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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

An Ineffectual Start for Elder Sister by Dan Morrison

 When Mamata Banerjee defeated the Communist Party of India (Marxist) last May after 34 years of power in West Bengal, her victory was portrayed by optimists as the beginning of a Kolkata Spring. Free of the communists’ rural thugs and urban heelers, the story went, the state would finally enter the 21st century.

One year after Banerjee’s landslide, however, the new boss is looking a lot like the old one — maybe even worse. The woman who fashioned herself as West Bengal’s savior has turned out to be a disaster. Even Banerjee’s common-woman credentials appear to be eroding.

Business and civil society groups, along with farmers, are turning against Banerjee, who stubbornly continues to push for costly populist policies as the state struggles financially. After 11 months in power, her signature accomplishment has been to paint public buildings in Kolkata blue because, as her urban development minister said, “the motto of the new government is ‘The sky is the limit.’”

The question is whether Banerjee — known as Didi, or Elder Sister — can learn from a year’s worth of mistakes. The signs are not good.

Like most Indian political parties, Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress is dominated by one strong personality. As leader of the second-biggest party in India’s ruling coalition, she has held Delhi hostage to her populist whims, killing initiatives ranging from a major water-sharing treaty with Bangladesh to a plan for foreign investment in Indian retailers. In West Bengal, it often appears she is the only person in the state of 91 million people empowered to make decisions.

Unfortunately for India, Banerjee represents the unstable norm, not an exception. Regional parties run by a single figure or family saw gains in last month’s regional elections, while the two pan-Indian parties lost ground.

Banerjee rose to power on a wave of opposition to the Communist Party’s seizure of farmland for industrial projects, which united its enemies against it. In return, the outgoing Marxists bequeathed Banerjee $39.8 billion in debt. Public transport workers went for months without pay, and coal companies have restricted credit to state-owned power plants.

No one thought the transition would be easy. But despite West Bengal’s dire situation, Banerjee won’t make any moves that could be seen as harming the poor. She won’t raise taxes or even collect many existing levies. When her successor as railways minister proposed mild fare increases, Banerjee forced him out.

Then there are more symbolic issues. While still in opposition, Banerjee championed the Bangladeshi feminist Taslima Nasreen, who had taken refuge in Kolkata after threats by Islamists had forced her to flee her homeland. In February, however, Banerjee’s government pandered to Islamists and canceled the launch of Nasreen’s new novel at the Kolkata Book Fair.

Personality has also played a role: Banerjee apparently can’t take criticism. She’s spoken out in defense of rape victims, but when a woman was raped on a Kolkata street in February — the latest case in a rise of sexual assaults — she claimed the case had been “cooked up to malign the government.” When a wave of farmer suicides struck the state, Banerjee’s response was simply to dismiss the reports.

High voter turnout over the last three years has shown that Indians want change. Banerjee’s chaotic first year is yet another example of how the political class isn’t up to the task.

As Taslima Nasreen, seldom one to mince words, said recently on Twitter, “It looks like 34 years of fake/mild communism was replaced by real Stalinism in West Bengal.”