Kolkata: A hike in bonus for police, steps to release long-due arrears for government employees, a relook at the Modi government’s general-category quota after initially shunning it. Stung by the unprecedented gains made by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in West Bengal in this year’s Lok Sabha polls, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is recalibrating.
The state is headed for an assembly election in less than two years and Mamata’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) no longer looks as formidable as it did in 2016, when it won 211 of the state’s 294 seats, or even in the controversial 2018 panchayat polls.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP won 18 of West Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats, up from two in 2014. The TMC had more seats at 22, down from 34 in 2014, but it suffered some stunning defeats, including a near wipe-out in the tribal belt (Jangal Mahal), where the BJP won all five seats, and north Bengal, where the Trinamool got none of the eight seats (BJP won seven, Congress, one).
The BJP’s gains prompted Mamata into introspection, leading her government to announce a slew of measures in the days after the poll results came out on 23 May — measures she hopes will help her party regain its edge in West Bengal.
Bonus and DA dues
At a review meeting held by the TMC on 30 May, party leaders told Mamata that lakhs of state government employees had boycotted them in the 2019 elections over massive dearness allowance (DA) dues, a senior party member said.
“At least 70 lakh votes went to the BJP with government employees and their families not voting for us,” the senior TMC leader said. “Our voting percentage may have increased, but such a high number of anti-incumbency voters do matter in close fights.”
So, two weeks after the results, Mamata held an administrative meeting and the first step announced afterwards was the setting up of a “monitoring cell for implementation of government welfare schemes and redressal of public grievances”.
The cell, which started functioning from 10 June, is under the chief minister’s office, and has a toll-free number where people can register complaints about anomalies or malpractices in government schemes.
Then, as reported by ThePrint Wednesday, on 18 June, Mamata launched a clean-up within her party to check a suspected extortion racket that saw grassroots TMC members, allegedly with seniors’ patronage, take “cut-money” from beneficiaries for the proper implementation of government schemes.
This was an attempt to dissociate her party from allegations of corruption after PM Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah made the alleged extortion an issue during the campaign for the Lok Sabha polls.
Ten days later, she sought to rebuild bridges with West Bengal Police by enhancing a bonus they are entitled to: According to an order dated 25 August 1988, state police personnel of and below the rank of deputy superintendent of police got 30 days’ pay as bonus for every year spent on the force.
On 28 June, Mamata increased the incentive to 52 days’ pay, “with immediate effect”.
According to a proposal prepared by the Home Department, which oversees police, this will cost the exchequer an additional Rs 232 crore.
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It was at the same review meeting cited earlier, the aforementioned TMC source said, that leaders of the party informed Mamata about police turning “hostile” to them.
According to the sources, one minister said junior police personnel, especially those at ‘thanas’, were openly defying local leaders of the ruling party.
The complaint rattled the chief minister, and she also raised the issue multiple times at public meetings.
Apart from this, a renewed focus on rebuilding her public-connect saw Mamata instruct Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim to take direct calls from the public once a week and address their issues.
Consequently, on 1 July, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation launched the toll-free ‘Talk to Mayor’ service, which allows residents of the state capital to directly access Hakim every Wednesday.
Additionally, she has hit the streets with “public-connect programmes” and marches. As a source close to Mamata told ThePrint, “Didi wants to gauge the public mood. For that she needs to lead rallies.”
The last such public march was a government-sponsored programme for water conservation on 12 July, which she declared the “save water day”.
Mamata is said to have been advised by political strategist Prashant Kishor, who is helping her prepare for 2021, to conduct more such programmes. In a bid that seems to be aimed at checking the TMC’s association with political violence, she has also instructed her party colleagues to not get involved in unnecessary altercations with BJP leaders, sources told ThePrint.
There also seems to be an effort on Mamata’s part to revisit popular Modi government initiatives that she stonewalled earlier, including the 10 per cent quota in jobs and education for the upper-caste poor.
When the Modi government announced the initiative earlier this year, Mamata had questioned its “constitutional validity”. However, on 2 July, after a state cabinet meeting, Mamata introduced the idea in West Bengal, with the notification following a week later.
‘Jai Bangla’
Another crucial thrust area for Mamata is instilling Bengali pride in people to counter the BJP’s Hindutva politics, said a senior Trinamool Congress leader.
“As we all know, Bengali culture is very dear to the people of Bengal. And a group of Hindi-speaking leaders from the Hindi heartland states are trying to destroy that,” the leader added, “They are alien to Bengali society.”
Billboards and posters featuring pictures of Bengali icons — alongside the tagline “Jai Hind, Jai Bangla” — have been put up at almost all crossings in Kolkata, besides at other key locations. Mamata has also coined the slogan “Jai Hind, Jai Bangla” as a counter-narrative to “Jai Shri Ram”, which is associated with the Right wing.
Mamata has also intensified efforts to get immigrants to learn Bangla, though the state government had announced as far back as May that the language would be made mandatory in Bengal schools.
Other initiatives include marking out the spokespersons it wants presenting the TMC’s arguments on national and regional media.
‘At her wits’ end’
Weighing in on Mamata’s recent posturing, political analyst Professor Amal Mukhopadhyay said the chief minister “seems to be at her wits’ end and very disappointed following the poll debacle”.
“She expected to have a very good number this time. She clearly was overconfident. Now, she is confused,” added Mukhopadhyay, former principal of the erstwhile Presidency College of Kolkata, which is now a university.
“She is making decisions without rational thinking or consideration. Moreover, she is making contradictory statements. She raised questions over this (general-category) reservation, now she has herself announced a scheme with similar clauses. She asked her partymen to return cut-money, and, when it backfired, her party issued a statement saying 99 per cent of TMC members are honest,” he said, “So what does this mean? Most importantly, the way she has been overemphasising Bengali nationhood, it looks awful. We all are Indians. And this cannot be supported.”
The BJP, meanwhile, said Mamata’s efforts were unlikely to yield results.
“With the kind of groundswell of support we have in Bengal now, no such measures will work for her,” BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya told The Print.
“She lost credibility and will soon be out of people’s mind. There is no way that she can regain her lost ground by eye-wash measures,” she said.
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Speaking even in the abstract, there should be opposition and regional parties that are doing well. One cannot picture Mukul Roy leading the Bengali renaissance.