Bengal bleeds again

Bengal bleeds once again. In the dumps and saddled with a government that has stopped delivering, the state has never looked this troubled in many, many years.

With Monday’s massacre of 24 policemen by Maoists, the state hit the pits. As if the loss of so many lives in the naxalite blitz wasn’t bad enough, the state had to swallow the ignominy of the Centre calling Bengal’s police force ineffective, flatfooted and poorly trained — security men on a picnic.

The invectives hurt and the state’s image is mud. From a distance Bengal appears to be fast sliding into decay and rot and I am not sure residents of the state are brimming over with hope.  It’s an excruciatingly slow stagger from one crisis to another.

Days after the Bengal government with the Centre launched the big push to recover lost ground in Lalgarh, the chief minister had talked of the need to launch an equally concerted effort to win back hearts and crank up the rusty governance machinery in the vast Jungle Mahal stretches where people have through decades lived in poverty and neglect.

But with the government dazed, jaded and having virtually lost legitimacy, that effort has been a non-starter.

West Midnapore and its neighbourhood continue to be in Maoist grip. Silda where Monday’s massacre took place is in the district. Fearsome naxalite fighters emerged in strength from the Jharkhand jungles, roared into the sleepy, backward township on two-wheelers and SUVs, picked their target and rained bullets on easy meat – Eastern Frontier Rifles men, who instead of manning their posts and strengthening stockades were cooking meals and fetching water.

Let me make it clear this isn’t an effort to insult the securitymen who froze in the face of the killer strike and couldn’t even reach for their guns. Low on ration, untrained to fight such lightning strikes, tired and overstretched, there was little they could do.

Apparently deployed to instill confidence among local CPM leaders and protect area residents, within a matter of minutes they were dead.

True, they had AK 47 and Insas rifles. But these EFR men needed to be wedded to their guns. Only that would have given them a fighting chance in such a battle.

A government can pile a force with any number of guns, but pundits say the fight is in the mind. A tired, poorly fed force is half beaten anyway. Push it a little harder and it topples over. Is this is how it is with the rest of West Bengal Police too – uncared for, politicised and strained?

Media reports on the state’s police force have been far from encouraging. Close to 12,000 posts remain unfilled. Those serving march with death bands tied to their heads — mostly worn-out men who have lost count of days. There’s no incentive to go out and fight. It’s a depressing picture.

I’d blame the chief minister for this sorry picture. He is in charge of the home (police) department and ought to have done better. True, West Bengal’s battle with the Maoists began only recently.

But here’s a situation where a faceless Kishanji seems more effective and better heard than the chief minister himself. He calls reporters at will, speaks to them at will, threatens, directs, abuses, accuses.

Buddhadeb, on the other hand, whimpers and says there’s no way he can put a finger on the naxalite leader’s location. This is a fantastic claim and rings hollow.

I have heard a hundred stories of an overwhelming sense of sloth and drift emerge out of Bengal. It’s a far cry from the “do it now” days. The only noteworthy policy initiative is the decision to institute a 10 per cent minority quota. Wonder if this would be enforced with any sense of purpose or soaked up by entrenched patronage networks?

Those days when brute force wiped out challengers to state authority are gone. In this age, the public asks questions and evaluates governance. Unlike in the past, he winces when it pinches and is loath to put up with nonperformance.

When the judiciary seems out of reach or way beyond means, he doesn’t mind approaching a kangaroo court.

When the local BDO bloats on corruption and does nothing to solve the local water woes, he doesn’t mind taking Maoist help to get a pond dug, a school built or a road laid.  The story of Lalgarh or Sildah is pretty much this.

The Centre talks of the pressing need to reclaim lost ground first and then making security and stability available for civil governance to take progress to those who have for generations lived in poverty.

A wonderful way forward. But how would the state account for or explain the bloodshed through which this dream objective is to be served? The Maoists aren’t from Timbuktu.  They are our people, citizens of India. How do you hunt them down using UAVs and helicopters?

May the honourable chief minister of Bengal now show resolve and sincerity of purpose. May he ensure that a few primary health centres function. May there be some governance. This is the only way forward.

Given that the alternative that looms on the horizon isn’t particularly promising and doesn’t necessarily have a great formula hidden in a magic trunk, one can only pray that Bhattacharjee gets his act together. Better late than never.

Personally, I admire Mamata Banerjee for her dogged anti-Left struggle. But I still don’t know what she’d do to clean the house up and get things moving. As of now, she is caught between two stools – that of railway minister and chief minister wannabe.

If she has to show us a future then she has to dirty her hands, plunge headlong into the onerous task of reconstruction from scratch.

Merely scripting a half-hearted railway budget and protesting loudly that she doesn’t have anything to do with the Maobadis wouldn’t be enough.

Pontification and punditry in the midst of crisis is most unwelcome. I am acutely aware of this. But it’s a strange blend of anger, fear and foreboding that forces me to put my thoughts down.

Bengal worries me. I stay away from the state but I care.

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