Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Subrata Mukherjee,former Kolkata mayor on a Trinamool Congress ticket and working president of the West Bengal Congress till a couple of weeks ago,may be building himself a reputation for moving back and forth between the states two main opposition parties every five years. In 2000,he left the Congress for the Trinamool; he rejoined the Congress in 2005; and now,in 2010,hes again left for Mamata Banerjees party. But Mukherjee is just the most visible symptom of the churning in Bengal politics since the Congress and Trinamool locked horns over seat-sharing for the May 30 Kolkata Municipal Corporation polls,and saw their alliance,at least for the KMC elections,coming apart. As that unbinding was happening,words of indignation and outrage were exchanged,appeals were made to the Congress high command,and Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee,WBPCC chief,last week played down the rift,holding forth the possibility of the two aligning for next years assembly polls. As for the CPM,much as it would have liked to savour the split and resurrect its own sinking hopes,its internal assessments are bleak.
All of this would have been just another episode in Bengals crisis-ridden politics,but there is some cause for concern. Bengal is in a state of crisis,no longer of the abandoned industrialisation script,but of political violence,especially the repeated blows being dealt to the states body politic by Maoists. Also,violence between CPM and Trinamool cadres is routine. Moreover,ever since the 2009 general election,Bengals quality of politics has,somehow,taken a further turn for the worse. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjees administration has repeatedly demonstrated its inability or unwillingness to govern. Banerjee has periodically made unreasonable demands. Under the circumstances,calls for advancing the assembly polls only compound the fraught situation. Bhattacharjee may have furiously rejected the idea,but the political protagonists in Bengal are better advised to take one thing at a time. Its essential to first get the KMC and accompanying civic polls off the table as sanely as possible.
