My take on Lalgarh

Mamata Banerjee’s show of strength in Lalgarh on August 9 was an interesting departure in Bengal’s recent political history. For the first time in years, politicians, opinion makers, artists and litterateurs travelled to the hinterland and pitched their appeal to the unsung, neglected residents of the Jungle Mahal.

Whatever the electoral calculations, one thing was for sure Brigade Parade Ground was no longer the sole playfield of politicians. The days of fiery Maidan rhetoric and garnering votes from podiums erected on the Brigade greens were over.

Mamata had some weeks ahead of the Lalgarh meeting addressed a mammoth Martyrs’ Day gathering in Calcutta. But clearly that voice wasn’t piercing enough to reach those who really mattered in the new scheme of things. The Mountain had to move and go all the way to Lalgarh – part of Bengal’s red country remote, backward and abjectly poor.

There was a discernible shift in Bengal politics. When the Marxists were sitting unassailable at Writers’ Buildings, arrogant and supremely unchallenged, the joke was there were two types of communists– Kalo (black) and Shada (white). The dark skinned variant was earthy, spoke little or no English remained in Midnapore or Bankura or Purulia, seldom making it to the levers of power. The fair skinned chap was cherry picked for a seat in the Lok Sabha. He looked smarter, was presentable and spoke better.

It didn’t really matter that the shada communists were often removed from electoral politics. Many among them hadn’t come up the hard way, hadn’t experienced the rough and tumble of the dirt tracks. But they had their utility. They were there to make an impact with their oratory, to hold forth on the party line. They weren’t hard nailed and connected enough. This artificial class distinction emerged as a pattern, the rustic leadership presiding over the agrarian patronage network and the urbane playing elected or selected communist in the House.

Problems arose when and if ever the Calcutta communist forayed into villages. He went in with his insufferable arrogance and talked down to the village folk. He was close to policy makers or one among them. Little did he care for the soundings from the ground.

All that rootless politics got swept away with a string of disasters at Nandigram, Singur, Dankuni, Lalgarh and Haldia. Rural Bengal turned around and said hello, what makes you think you know our story. You don’t. We decide. Not you.

They tore up the Left government’s elaborate plans for chemical hubs, motor car factories, expressways and mega townships. Rural Bengal was no longer soft ground easy to trample.

A different breed of politicians is now on the ascendant – one among them, Mamata Banerjee. She too started off as a city phenomenon in the Congress ranks. But ever since she broke with her parent party and stopped playing vanilla politics, she probably realised the importance of the encirclement strategy –making Calcutta the last theatre of her long battle against the Reds.

The idea was to find a way to delegitimize the CPM – that claimed to be the voice of the peasantry and the have-nots – in the very constituency it drew its strength from.

This has been happening – largely because of the Left’s numerous self goals. Blinded, condescending and corrupted by decades of unchallenged power the Left was convinced it had the best cure for backwardness – industrialization—which in their terminology meant unsympathetic and poorly mapped acquisition of multi-crop arable land for factories.

What they hadn’t bargained for was resounding rejection. Mamata’s army saw an opportunity in this and quickly stepped in. Kalinganagar in Orissa had earlier revolted against a similar heartless acquisition of land but while the national media reported the spark, the agitation never really held on to the headlines it had grabbed for a sustained period of time, probably because the movement lacked a leader as dogged, shrill, theatrical and entrenched as the Trinamool chief.

I’d credit Mamata for firmly putting agitations such as these firmly on the national agenda. The embers of Kalinganagar turned into a raging fire in Singur and Nandigram and recently spread to Uttar Pradesh forcing “iron woman” Mayawati to go soft on the Ganga Expressway farmers’ compensation issue.

Having relentlessly championed the anti-land alienation voice, Mamata is probably among the few parliamentarians we have with a rural texture, appeal and pitch. It’s an image that’s meticulously nursed and nurtured.

This strategy has advantages and pitfalls. The Trinamool boss is perceived to be close to naxalites and her Lalgarh address raises questions of propriety. As a senior minister of the union government, she virtually charged the Indian state with murder when she talked of naxalite leader Azad’s encounter death.

The PCAPA, an organization her party is said to be associated with, has been under the scanner for a while. There have been allegations of the Trinamool providing armed support to Nandigram agitators. There’s a good deal that she has to come clean on.

Mamata’s challenge should now lie in championing the causes she has set out to and yet keeping a distance from them befitting the dignity of the office she holds at the Centre. To her credit, she has been quite open on the naxal issue unlike many others who have in other states hobnobbed with the Maoists and even won elections exploiting Naxalite fears to their advantage.

She has got the pulse right and has thus far been on a winning track. It is also true that in going this way she has pegged her rivals back quite a few notches. Hers is the voice that’s heard in Bengal, not that of the moribund administration that sits in Writers’ Buildings. But even as she closes in on her destination, things look critical than ever before.

Mamata has to quickly find a formula for inclusive, fast-paced development for Bengal where all the stakeholders have a say and share. Factories must be built. Farmers’ interests must be protected. Tribals must not be taken for a ride. Jungle Mahal must be rid of violent elements and returned to its unspoiled state. How would she do all of this and keep everything on an even keel? To say she’d make a London out of Calcutta and Switzerland out of Darjeeling is meaningless hot air. Show us your route map. It’s time.

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