Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, being a pukka bhadralok, has every right to abhor the kind of language used by Mamata Banerjee. It, he says, makes him want to throw up. The street language often used by Bengal’s current chief minister is not a normal part of a bhadralok or a bhadramahila’s vocabulary, inflected as these are with Tagorean resonances and a grooming in the higher literature of Bengal.
Mamata may be aware of this and trying to hide this by professing a parvenu’s eagerness to honour artists and intellectuals, giving them lucrative sinecures that lie within her discretion.
Buddhadeb’s response is aesthetic. He finds Mamata’s language not pretty, not gentle enough to be ladylike. She describes herself as “rough and tough” like a military person. She is the pure incarnation of what Nietzsche called the will to power (“What does man want? He wants to triumph”). Mamata goes around looking for fights she can win.
But what about ideology? Those who are looking for clear, well-defined, coherent ideology in Mamata will be disappointed. She has no clear and consistent body of principles and values through which she defines her government’s actions. Her ideology, for whatever it is worth, is a mish-mash of popular Hinduism, a moderate Bengali chauvinism and populism. More important is the role she wishes to play on the political stage.
She wants to be a Heroine of the Poor, as recognised and applauded by the intellectuals. The recognition and the applause are very significant since they confirm her heroism on behalf of the poor and give her a certain glamour. Her nexus with Tollywood is explained by this. She wants to return land to unwilling Singur farmers because that is what a Heroine of the Poor is supposed to do.
She does not want only the well-being of her constituents. She also wants their love and affection and wonders why everyone before her doesn’t want what she wants. The Left Front regime was feared, admired and respected. But one can’t say it was loved, nor did the Left ever bank on such a flimsy and fickle sentiment as love.
But if you want concrete policies based on first principles defined by her party, you will have to wait. Thinking things through about industry in Bengal is not what a Heroine of the Poor is supposed to do. She is there to provide inspiration, not deal with the nitty-gritty of administration.
The input she provides on administration is such things as disallowing SEZs and land acquisition by the government, to which we can now add the non-removal of squatters on important civic project sites. All these are considered pro-poor measures. The most disappointed by Mamata’s government are those who were looking forward to a reversal of the CPM’s emphasis on the poor and the downtrodden. Mamata has gone a step further by espousing their culture and speaking the sort of combative language they are prone to use in certain situations.
The paradox is that the nonbhadralok sections of Bengal may not see her as their heroine. And that is not just because of the Saradha scandal, although that certainly figures. They are wondering if Mamata is all about playacting. Will she be a Heroine of the Poor for the poor themselves? They can make neither head nor tail of the Rabindra Sangeet played at traffic junctions, for instance. That does nothing for the cavity in their stomachs and they are not prone to Bengali sub-nationalism. They want to know whether Mamata will, at long last, address their bread and butter issues.
Mamata’s speech may want to make Buddhadeb throw up, but what he doesn’t understand is that this speech is what connects Mamata, a person without ideology, to the non-bhadralok segments of Bengali society, especially in the mofussil and rural areas – where the Marxists have been so impressive with their mammoth organisation and whose loss they mourn everyday. Buddhadeb can’t figure out what makes Mamata tick and what draws the crowds to her rallies. It is what draws people to Lalu Prasad’s rallies. The illusion is created that she is one of them. This is an impression that no communist leader has been able to produce in their 34 years of rule in Bengal.
As far as the reindustrialisation of Bengal is concerned, one has to be fair to Mamata. Thirtyfour years of Left rule and anticapitalist rhetoric have left people demoralised, content with petty jobs and wallowing in an inertia that will require some time to overcome. Also the fiscal situation in Bengal is not pretty.
But has Mamata done anything to rectify the situation? On the contrary, while playing Heroine of the Poor for the sake of the intellectuals, she drove the Tatas out of Bengal. No industrialist, across the country, has forgotten that. Her policies regarding land and SEZs are obstacles to industrial growth.
But above all, Mamata doesn’t have what it takes to attract big industry to Bengal. That does not mean that she doesn’t want industry. But she does not speak the language of business, she doesn’t understand the ethos and practice of business, above all, she does not like the world of business. In this, she is exactly like the CPM. There is no poriborton.
No comments:
Post a Comment