Singur ruling gives Mamata a lesson in governance

Governments should not behave like goondas.

That, in short, is the substance of today’sCalcutta High Court verdict declaring as unconstitutional the Mamata Banerjee government’s forcible re-acquisition of land from Tata Motors.

The court’s objection is centred not so much on the government’s right to acquire land that the previous Left Front government had allotted to the Tatas for the prestigious Tata Nano project; it is rather more about the failure of the Paschim Banga government to observe the due process of law in taking back the land from the Tatas.

[caption id=“attachment_353837” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Did Mamata’s government overstep its bounds? Reuters”]  [/caption]

It is a rap on the knuckles for Banerjee, for whom securing retribution against the Tatas has become something of an obsession ever since she launched her agitation to drive out the Nano project from the State.

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She did succeed in that endeavour - the Tatas fled to Gujarat - but calculated wrongly that it was her extreme brand of agit-prop politics aimed at “out-Lefting the Left” that had brought her to power last year. And, she reckoned, there was still a bit of unfinished business to settle with the Tatas: she had to grind their faces in the dust.

Almost the first act of her government after coming to power was to pass theSingur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act, 2011. Passed in June last year, within a month of Mamata Banerjee storming the bastion of the Left Front, theAct empowered the state to take back the land that the Left Front had leased to the company at Singur.

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With the Nano project having been hounded out of Singur, the Tatas had few options but to return the land to the government - and then on to the original farmer-owners. After all, the political winds had changed direction in the State, and there was no earthly chance of them returning to the land and putting it to good use.

But rather than observe due process of law in the acquisition process, streetfighter Mamata Banerjee resorted to the same recklessmethods that she had relied on to take on the Left Front government. She effectively shredded the negotiated agreement under which the land had been acquired. And in so doing, she dealt a blow to the principle of justice. Which is why the High Court has today administered her government a resounding slap.

In other words, the lesson for Mamata is, in the immortal words of Sir Humphrey Appleby: “If you must do this damn silly thing, don’t do it in this damn silly way.”

Apart from making bold to teach the mercurial Mamata a lesson in the due process of law, the judgement gives her something to reflect on: on the role of governments.

Street-level theatrics and grandstanding may have worked well for her while she was in Opposition - and taking on the brute force of the Left Front regime. On that count, there is even much to admire in her. But she has concluded erroneously that the people of the State elected her to continue the same reckless deindustrialisation and class warfare that the Left Front visited upon the State.

In fact, as Firstpost had observed ( here ), the Trinamool Congress won because the State’s voters wanted poriborton, not more of the same policies that had bankrupted the state and destroyed jobs and growth. Her strategy to “out-Left the Left” is political suicide.

If anything, Mamata Banerjee needed to reinvent herself for a role in government - by adherence to the law. Today’s verdict is the most recent reminder of that.

But given the essential nature of her confrontational politics and theatrics, it may need rather more than a judicial rap on the knuckles to make her see reason.