Mamata, Modi and the battle for Bengal

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Those Indian politics have become a vaudeville, exemplified via West Bengal leader minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) chairperson Mamata Banerjee. What is a pacesetter of her stature, a chief minister to boot, doing stomping out of her car and dangerous a collection of humans shouting Jai Shri Ram?

The latest choice to ban the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from removing victory processions paints Didi Extra as a petulant baby-kisser sulking after an electoral hiding instead of a competent administrator. The struggle of postcards that BJP and TMC have threatened on every other suggests how puerile politics has ended up inside the nation. Mamata has said her birthday celebration could ship 20 lakh postcards with Jai Bangla and Jai Hind written on them in response to the BJP’s 10 lakh Jai Shri Ram postcards.

Union minister and a BJP MP from West Bengal, Babul Supriyo, has jumped into the fray, threatening to flood Mamata Banerjee’s mailbox with getting Well playing cards. And more to come: Some sadhus from Varanasi have promised to send copies of Shri Ramcharitmanas to Didi.

Amid some of these posturing and nose-thumbing, the news of the Rs 380 price to priests at Kolkata’s crematoriums in line with cremation was given buried. This selection continues the appeasement politics that Mamata Banerjee has been accused of. Remember the decision to pay imams and muezzins an honorarium? That decision was luckily squashed using the Calcutta High Court in 2013.

Modi

Surprisingly, Mamata Banerjee is losing her political nous and playing proper into the palms of Narendra Modi-Amit Shah’s recreation plan. Noted filmmaker Aparna Sen, an early Mamata Banerjee supporter, said that Mamata is digging her grave, together with her knee-jerk reactions, that is a broadly held view.

BENGAL ON THE BRINK

Mamata Banerjee must step lower back and reflect on how and why the BJP made such deep inroads into West Bengal. In five years, the saffron celebration has made large strides in the Japanese country — from two seats (2014 LS elections) to 18 (2019 LS elections) out of forty-two seats in West Bengal. BJP’s vote percentage in the state has also seen an incremental bounce: 17.02 according to cent (in 2014) to 40.25 consistent with cent (in 2019).

This means West Bengal is now ripe for BJP’s polarisation politics. By announcing, “Joh humse Tauranga, who choor choor ho jayega” [anybody who opposes us will be shattered], Mamata said at an Eid feature in Kolkata on June 5 – is assisting in consolidating the Hindu vote. Denizens at Delhi’s 6A Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg are rubbing their arms in glee.

Bengalis have hung on to their secular credentials for decades — skinny maybe, but secular. Memories of a land misplaced are alive among many Bengali Hindus. A land that turned into fertile, with groves and ponds. All were left in the back throughout Partition. Religious polarisation in Bengal simmers just below the surface. And Mamata Banerjee’s overt appeasement of Muslims has pretty much sprinkled salt over barely healed wounds. On being asked approximately coddling Muslims, her retort — “Je goru doodh dei taar lathi this Raji achhi” [roughly translated to “Am willing to be kicked by the cow that gives milk”] has riled many.

But Mamata can’t play the polarisation card. She would be on very skinny ice. Instead, she has to convey lower back the doughty-Bengali-female-taking-on-the-world character. In this example, her villain has to be those Hindi-talking goons. If she stokes Bengali chauvinism in opposition to the Hindutva of North India, there might be takers. Just examine how Trinamool fared inside the Lok Sabha seats in Kolkata and neighboring areas publish-desecration of a Vidyasagar statue.’

West Bengal’s chief minister should also look at creating jobs in the country. All the Bengal Global Business Summits make true headlines. In this year’s version, the government acquired Rs 2. Eighty-four lakh crore was worth of investment proposals, in line with wire provider IANS. How an awful lot of this can trickle right down to create electricity increases stays to be visible.

Manufacturing is not going to take off in West Bengal. Big industries want to land. And this is in brief supply. With an area of 88,752 square km, West Bengal is one of the smaller states within the United States of America. Moreover, the land is fertile, usually giving three plants 12 months. It isn’t easy to convince agriculturalists to sell their land to construct factories.

Instead, what Mamata has performed, and she must consciousness extra on it, is to encourage medium, small, and micro enterprises (MSMEs). In its trendy document, the MSME ministry says there are 8.86 mn MSME gadgets in Bengal, 2nd only to Uttar Pradesh. Young people busy setting up their little corporations would be the perfect foil for any rhetoric based on religion.

During the last decade and more, Kolkata has become the hub of medical tourism – specifically from neighboring Bangladesh. According to Technopak, a representative, the number of clinical vacationers is predicted to be 24 lakh via 2020 and is possibly upward push to forty-nine lakh by 2025. Medical tourism is a dawn sector, and Mamata should harness Bengal’s critical place and Kolkata’s connectivity.