Elusive Poribarton: Mamata's biggest problem is, Mamata

Poribarton has become a bit of the Royal Bengal tiger in West Bengal. It’s rumoured to exist but few people have actually seen it. In the current issue of OPEN Magazine Jay Mazoomdaar tries to hunt down that elusive beast. Or rather he counts the reasons why poribarton has proved to be so elusive. (Read Mazoomdar here_.)_ Some reasons are well-known. Trinamool Congress is a one-woman show. The second rung leadership is not strong. The most prominent names have no political base. The highest-ranking Congress minister looks after irrigation. All key decisions have to go through Mamata Banerjee. And even a woman who puts in an 18-hour workday can only do so much, especially if she is even having to decide which sofa goes where in the secretariat. [caption id=“attachment_137326” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Trinamool Congress is a one-woman show. AFP”]  [/caption] But Mamata’s biggest problem is Mamata. The rabble rouser Mamata Banerjee has become chief minister and that’s proving a tricky transition – she’s more used to shaking the establishment, rather than running it. As an opposition leader it was easy to be principled and stand by an upright Muslim IPS officer who took on the Left government. She even, in typical grandiose fashion, said she would appoint this officer Commissioner of Kolkata police if she came to power. Now she is in power. And as Mazoomdar writes she has appointed R K Pachnanda to that post, a man she had called a “Left stooge” and accused of “tearing her sari and biting her during a protest rally in 2008.” Apparently the IPS officer was a little too upright and Didi needed a “more pliant officer to ensure smooth functioning of the government.” To be fair, a U-turn is not  unique to Mamata. Before he became chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya refused to attend functions hosted by industrialists to flaunt his anti-capitalism street cred. As soon as he became chief minister, the first person he met was Ratan Tata. That meeting eventually led to his downfall but that’s another story. But in Mamata’s case the U-turns are antagonizing the very people whose goodwill she carefully cultivated to come to power – Bengal’s traditionally left-leaning civil society.  One of the greatest coups was when she got the support of an intellectual heavyweight like octogenarian writer, activist and cultural icon, Mahasweta Devi. At her grand victory rally in July, she made sure the 87-year-old writer was prominent on stage. The latest storm in a tea cup is about the right to protest. The Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (ADPR) wanted to book a passageway called the Metro Channel in the heart of the city’s business area to push for the Maoists’ demands – unconditional release of political prisoners, withdrawal of joint forces from Jangal Mahal etc. But Mamata has done a U-turn on Maoists. And her government told the ADPR that a Trinamool union has already “booked” the space. “I strongly condemn the new government’s _hukumat (_diktat),” Mahasweta Devi told a media conference according to The Telegraph. And then asked for good measure “Have we invited fascism?” Mamata, stung, hastily convened her own press conference and said “Some people are taking advantage of her age and forcing her to tell lies." But it’s not just the “aged” Mahasweta Devi. Other culturati from film director Aparna Sen, to writer Suchitra Bhattacharya to poet Sankha Ghosh have also come down on the government for curbing ADPR’s democratic rights even if they don’t agree with its viewpoint. It’s a biting lesson for Mamata that civil society can afford to be “principled” in a way she cannot. They don’t actually have to deal with the hassles of governance, empty coffers, or the balancing act of being populist and yet pleading with the centre for financial assistance. Of course, as the Telegraph points out, neither side are saying anything about the plight of the hapless commuters who use the Metro Channel to go to work. The High Court has said no rally should be allowed to block it. In the ping-pong over the permission to hold a rally, “commuters were reminded all over again that their democratic rights don’t count in any heated debate over rights.”