West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, who is known for going all out against her opponents- earning her title of lioness of Bengal- is suddenly playing out defensive. Two days ago, in a virtual rally to address the party workers for 2021 West Bengal assembly election, Amit Shah said that Banerjee coined the term, “Corona express” for the trains which brought migrant laborers back home, and this would cause her political downfall.
Mamata Banerjee responded to Amit Shah’s statement in an uncharacteristic defensive style. “I never said Corona Express. I said the public is saying it. You can see my original statement. I said the public said,” said Banerjee.
Mamata Banerjee, with almost 9 years of experience as Chief Minister and decades long experience as politician and administrator, proved to be one of the worst leaders in handling Coronavirus crisis.
As per a recent Times Now ORMAX Media survey, only 6 percent of the people of Kolkata approved of her management of the Coronavirus crisis. Such low approval rating in Kolkata- bastion of Mamata Banerjee, where she won all Lok Sabha seats in 2019 general election despite Modi wave- means AITC is set to lose the 2021 general election.
As one can see in the image above, BJP won all the seats in Western and Northern part of the state, but TMC and Congress emerged victorious in Central and Southern (which constitutes 8 seats of Kolkata- all won of by TMC) part.
But, after the spread of the Coronavirus, Banerjee has become very unpopular in these areas, and therefore, her defeat looks imminent. People, especially youth, is not happy with performance of Banerjee, and are willing to give a chance to BJP, as they voted in large numbers for Modi in 2019 general election.
Banerjee has lost whatever base she has due to criminally incompetent handling of Coronavirus crisis. West Bengal government not only under-reported the number of cases in the state but also was in a constant tussle with the central government throughout the crisis instead of cooperation.
To hide her failure, the Mamata Banerjee government tried to muzzle media by telling the cable operators to not air whatever channels were critical of the TMC government.
Calcutta News, the only channel which has persistently dared to raise its voice against Mamata Banerjee, suddenly went blank on TV screens. While the channel was still available on DTH platforms, local cable networks have succumbed to the immense political pressure from the Mamata government, and taken the news channel off.
She also used to her old trick of invoking ‘Bengali Asmita’ to cover-up for her administrative failures. She said that she would pray to god to forgive “Bengalis who are maligning the image of Bengal”, which was probably directed at employees of Union government from ICMR team who flagged discrepancies in West Bengal data, and perhaps also on Advisors like Bibek Debroy- Chairman, PM Economic Advisory Council and Sanjeev Sanyal- Principal Economic Advisor- Bengalis in top positions in Modi government who have been critical of Mamata’s handling of Coronavirus crisis.
Invoking regional chauvinism to cover up administrative and economic failures has been a typical trait of Indian politicians, especially those from non-Hindi speaking states. Sub-nationalism and promotion of the state’s language and culture is a good thing, as long as it is not being used for covering-up political failures. But, many politicians like Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal resort to it, as this seems the easiest way to fool the masses by playing with their emotions.
But, it seems, the people of West Bengal will no longer be fooled by Banerjee’s theatrics, and from Mamata’ defensive tone is clear that her gimmicks are not working. BJP won 18 seats and around one-third of the popular votes in the 2019 general election thanks to the exceptional performance in rural constituencies of the Western part of the state. As Mamata Banerjee loses in the Eastern part of the state and urban constituencies like Kolkata from several seats, her defeat in the next assembly election is all but given.
