Mamata’s Biggest Blunder

Narendra Modi began by being nice to Mamata. She rebuffed him viciously. That massive strategic error has landed her and Trinamool in a mess. But the biggest sufferer is the state of West Bengal

This week marks the first anniversary of Narendra Modi’s first ever election rally in West Bengal. Modi arrived to the rapturous welcome of a five-lakh-strong crowd at Kolkata’s historic Brigade Parade grounds on the afternoon of February 5, 2014.  And this could also be marked as the first anniversary of one of Mamata’s momentous blunders that is costing not only her party, but also Bengal, very dear.

At the rally in Kolkata, Modi spoke quite like a friend of Mamata Banerjee and was careful to refrain from criticizing her, though there was (and is) a lot she could be criticized for. His speech was nuanced and he made it very clear that the BJP was not in competition with the Trinamool for Bengal, but wanted Bengal’s support to rule from Delhi. “Ensure that BJP wins in the Lok Sabha polls. Here you have the Trinamool government that has promised to work. Let us have friendly competition. Let Mamataji’s government work for the betterment of the people of West Bengal and when BJP comes to power in Delhi, let us too work for you. The people of Bengal will benefit”, he had said.

Modi, and the then BJP president Rajnath Singh, also supported Mamata’s longstanding demand of a three-year moratorium on repayment of Bengal’s huge debt that had accumulated during 34 years of Left misrule. Mamata, since becoming the Chief Minister in mid-2011, has been asking the UPA regime that she was then part of, to restructure the state’s debt that stood at a whopping Rs 2,08,382.58 crore and impose a three-year moratorium on repayment of interest that amounted to Rs 16,097.31 crore annually. Modi and Singh explicitly said that Mamata’s demand was justified and if the BJP came to power at the Centre, it would restructure the debt and agree to the moratorium.

The top BJP leadership was clearly reaching out to Mamata and the message to Bengal’s electorate was clear: vote for us at the Centre so that we can work for the betterment of the Trinamool-ruled state. There was promise of co-operation with the state government for Bengal’s development. But Mamata, in what could be termed as one of the worst judgments of her political career, turned down the overtures and, instead, went for the jugular.

She termed Modi as ‘dangar mukh’ (the face of riots) and accused him of trying to divide the nation along communal lines. She went hammer and tongs against the BJP and Modi in particular. She said that she would tie a rope around Modi’s waist and drag him to prison. She labelled him a ‘paper tiger’.

There were two reasons for Mamata doing what she did. One was her over-eagerness to uphold her so-called secular image and position herself as the champion of the minorities. She wanted to portray herself as one who had the guts to take on Modi and this, she thought, would get her the votes of minority Muslims.

And the second was her total miscalculation of the post-poll scenario. Many political observers sing paeans to Mamata’s (so-called) political acumen, but it has been found failing on a number of occasions, including the early part of last year.

Till the poll results started pouring in, Mamata was of the firm belief that no party would garner a majority of the Lok Sabha seats and that would provide her with a lot of room to wheel and deal and even become a kingmaker, if not emerge as a consensus Prime Ministerial candidate herself.  

Mamata kept up her tirade against Modi, who had no choice but to hit back at her. He did so at his second election rally in Bengal on April 10 at Matigara near Siliguri in north Bengal. His gloves off, Modi tore into Mamata’s poor track record in governance and alluded to her, and the Trinamool’s, links to the Saradha scam. That criticism drew instant response from the lakhs who had gathered to hear him speak. They cheered and applauded when Modi lambasted Mamata. The Saradha reference touched a raw nerve in Mamata and her colleagues and they stepped up their tirade, little realizing how the ground political realities had changed in India.  

Modi kept up his offensive through Serampore (April 27), Asansol (May 4) and Krishnagar, Barasat and Kolkata (May 7). And the more he criticized Mamata, the more the crowds loved it. This also set the agenda for the BJP’s organizational post-poll surge in Bengal. At the end of all this, the 2014 verdict came a sharp slap on her face and stunned Mamata.

But like the egoistic and visionless politician that she is, Mamata stuck to her anti-Modi stance. Anyone else in her place would have tried to make quick amends like sending a congratulatory message to Modi and travelling to Delhi to attend his swearing in before seeking an appointment with the new Prime Minister. At such a meeting, she could have requested Modi to let bygones be bygones and explained away her intemperate remarks against Modi as poll rhetoric. She could have sought the new NDA government’s co-operation to develop the state and also offered her government’s co-operation to further Modi’s diplomatic initiatives in Bangladesh which include signing the Teesta Waters Treaty and the land boundary agreement.

Modi, though riled as he was by Mamata’s and the Trinamool leaders’ offensive remarks against him, would quite possibly have been willing to forget the past to forge a new future. His agenda, after all, is development, not revenge. He would have definitely agreed to the three-year moratorium on payment of interest on Bengal’s huge debt burden that Mamata had been wanting. That would have helped Bengal immensely. A friendly NDA government would have benefitted Bengal. But that was not to be, all because of the monumental ego of a visionless politician with blinkers as her fashion accessory.

Mamata can now blame only herself for the mess that she has brought Bengal to and the mess that she and her party find themselves in. The ghosts of the not-so-distant past are fast catching up with her and her colleagues, some of who are behind bars for their involvement in the Saradha scam. Her close aide and number 2 in the party, Mukul Roy, is being questioned by the CBI. Some of her party colleagues have defected to the BJP, like the thousands, including Muslims, who are joining the BJP en masse every week. There is every likelihood of the noose tightening around Mamata’s neck; rumours about her meeting Saradha boss Sudipta Sen and chiefs of other Ponzi firms at a resort in Kalimpong in the Darjeeling hills have now been confirmed. It is also now a known fact that it was Sen who bought one of Mamata’s mediocre paintings for a whopping Rs 1.86 crore.

But more than Mamata and her corrupt colleagues, it is Bengal which is suffering. The NDA government at the Centre is not starving Bengal of funds for development and projects, like the UPA used to. Far from it. But Mamata’s strange intransigence, and her false ego, is coming in the way of these funds being properly utilized and the projects from becoming a reality. Her adamant posturing on land acquisition has put many projects, including railway lines, Metro Rail expansion in Kolkata and new industrial units, in the cold storage.

Potential investors are turning away from Bengal and her churlish refusal to co-operate with the Union government on even small matters like adhering to well-established norms on, say, providing utilization certificates for Central funds that is a prerequisite for getting the next tranche of funds, is costing Bengal very dear.

That political ideologies need not come in the way of development was amply demonstrated by another Bengali—Manik Sarkar, chief minister of Tripura, and a Marxist to boot. Sarkar, realizing that New Delhi’s help is a must for developing his northeastern state, junked empty political rhetoric that many of his comrades mouth, and went out of his way to meet and greet Modi during the latter’s visit to Tripura on December 1 last year.

He even invited Modi to a meeting of the state’s cabinet—an unusual gesture—and, as a result, Tripura is today the beneficiary of a number of development projects from the Centre. This is not to suggest that states need to please the Prime Minister to get central funds and attention, but in the present set-up, centre-state co-operation is crucial to a state’s, and hence the nation’s, progress.  

Bengal, too, could have been on the same plane as Tripura if Mamata had displayed a modicum of political sagacity and played ball with Modi before and even after the elections.

Because she didn’t, she finds herself painted into a corner. And her response to that has been to cut off her nose to spite her face. That has left not just Mamata, but Bengal too, bloodied.