Copycat Mamata?

Bengal chief minister continues to fall for her own rhetoric.

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.

More than three months after she took over as chief minister,Banerjee continues to betray an alarming tendency to slip into oppositional slogans,high on rhetoric and very low on detail. Indeed,for the long years that she rallied the streets and countryside against the Left Front government,such tactics had the effect of showing up the hollowness of the state under communist rule,with the party having annexed much of the states role and cadres used to carry out tasks of the state bureaucracy. Yet,instead of rebuilding the state,Banerjee seems far too amiable to doing as the Left did,and insinuating her cadres as an interface between government and the people.

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.