Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Mamata Banerjee has a plan. Conscious of the promise of economic revival she had made for a post-Left Front West Bengal,she has announced a student brigade. Anybody who enrols for a two-year stint of rural work will be guaranteed a job,through an employment bank. And as with all of Banerjees big ideas,come January this one too will be capped by a rally.
Indeed,caught up in her own rhetoric,she said at a gathering organised to mark the foundation day of the Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad that Bengals young people need to venture out to other parts of India in search of employment.
Put simply,Bengals problem is not that the right people cannot be found for jobs,as her rural work scheme suggests,but to create jobs in the first place. Its a tough ask: the Lefts late effort to attract industrialisation exposed its internal flaws,in a way preparing for Banerjees last assault,but the factors that made such outreach imperative for Bengals economy remain. Fuzzying the line between party and state will not help her or,more crucially,Bengal.
