it was a “catch patient”, a term used for someone who came to the hospital with a political recommendation.
One PG student told me he was so badly harassed that he even considered killing himself by jumping from the second floor of the Trauma Ward building. With final exams coming up this December and him busy with the cease-work and demand for justice, he has been unable to study and fears he may not pass on the first attempt.
“But this,” he said, waving at the scores of junior doctors sitting on dharna at Swasthya Bhavan, the state health department’s office, holding posters demanding justice, “is worth it.”
Also read: What would you do in Mamata’s place? Not what she did at RG Kar, say Bengal’s people
Pulling wool over eyes
But what have the junior doctors achieved? Definitely, an unprecedented support from the people of Kolkata and beyond. Yet concessions from Mamata? Very little.
Day 1, she accused them of playing political games when they refused to budge from their demand for a live broadcast of their meetings. Day 2, when doctors visited her house, the live broadcast demand again got in the way. Day 3, the doctors, some of them in tears, rolled back all their demands—for a live broadcast and videography. But because their response was delayed, the talks were postponed.
Day 4, the two sides met, and a tentative deal was struck. Mamata “conceded” to four out of five demands and the junior doctors rejoiced. But a sneering tirade by Trinamool Congress MP Sougata Roy threw cold water on their celebrations. ‘What concessions, a couple of IPS officers and two health officials have been transferred. What’s the big deal,’ Roy said. Transfers are routine, not a revolution.
Face saver floods
The floods in several south Bengal districts have given the doctors a valid prompt to roll back their cease work. They will deploy Abhaya Clinics in worst affected areas to continue their campaign for justice.
The floods have come as a face-saving, convenient distraction for Mamata. Of course, the chief minister of a state must fire-fight on multiple fronts and cannot focus solely on one issue, no matter how pressing it may be. However, had the floods not come along, Mamata would be staring at an embarrassing failure to end the junior doctors’ strike, despite appealing to them as their “Didi” rather than as chief minister, even offering tea and biscuits and fresh clothes to doctors drenched in rain while waiting to meet her at her Kalighat home.
All her mastery of manipulative politics has come to naught against the junior doctors’ earnest determination to achieve justice. The initial disappointment of realising that Mamata had not truly conceded an inch has been overcome, thanks to the Supreme Court hearing on Tuesday. The junior doctors now feel more empowered than ever. Today, they can name the on-campus tormentors and the former principal freely and loudly.
For them, this is a big step and a precursor to many more.
Mamata’s brush with the junior doctors should teach her that manipulative political tactics crumble when faced with the people’s uncompromising outrage.
Monideepa Banerjie is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
Your first article about round 1 going to Mamata was quite disappointing. It’s interesting how you still slipped in some of that but have a somewhat different take on this article. I traveled from my current location to Kolkata to participate in the protests and it’s clear to me that people see through Mamata and her coterie. She is a complete failure as Health Minister, Police Minister and Chief Minister as far as this situation is concerned. Electorally, TMC may still win because opposition is weak and look/act like idiots most of the time.
What you, or The Print should think about is an entire series on scams run by TMC openly. Media should be on the side of people, exposing these corrupt politicians should be your responsibility. It’s time that a war is declared against TMC and the good people of Bengal win it so convincingly that Mamata and coterie are left wondering what hit them.
The Kolkata upper class is dominated by Choti-Chata (slipper licking) Buddhijeebis (intellectuals). For these people, the BJP is a much greater evil than Mamata Banerjee.
They are ok with being slaves of the TMC but baulk at the thought of bowing before the BJP. The actor Parambrata Chatterjee is a fine example of this category – the Choti Chata Buddhijeebi. Seems to have quite a few fans at The Print. Tina Das wrote a fawning article on him a few days ago.