Mamata made New Delhi a convenient scapegoat for channelizing West Bengal’s resentment.
The politics of Mamata Banerjee stands on three pillars—use of resentment, spreading falsehoods and manipulating media. To be fair to the West Bengal Chief Minister, these three tools have been used since the dawn of organised politics. Starting from Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and nearer home in West Bengal by the left leaders led by Jyoti Basu, the three pillars proved robust enough till the inner scheme got finally exposed. Mamata Banerjee is a meticulous student of manipulating political sentiment and used the pillars instinctively since her first Lok Sabha election in 1982 onwards.
When Mamata contested the South Kolkata Lok Sabha seat in 1982 against late Somnath Chattopadhyay, an erudite face of Left politics, most thought it was a walkover of sorts offered to SomnathBabu by Congress. By then the Left was in power in the state for more than five years. Naturally there was some resentment brewing especially among the urban middle class voters. South Kolkata was dominated by the urban educated middle class which thrived on resentment, real and imaginary.
Mamata Banerjee’s campaign took the cue from this latent feeling of voters. Somnath Chatterjee, a successful lawyer, came from a rich family of lawyers. His house was at a relatively affluent locality in the constituency, a good enough reason for creating resentment among the voters. More so when contrasted with Mamata’s humble abode at Kalighat, on what was believed to be encroached land by the side of Tolly’s Nullah, it proved an attractive factor for channelizing the resentment and supporting the relatively greenhorn Congress candidate.
Here the second important tool of spreading negative stories played an important role. It was widely circulated that Mamata Banerjee had obtained her PhD from a certain East Georgia University. Placed against an erudite Somnath Chatterjee, the handicap that the Congress candidate had in terms of qualification was immediately breached by this qualification obtained from an imaginary university. The quiescent snob value of a large section of voters of the constituency was adequately compensated by Mamata’s PhD.
The third pillar came without much effort. Media sympathy was there for Congress since the unfortunate assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi and a good looking Rajiv Gandhi assuming the charge of saving the nation. The leading newspaper group of Kolkata, the Ananda Bazar Patrika and its sister publications, did not hide its partisan attitude towards Congress. The readers the publications catered were keen to consume such tilted news. Hence the dominant media that favoured Mamata’s campaign came spontaneously.
The success of 1982 taught Mamata on the critical need of the three pillars, though given her inability of continuing with these, she had to wait till 2011 for final success. During the 29 years Mamata learnt why she failed to replicate her debut election thereafter. First and critical one was that the ruling Left Front in West Bengal, too, used the three pillars first used by their political guru Lenin in early 20th century. It came to sweep the state through agitating on the resentment of common Bengalis, many of whom were displaced from erstwhile East Bengal. It carefully created narratives in favour of them, painting a rosy picture of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. In those days of slow moving news and narratives they could effectively hide the excesses of Stalinism or Maoism, distorting reality successfully. And the third pillar of media could be marginalised by a growing clan of left leaning “intellectuals”. For Mamata this was a formidable challenge.
But any narrative based on the three pillars gets exposed in due course. Except for Hitler, whose deeds were uncovered only following the loss in the war, all others eventually were laid bare before the court of the people. In fact this factor of weaknesses to sustain the three pillars helped Mamata Banerjee to finally oust the Left Front government in West Bengal. She capitalised on the resentment which fuelled her agitational politics, while media and intellectuals came spontaneously to spread narratives against the Left rule, and as the lone political face standing against the Left politics in West Bengal for nearly three decades Mamata was the obvious choice for the state.
The crafty politician that Mamata Banerjee is, she went back on her time-tested three pillars after refurbishing those to meet the changed times. First, she needed a reason for resentment. She was in power in the state hence a different target was essential. Mamata Banerjee, therefore, walked out of the Congress-led UPA within a year. She complained bitterly, “We are never being heard, so what is the use being in the Centre? ….the Centre is only taxing poor people.” She opposed Delhi’s decision to hike petro-product prices and kept harping on a special package for West Bengal. New Delhi was a convenient scapegoat for channelizing West Bengal’s resentment.
The second pillar of controlling narratives was relatively easy in West Bengal, which had been isolated from the national mainstream politics since the post-Gandhi Congress days. Thus any decisions of the Union was opposed; even a diplomatically sensitive (and necessary too) case like signing of the Teesta water treaty with Bangladesh had to be postponed by the then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. Fed on the staple diet of anti-Hindi-heartland politics, narratives in the state supported the Mamata brand of politics.
The question was how to feed these to media so as to mould the views of the common men. Given the low level of economic activity trap of West Bengal, media organisations in the state depended badly on the state-government funded advertisements. This financial muscle was so strong that even a powerful media house like the Ananda Bazar group had to remove its family’s successful entrepreneur editor and show obeisance to the ruling party. In short, Mamata Banerjee maintained successfully the three pillars that proved effective since the beginning of modern political system.
Now the question is how long the same can help her politics. Resentment is now coming inward as knowledge of progress made by other states is no secret any more. Media (mainstream) has lost its power due to the advent of digital media. Narratives now are no longer the monopoly of certain individuals. What is more, irregularities and illegalities are getting exposed due to judicial intervention. The three pillars of electoral tactics have weakened, seemingly beyond repair. How Mamata Banerjee survives the crumbling pillars that fuelled her ascent is the question.