Democracy is Catchword, Dictatorship Coveted in West Bengal

 

Democracy is Catchword, Dictatorship Coveted in West Bengal

Nidhu Bhusan Das

 

Dictatorial tendency and monopoly of power have been the hallmark of politics in West Bengal though democracy dominates the political discourse. Democracy gets lip service, and contravention of democratic rights is the norm.  Secularism pervades the discourse and avowed secularists are heavily tilted to a particular religious community. A known leftist- secularist intellectual could travel to Shaheen Bagh, Delhi from Kolkata to address the anti-CAA demonstrators but failed to condemn the large scale destruction of public properties like railway stations by anti-CAA agitators in West Bengal. This is the general role of secularists throughout the country. The Leftists are fond of Karl Marx’s assertion that    "Religion is the opium of the people” but they don’t hesitate to pamper the largest religious minority community and don’t find anything wrong in the sending out of communal messages through religious congregations like Friday prayer meetings in many places across the country. Besides, many political parties including regional ones that look like and function as family enterprises have the same secular stance as that of the left. This brand of secularism has been just a tool to win minority vote to the detriment of the pampered community and the unity and integrity of the country. Sachar Committee report   makes us aware how the Muslim community remains backward despite being pampered.One friend of the secular camp and former Chief Minister of now defunct Jammu & Kashmir Farooq Abdullah    reportedly hoped that China would help restore Article 370 in valley. National Conference president on Sunday said in an interview with India Today TV he wished that with China’s support, Article 370 of the Constitution, which conferred special status on Jammu and Kashmir, will be restored. The secularists have not found anything wrong in the statement.

Such secularists combine a devious electoral strategy with their dictatorial aspirations and function like natural allies to win votes. Once in power, they behave like masters and potentates. The Left Front Government in West Bengal from 1977 to 2011 monopolized power, and multi-party democracy was enveloped and rendered ineffectual through alleged electoral malpractices by the ruling alliance.  A virtual extinction of the separation between the party office and seat of government and the long rope of control held by the party office also hampered governance. An overwhelming control over the government helped the party to have almost complete sway over the people who, willy-nilly, had to accept the dictates of party offices at every level down to the grassroots. Once out of power, the Left Front constituents including the big brother CPI (M) overnight found the party edifice crumbling.

The sustained movement against the “misrule” of the Left Front catapulted Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee to the centrestage of state politics and ultimately Left Front was washed away from power in 2011 drawing curtain on 34 years of their so called “dictatorship of the Proletariat” which saw the rapid eclipse of industry because of the militant and questionable activities of CITU, the trade union arm of CPI (M). 

The fall of the Left Front at that stage was ironical. Meanwhile, well into the first decade of the new millennium Buddhadev Bhattacharyya was chosen the Chief Minister of the Left Front government. To reverse the anti-industry image of the Left government, the new Chief Minister earnestly embarked on an aggressive policy for rapid industrialization. This backfired. Trinamool Congress launched a massive movement against the land acquisition in Singur for Tata Nano small car Factory and the proposed chemical hub in Nandigram.Some left intellectuals and splinter left groups supported Trinamool Congress as they could not go beyond the copybook communism they had learnt before the launching of Perestroika and Glasnost in the erstwhile Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev. Some of the left splinter groups are now in Trinamool Congress and share power.In Nandigram,dominant partner of the Left Front showed how they had arrogated unto themselves the responsibility of silencing the protest against the proposed chemical hub project,perhaps,to the discomfiture  of the Chief Minister. Tata pulled out and set up the factory at Sanand in Gujarat.

 Romping home to victory in the Assembly polls, the Congress-Trinamool Congress alliance formed the government headed by Ms Banerjee. However, the alliance ceased to exist soon as Congress walked out, and a one party government continued. Mamata Banerjee, in course of time, came to be tagged as Trinamool Congress supremo which signifies that the party accepted the norm of one- leader domination. Congress and the Left Front formed an alliance to fight the Assembly elections of 1916.The parties that fought street battles during the 34 years of left rule agreed to  an arrangement which might have looked like a marriage of convenience to the electorate and came a cropper. The alliance would fight the 2021 assembly polls and it appears their standing in the eye of the electorate has not much improved over the years. In fact, they are not different from the Trinamool Congress insofar as their brand of secularism is concerned. While Congress and Left Front are in alliance in West Bengal, they play the rivals in Kerala. This does not go down well with the electorate in West Bengal.

Well, after the exit of Congress from alliance, Trinamool Congress tightened its grip on power, went on expanding its base in areas where Congress and the left retained their strength. They won comrades of the left and congressmen, could, thus, form local government even when the popular verdict was not in favour of them. This is how power got monopolized even after the defeat of the Left Front. Besides, Trinamool Congress, it is alleged, has now the Congress syndrome of having become what looks like a family enterprise. Nephew Abhishek Banerjee is seen as the heir-apparent to Mamata Banerjee.

West Bengal has long been in the grip of political and poll violence though every party swears by Democracy. After all, monopoly of power matters.

 

 

 

"Hunger Makes Men Mad"

  Corona Lockdown

"Hunger Makes 

     Men Mad"

   Nidhu Bhusan Das

The mass exodus of migrant workers in the wake of Covid -19 lockdown clamped on 25 March for three weeks reminds me the grim fact that "Hunger makes men mad." Nobel laureate author Pearl S Buck makes the quoted observation in her  novel "The Good Earth" The migrants are desperate in the face of the double whammy of Covid -19 pandemic and the consequent lockdown.

The migrants have turned desperate to return to their homes because of the uncertainty ahead  aggravated by the inhuman treatment of their employers and landlords in utter disregard of the advisory of the government of India.Pearl S Buck also says:"The rich are always afraid." The heartlessness of the rich employers of the migrant workers testifies to the veracity of and wisdom in the statement of the Nobel laureate author.

It is beyond comprehension how the administration of the host states/ UTs failed to act according to the advisory of the Central Government and ensure that the workers are paid subsistence allowance at least and are not evicted from their rented house.

We may revert to the author and refer to her another aphorism to understand how some of us are incarnations of wickedness while we may be proud of many who have played the Good Samaritan providing food,water and temporary shelter to the tired and famished trudgers.She also says: "The test of civilization is in the way that it cares  for its helpless." Fie on the cruel employers and landlords! They are a slur on our civilization.

Here is a heart rending report in Hindustan Times: "An eight-month pregnant woman and her husband were offered monetary help and an ambulance in Meerut to cover the rest of their journey from Saharanpur to Bulandshahr after they were forced to walk over 100 kms on their way home without food when the latter’s employer turned them out without any money."

Action against such cruel people is imperative.

But there is also a silver lining in the same report:

"Local residents Naveen Kumar and Ravindra spotted the exhausted couple, Vakil and Yasmeen, when they arrived at Meerut’s Sohrab gate bus stand on Saturday and informed Prempal Singh, a sub inspector at Nauchandi police station, about their problem.

Ashutosh Kumar, the Nauchandi police station in charge, said Singh and the residents gave the couple food and some cash besides arranging for the ambulance to drop them to their village--Amargarh in Bulandshahr’s Syana.

Kumar said Vakil was employed at a factory and covered the 100 km distance with his wife over two days.

Yasmeen told police they lived in a room the factor owner had offered them. “But he asked us to vacate it after the lockdown was announced and refused to give us any money to go our village,” she said.

With no alternative, the couple started walking on Thursday from Saharanpur to reach their village. Yasmeen said that they had no food for the past two days because of complete closure of restaurants along the highway.

The three-week lockdown announced on Tuesday to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic has left millions of migrant labourers jobless and forced them to walk hundreds of kilometres to their villages in absence of any means to sustain themselves."

Meanwhile a Press Trust of India report states:

The home ministry suspended two senior Delhi government officers on Sunday while two other officials were issued show-cause notice for dereliction of duty during the nationwide lockdown imposed to contain Covid-19 spread.

The Additional Chief Secretary of the Transport Department and the Principal Secretary of Finance, GNCTD & Divisional Commissioner were suspended with immediate effect, while the Additional Chief Secretary of the Home and Land Buildings Departments and SDM Seelampur were issued a show-cause notice for "failing to ensure public health and safety during the lockdown.

"It has been brought to the notice of the competent authority that the following officers, who were responsible to ensure strict compliance to the instructions issued by Chairperson, National Executive Committee, formed under Disaster Management Act 2005 regarding containment of the spread of Covid-19, have prima facie failed to do so," the Home Ministry said.

"These officers have failed to ensure public health and safety during the lockdown restrictions to combat Covid-19. Due to the serious lapse in performance of their duties, the competent authority has initiated disciplinary proceedings against the following officers," the ministry further said.

The Central government has initiated disciplinary proceedings against the four officers of Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) for dereliction of duty regarding containment of the spread of COVID-19, the spokesperson said.

The concerned state governments have taken steps to rescue and provide succour to the hapless people.They will be kept in quarantine for 14 Days to prevent possible spread of the virus through them.The very purpose of the lockdown is bound to be defeated if we cannot take care of the poor.The national effort should be,at the administration level, from the top to the grassroots to contain the scourge.

Covid-19: Reliability of Crowd Wisdom

            Covid-19: Reliability

             of Crowd Wisdom

                Nidhu Bhusan Das

Crowd Wisdom does not exclusively mean Collective Wisdom. Neither is it synonymous with a Jury in the court of law. We find today in the social networking sites that provide platform for free expression of wisdom as well as nescience. Wisdom is not knowledge per se.A person is wise when (s)he knows that (s)he knows very little and there is much more to know. Knowledge refers to the awareness of a person that (s)he knows. Such a person is complacent about what (s)he has intellectually grasped. Wisdom looks beyond the boundary of knowledge. We may recall what poet Tennyson’s Ulysses says: “ Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’/ Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades/For ever and for ever when I move.” A knowing person would say: “I know that I know.” His/her knowledge is limited to what (s)he knows. A wise person would rather say:  “I know that I do not know.”  Wisdom is the knowledge of the non-knowledge. This is genuine knowledge, and is, therefore, wisdom.

My friend Bikram in a Facebook post on 21 March 2020 stated: “Bangladesh seems to have the highest number of experts on Coronovirus. My inbox is overflowing with tons of advice and prescriptions.” True, Facebook and other social networking sites provide open forum for sharing perceptions, feelings and understanding. Most of them do not have the weight of being recognized as wisdom. When an innocent milkman speaks on astronomy and confuses it with astrology, it may provoke our laughter, and we cannot take it to be an expression of wisdom.

In his 2004 book The Wisdom of Crowds, New Yorker writer James Surowiecki first popularized the idea of Crowd Wisdom. It refers to idea that large groups of people are collectively smarter than individual experts. Within financial markets, the idea helps explain market movement and herd-like behaviour among investors. Herd-like behaviour cannot be the demonstration of wisdom. And my friend’s satirical observation tells a lot about the reliability of many a post on social sites. So, we need not be influenced by such unsolicited posts. 

When Ruler Fails People Protect Public Interest

When Ruler Fails People Protect Public Interest

Nidhu Bhushan Das

"The Myth and Aura Will Pass Away" is the title of my blog post published here seven years from now on 4 February 2012. I wrote: "The Mamata myth appears to be waning rapidly after Ms Banerjee has become the Chief Minister of West Bengal. The Chief Minister tends more to play to the gallery than to be serious about steering the state clear of the mess she inherited from the left rule of about 35 years. She deserves credit for the ouster of the Left Front from power. It was she who pulled down the left edifice which once was thought to be impregnable. Her sustained movement against what was seen as left misrule earned her the credibility which ultimately catapulted her to power in the state. Once in power, she is in a hurry to project herself as the Santa Claus to the people, and heaps promise upon promise to keep the people in good humour.Even she squanders money in the form of donations to the clubs of the state and her government organizes gala festivals while roads and highways remain degraded."

In the seven years her policies, political moves and manoeuvres have led to many developments which appear to be the cause of her undoing,nay hubris is the cause.

Her idioms suggest she fails to distinguish between democracy and autocracy, between the power of the people and that of an individual.When the will and the rights of the people are sought to be subordinated to the will and caprices of the individual on whom the people repose their trust for a fixed period,people feel being betrayed and teach the individual a lesson.The hubris of the individual activates the autocrat in him/her and accelerate the undoing of the ruler.

The West Bengal Chief Minister has ,of late,developed an allergy towards the slogan "Joy Shri Ram". Whenever she hears the slogan, she loses her cool, disembark from her car to chase away the sloganeers who appear to be persistent.The problem is personal and once it is found in someone, fun loving people may find it an opportunity to exploit the supersensitivity of the person just for fun.The Hindustan Times reported on 31 May: "West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee lost her temper on Thursday when protesters shouted ‘Jai Shri Ram” and “Jai Modi” slogans while she was on her way to a sit-in venue.

She got out of her car twice when she heard the slogans. Banerjee shouted back at the crowd and asked policemen to identify the slogan shouters and conduct an house-to-house search."

This reaction of the Chief Minister (twice in a month) is the talking point and issue of satiric comments at street corners,markets and other public places.It appears the proactive Chief Minister has turned reactive to her perils.

This change in her suggests she has the dearth of ideas to face the political development thrown up by the Lok Sabha polls in which BJP decimated her party TMC.The need of the hour is statesmanship,not being temperamental.Democracy demands reasonable space for debate and discussion,respect for the views and opinions of the opposition.Stifling the opposition does not augur well for democracy.We may buy support or force opposition into submission but the vox populi cannot be silenced,public conscience cannot be bought.Rulers who tried so brought about their own doom across the globe.After all, "the voice of the people is the voice of God."(Vox Populi, Vox Dei).Voice of the ruler is subordinate to the voice of the people.When the ruler fails to be just,people act wisely to protect public interest.

Mamata is not Invincible

Mamata is not Invincible

Nidhu Bhusan Das

"In an autocracy,one person has his way".

-Celia Green

Should it be seen as a simple downturn soon to turn into an upswing,or the beginning of a  countdown to the final collapse? The sharp decline of Mamata Banerjee's All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) in the recent Lok Sabha polls from 34 seats won in 2014 to 22 in 2019 is an evidence of the erosion of popular support for the party and it's omnipotent leader.The redoubtable Chief Minister of West Bengal Ms Banerjee is identified as the supremo of the party which in 2011 dethroned the apparently invincible Left Front which ruled West Bengal for 34 years with iron grip as typical of the communist dispensation.While in the Left Front,constituents like the CPI(M) has the Stalinist dictatorship in the name of democratic centralism in place,AITC is blessed with the supremo who has the iron grip in the party and the Government. Such iron grip has the inherent weakness and faultline which cannot ultimately hold together the organisational structure and edifice of power.Once the grip begins to loosen, the structure exposes it's cracks and cleavages hidden so long meticulously by the ring of sycophants.Autocracy thrives under sycophancy.

The syndrome of inferiority complex is,perhaps, the hallmark of an autocrat.This syndrome finds expression in the desire to occupy every space  to show the person's grandeur in omnipresence. Mamata Banerjee has presented herself as a polymath-poet,essayist,painter,song writer and a prolific author,besides being a politician.She claims she runs her party with funds received as royalty from her books and huge proceeds from the sales of her paintings.

Arrogance and stubbornness are the twin attributes of autocracy.Ms Banerjee shows her dogged determination to pursue her policy of minority appeasement to the chagrin of the majority and the enlightened section of the minority.An autocrat breaks but does not bend.The breakdown of Ms Banerjee is likely to be the natural consequence if she fails to reason why her party had to yield a huge space to BJP in the parliamentary polls.

The decline,it is obvious, set in for the following reasons:

01.The explicit minority appeasement .

02. The alleged rampant corruption in the form of syndicate raj and extortion by party workers, and  bribery at different levels of party and administration.

03.The alleged inaction in respect of enforcing law against crime and criminals.

04.The resultant disenchantment of the people.

05.The deprivation of a large number of  rural people in many areas from exercising their right to vote in the Panchayat polls accelerated the disenchantment.

06. An inevitable  huge Hindu backlash against the overt and assertive minority appeasement.

06.The over-assertiveness of Muslims in many places,especially in the border areas.

07.The perceived infiltration of  NRC affected Muslims from Assam and Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar via Bangladesh and their settlement in the state went against the ruling party.

07.The impudent and vituperative language of the ruling party supremo against Prime Minister Modi

offended many in the electorate.

08. Intra-party clash and squabble weakened the party.

If a judicious policy and well thought out strategy are not put in place, the decline may lead to the collapse of the party in the next democratic exercises like the municipal elections and the Assembly elections of 2021.BJP's win of 18 Lok Sabha seats is equivalent to  126 assembly seats in the Assembly of 294 seats.Trinamool Congress is no longer on a strong wicket and invincible.It is already decimated.

China Against Global War on Terror

China Against Global

War on Terror

Nidhu Bhusan Das

China has again,naturally,done it - blocked the listing of Jaish-e- Mohammad Chief Masood Azhar as a “global terrorist” at the UNSC Resolution 1267 sanctions committee.China Wednesday did it at Pakistan’s behest.This is consistent with Chinese policy to support genocide,terrorism  for expansionist gains.Beijing supported genocide of Pakistan in Bangladesh way back in 1971.They have shielded Azhar the fourth time in ten years.

For Beijing,Pakistan can never do any wrong insofar as Islamabad serves their geo-political interests and further their expansionist designs.China stands to gain in respect of their territorial expansion, preventing Islamic fundamentalist uprising in their Xinjiang province with this unflinching support to Pakistan and Ajhar.So,Beijing does not hesitate to go against the global war against terrorism.

Jaish-e-Mohammad owned up the February 14 Pulwama terror attack that left 40 CRPF personnel dead.New Delhi launched diplomatic offensive against Islamabad which harbours,trains terrorists and sends them to India to kill and terrorise Indians.

All the veto-wielding powers except China  were active to get Azhar designated as a global terrorist.Not only this,the proposal this time had the impressive number of co-sponsors — 13 in all. Besides the US, UK, France and Germany, other co-sponsors were Poland, Belgium, Italy, Bangladesh, Maldives, Bhutan, Equatorial Guinea, Japan and Australia. While some of them were at the UNSC as non-permanent members, others came as UN members. This reflected the support India had this time.

What They Say!

What They Say !

Nidhu Bhusan Das

What they say is chocolate-like

They’re pied-piper,not of Hamelin,

Superior rather, able to manipulate

Common folks,as Brutus,and then

Antony could swing the Romans.

They’re great, what they say

Being beyond comprehension.

They enthral with promises,often,

Not to keep.I like character-play

No matter,film or stage,even public pulpit.

Our orators, original or script-reader

Move us,and we don’t understand

What they say, exactly, at election

Rallies.They,no doubt, must be great.