यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत ।
अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् ॥
परित्राणाय साधूनां विनाशाय च दुष्कृताम् ।
धर्मासंस्थापनार्थाय संभवामि युगे युगे ॥
Whenever there is decay of righteousness, O Bharata,
And there is exaltation of unrighteousness, then I Myself come forth;
For the protection of the good, for the destruction of evil-doers,
For the sake of firmly establishing righteousness, I am born from age to age.
Looking at the current trends of electorate behavior in India, it seems the public has taken the above verse to heart. The evil is in the form of bad governance. The Bhartiya Janta Party or more specifically Shri Narendra Modi can be visualized playing the role of the lord himself.
All is not well in West Bengal. It hasn’t been for a long time. Many sections of media and intelligentsia heralded Mamata Banerjee as the savior of Bengal. In 2011 Mamata Banerjee pulled off a landslide victory for the TMC-Congress alliance by defeating the Communist Party of India (M) led Left Front government. This was a significant win as Mamata Banerjee routed world’s longest-serving democratically elected communist government in the process. For 34 years the CPI(M) had ruled Bengal as its fiefdom and Didi was able to end that. Among other accolades given to her was a spot in Time magazine list of most “100 Most influential People in the World.” Didi was also voted in May 2013 as India’s most honest politician in an internal poll by members of India Against Corruption, India’s largest anti-corruption coalition.
Stare into the abyss too long and the abyss stares back at you. Mamata Banerjee has fought the system so long that she has now become a mirror image of all that she stood against.
हिंदी लेख यहाँ पढ़ें
Let’s take a look at the dire straits the finances of West Bengal are in. West Bengal’s outstanding debt has increased 64% in the past six years. Data from the Bengal Government Budget document show the outstanding debt of the state was close to Rs 1.86 lakh crore in 2010-11, which increased to Rs 3.05 lakh crore in 2015-16. West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra has presented a second tax-free Budget further burdening the state’s finances. Financial disarray in West Bengal can be assessed from the fact that in 2017-18, nearly 80% of state’s tax revenues, i.e. Rs 55,787 crore, will go towards the loan repayment, which is around Rs 45,340 crore (against Rs 36,638 crore in 2016-17). Even though the state has such dire financial condition what does Didi do?
Mamata Banerjee’s government has allocated more money to Minority Affairs and Madrasa Education (Rs 2,815 crore) than its spending on the large industries, Small and Medium enterprises, Tourism and Information Technology sector (Rs 2,154 crore). Even irrigation and waterways have received lower priority with an allocation of Rs 2,410 crore to them. For a state that is in the midst of a Debt Trap how this kind of spending is justified?
If the mismanagement finances of the state aren’t an indicator of how things are going for the state then let’s take a look at condition of crime in West Bengal. Didi may claim that West Bengal is a safe haven but nothing could be further from the truth. In comparison to West Bengals population share of 7.5%, its crime statistics are worse than UP and Bihar. West Bengal accounts for 15.6% of all the murders and attempted murders, which is the highest among states. Uttar Pradesh which has 16% of national population accounts for 12.48% of the murders and attempted murders. Let alone that, even after being headed by a female Chief Minister, West Bengal has the distinction of registering the highest number of cases of attempted rape at 1,551, which was 35.3% of the all-India figure! The West Bengal police and judiciary performance is just a mirror of the crime wave that West Bengal is stuck in. The conviction rate (number of cases that result in convictions) in West Bengal is a measly 14.6%, way below the national figure of 77.7%. Uttar Pradesh registers a much higher conviction rate of 58.4 percent and Haryana 30.3%.
West Bengal is also becoming a hot bed of terrorist activities. As the Sheikh Hasina government has turned up the heat on home-grown terrorist, many of these operatives are infiltrating into the state, due to its porous borders. Terrorists from Harkat-ul-Jihadi al-Islami (HuJI) and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) sneak through and spread to various parts of India using the connectivity that Kolkata provides. Malda and Mushirabad have becomes hot beds for pushing of Fake Indian Currency Note(FICN) from across the border. Various intelligence and National Investigation Agency (NIA) documents have, from time to time, pointed to close financial links between the members of Trinamool Congress and the radical Bangladeshi Islamists.
Mamata Banerjee through her minority appeasement policies has made a major dent on the secular fabric of West Bengal. Durga Puja is a major festival of Bengal. In 2016 Durga Visarjan and Moharram fell on the same day. The government arbitrarily set up a time limit for immersion of the idols as they didn’t want any conflicts to happen due to the carrying of Tazias. The decision was challenged in the Kolkata high court and it was struck down. The order, passed on 6th October 2016 read, “There has been a clear endeavor on the part of the state government to pamper and appease the minority section of the public at the cost of the majority section without there being any plausible justification.”
This isn’t the first instance of appeasement by Mamata Banerjee, she has allied herself with the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind. Her method is to give subsidies to Imams, nominating a hardcore Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) man to Rajya Sabha (Ahmed Hassan Imran), and a general encouragement to burqa, Sharia Courts, Haj Towers and other inducements to Islamist politics. This sort of appeasement coincides with the sharp rise in Muslim population in the state. This sudden rise cannot simply be attributed to the Total Fertility Rate of Muslims, which is higher than that of Hindus and also the national average, but can only be explained in terms of the large scale illegal migration from Bangladesh directly and via Assam.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has grown in West Bengal. In the 2016 assembly elections, it secured three seats and 10.5% of the vote share.
The need of the hour for BJP now will be to create an alliance with the marginal political factions of West Bengal, like the Gorkhas, Santhals, Kamtapuri to protect the unique identity and purpose of West Bengal. The state president for the BJP, Dilip Ghosh, has been focusing on strengthening the party’s structure in the state. Apart from a massive membership drive, Ghosh has initiated a number of other steps in anticipation of the fact, that it is the BJP which will replace the Left and the Congress as the principal challenger to Mamata Banerjee in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and the 2021 assembly polls. But Dilip Ghosh has still a lot of ground to cover.
Looking at the on ground conditions of rampant lawlessness appeasement politics, mismanagement of state funds, and destruction of the secular fabric of Bengal, one can’t help but wonder about the fate of the Bangali Bhadralok. Where did he go wrong? The task for BJP now is very clear cut. The need of the hour for Bengal is good governance under an able leader. With the growing sense of resentment against Mamata Banerjees’ appeasement politics and growing resentment against her due to her step-motherly treatment of other communities; BJP should strike the iron while it’s still hot.