The unhappy hour

Mamatas latest: get people out of bars before midnight,this will prevent rape

Mamatas latest: get people out of bars before midnight,this will prevent rape

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee continues to baffle. Having earlier questioned an incident of alleged rape as being politically motivated,she has now found an answer to the crime: the state excise department has excavated and imposed an old order that requires all bars and nightclubs to shut at the stroke of midnight. Unquestionably,the government believes that if the slipping people of Kolkata could be made to sleep early by being perforce made to exit bars before midnight,the women among them would be safe,and the men sane. Two fallacies here fly in the face of facts: first,the easy linking of night-time to rape; second,the ready focus on bars and nightclubs,ignoring reported rapes across the state notably,three of the four after the Park Street case and outside Kolkata.

One of the platforms Banerjees Trinamool Congress had campaigned from last summer was rescuing West Bengal from the lawlessness it had descended into. However,with a little more than two months left for the new administration to complete a year in office,its governance that Banerjee appears to be increasingly,and alarmingly,failing in. Worsening law-and-order is only the primary marker of that deficit. Its being alleged the police are either inefficient or not doing their job. But far more worrying are the CMs words after every major crime because,while these could have remained questions about the police alone,Banerjee is ensuring they turn into doubts about her governing ability. Shes using one or both of two responses dismissing the crime,or calling it a conspiracy against her government.

Banerjee has politically used incidents of rape to batter the CPM while in opposition. By continuing to do so now,shes demonstrating,once again,how she continues to be trapped as a leader of opposition,not of government.

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