Recalling the back, after Narasimha Rao, now it's turn of Mamata Banerjee to attack the Congress. Everybody from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from one corner to other of world knows "nothing could be done in the Congress without the consent of Sonia Gandhi." That the Time magazine had name Manmohan Singh as Under Achiever.In the eyes of the public Manmohan Singh is the Prime Minister of India but in fact a puppet at the hands of a family. And this family has read the pulse not only the Congress from workers to leaders but all of her opponents also. She knows where to hit and when.
But misjudged Mamata Banerjee that is the only woman political leader in India who has risen on her own, without the support of any family.But the fact is that the financial mess her state is in, she needs the UPA more than the UPA needs her.
As the only woman politician who has made it to the top with no husband, companion or powerful male politician propping her up – in fact, she may even be unique in that most male politicians also have begun with family support – Mamata stands apart.
What could be her gameplan? Sonia Gandhi may have helped elbow her out of the UPA, but is she learning to play Sonia’s game (the aam aadmi card where everyone can claim victimhood) and for much bigger stakes?
The major reason for Mamata’s unhappiness with the UPA is that the government of India has been unwilling to help West Bengal out of its debt-trap. As on 31 March 2012, the debt burden of the state government stood at Rs 2,08,383 crore. To repay this loan the government needs to pay interest and principal amounting to Rs 23,200 crore during the course of this financial year (i.e. between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2012).
As an article in Business Standard points out, “West Bengal’s outstanding debt by the end of this financial year is slated to be about Rs 2,26,000 crore , making it the most indebted state in the country in terms of debt to gross state domestic product ratio at close to 39 percent.”
This huge debt is a legacy of nearly three-and-a-half decades of misrule by the Left Front. “The Left believed that the key to power was to co-opt every section of society – school and college teachers, bus drivers, municipal employees, healthcare workers and so on – into government. So, the Bengal government is one of the largest employers in the country today,” writes Abheek Barman in an editorial in the Times of India.
Given this, the expenses of the government of West Bengal are higher than its revenues. The difference it has to meet by borrowing. The revenue that the government expects to earn this year stands at Rs 76,943 crore. The expenses are at Rs 83,801 crore, leaving a deficit of Rs 6,585 crore.
The government of West Bengal had been negotiating with the government of India for a debt relief package. “When President Pranab Mujkherjee was the Union Finance Minister, both Mitra (Amit Mitra, the finance minister of West Bengal) and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had lined up for countless meetings in the hope of a financial package. ‘During the last 11 months, I have met the Prime Minister 10 times and finance minister 20 times,’ Banerjee had earlier said,” the Business Standard points out.
The government of West Bengal was hoping that the Government of India would allow the state to skip interest payment and principal repayments amounting to around Rs 22,000 crore, for each of the next three years. It also wanted its debt restructured with the interest rate on the debt being lowered as well as the repayment tenure being extended.
There is little chance of Bengal getting any relief package from the Government of India. Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister of Bihar, clearly saw an opportunity here and threw his hat into the ring. He said that his party (the Samta party) would support anyone who would come up with a package for Bihar.
Mamata Banerjee has had a very edgy relationship with the Congress since she quit the party and formed her own party, the Trinamool Congress, on 1 January 1998. She has often been accused of thinking with her heart and letting her emotions override her decisions rather than thinking with her head and making cold and calculated political decisions.
Mamata has clearly made it of her own and understands the games that people play in politics very well. As Gupta writes, “Even when Rajiv Gandhi was alive, Mamata found herself in the company of Congressmen liaising with senior party leaders in Delhi, plotting to sabotage her career, to crash her soaring political ambitions to the ground. In the void following Rajiv’s death, Mamata was left to defend herself against plots and counter-plots, often real, sometimes imaginary, hatched by her own party leaders to pull her down.”
Mamata Banerjee may not understand economics. She may not be fit to govern. But she does understand what politics is all about. And given that the decision to withdraw support to the Congress-led UPA government at the centre was nothing but a cold and a calculated chance that she is taking.
And how is that? Before I answer that let me deviate a little to discuss something that Gurucharan Das writes about in his new book India Grows At Night. As he writes, “There are two spaces in the politics of India and one of them is largely empty. They reflect the classic division between those who look ahead and aspire versus those who look back and complain. India’s political parties still tend to cater to the second – to the victim in us – through their politics of grievance.”
Leading this list is the Congress party. “The Congress appeals to the victim in policies for the aam aadmi…with an ever expanding menu of job guarantees, food security and subsidy for gas diesel, kerosene, fertilizers and more…All this is about the politics of grievance…grievance admittedly can be a powerful motivator to action.”
This has put India in an economic mess and has forced the Congress-led UPA to suddenly turn reformist. As Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes in the Indian Express, “these reforms are coming after four years of colossal mismanagement in making the reform narrative problematic…politically it is not easy for the government, after running all fiscal responsibility into the ground for four years, and after stoking structural inflation, to turn back and accuse opponents of being populist.”
Given this, Mamata is only doing what Congress has done all these years. She is practicing the politics of grievance and appealing to the victim in us – i.e. the voters. She is trying to project herself on the national stage, as someone who cares about the poor and the not-so-well off. With the Congress talking reforms someone has to fill the space that has been left empty for the time being.
And how does that help Mamata and the Trinamool Congress? The panchayat polls in West Bengal slated for May next year could be advanced to the coming winter months. Mamata is appealing to the victim in the voters, by asking for a partial repeal in the diesel price hike and an increase in the number of subsidised cooking gas cylinders, which the government of India has limited to six.
She is also trying to influence the traders and the small shopkeepers by projecting FDI in multi-brand foreign retailing as a devil and asking for it to be squashed. A victory in the panchayat elections would really make Trinamool Congress stand true to its name.
The word Trinamool means grassroots. And currently the Trinamool Congress only controls two out of the 17 zilla parishads in the state. A victory here for the Trinamool Congress would be a further dent to the Left parties in West Bengal and would help consolidate Mamata’s position.
Also, any instability in Delhi benefits Mamata and Trinamool. The party currently has 19 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal. An early Lok Sabha election will clearly benefit Trinamool. Hence by withdrawing support Mamata is trying to destabilise the UPA government, and hoping that UPA loses its majority in the Lok Sabha.
If an early Lok Sabha poll does happen and the Trinamool Congress does get 30-35 seats, then Mamata Banerjee will clearly become an important player in the so called “fourth” or “federal” front that is now being talked about. It is a likely coalition of strong chief ministers like Nitish Kumar (JD-U), Naveen Patnaik (who runs the Biju Janata Dal), J Jayalalithaa (who runs the AIADMK) and Mamata.
This could mean that Mamata Banerjee could end up playing a very important role in the government of India. If the sleepy HD Deve Gowda could become the Prime Minister of India, why can’t Mamata Banerjee? That is the game at play.
And what about West Bengal? Well a state that has gone through 35 years of mis-governance and is an economic mess can surely wait for a few years more. In the meanwhile, their Didi is meant for bigger things.
But misjudged Mamata Banerjee that is the only woman political leader in India who has risen on her own, without the support of any family.But the fact is that the financial mess her state is in, she needs the UPA more than the UPA needs her.What could be her gameplan? Sonia Gandhi may have helped elbow her out of the UPA, but is she learning to play Sonia’s game (the aam aadmi card where everyone can claim victimhood) and for much bigger stakes?
The major reason for Mamata’s unhappiness with the UPA is that the government of India has been unwilling to help West Bengal out of its debt-trap. As on 31 March 2012, the debt burden of the state government stood at Rs 2,08,383 crore. To repay this loan the government needs to pay interest and principal amounting to Rs 23,200 crore during the course of this financial year (i.e. between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2012).
As an article in Business Standard points out, “West Bengal’s outstanding debt by the end of this financial year is slated to be about Rs 2,26,000 crore , making it the most indebted state in the country in terms of debt to gross state domestic product ratio at close to 39 percent.”
This huge debt is a legacy of nearly three-and-a-half decades of misrule by the Left Front. “The Left believed that the key to power was to co-opt every section of society – school and college teachers, bus drivers, municipal employees, healthcare workers and so on – into government. So, the Bengal government is one of the largest employers in the country today,” writes Abheek Barman in an editorial in the Times of India.
Given this, the expenses of the government of West Bengal are higher than its revenues. The difference it has to meet by borrowing. The revenue that the government expects to earn this year stands at Rs 76,943 crore. The expenses are at Rs 83,801 crore, leaving a deficit of Rs 6,585 crore.
The government of West Bengal had been negotiating with the government of India for a debt relief package. “When President Pranab Mujkherjee was the Union Finance Minister, both Mitra (Amit Mitra, the finance minister of West Bengal) and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had lined up for countless meetings in the hope of a financial package. ‘During the last 11 months, I have met the Prime Minister 10 times and finance minister 20 times,’ Banerjee had earlier said,” the Business Standard points out.
The government of West Bengal was hoping that the Government of India would allow the state to skip interest payment and principal repayments amounting to around Rs 22,000 crore, for each of the next three years. It also wanted its debt restructured with the interest rate on the debt being lowered as well as the repayment tenure being extended.
There is little chance of Bengal getting any relief package from the Government of India. Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister of Bihar, clearly saw an opportunity here and threw his hat into the ring. He said that his party (the Samta party) would support anyone who would come up with a package for Bihar.
Mamata Banerjee has had a very edgy relationship with the Congress since she quit the party and formed her own party, the Trinamool Congress, on 1 January 1998. She has often been accused of thinking with her heart and letting her emotions override her decisions rather than thinking with her head and making cold and calculated political decisions.
Mamata has clearly made it of her own and understands the games that people play in politics very well. As Gupta writes, “Even when Rajiv Gandhi was alive, Mamata found herself in the company of Congressmen liaising with senior party leaders in Delhi, plotting to sabotage her career, to crash her soaring political ambitions to the ground. In the void following Rajiv’s death, Mamata was left to defend herself against plots and counter-plots, often real, sometimes imaginary, hatched by her own party leaders to pull her down.”
Mamata Banerjee may not understand economics. She may not be fit to govern. But she does understand what politics is all about. And given that the decision to withdraw support to the Congress-led UPA government at the centre was nothing but a cold and a calculated chance that she is taking.
And how is that? Before I answer that let me deviate a little to discuss something that Gurucharan Das writes about in his new book India Grows At Night. As he writes, “There are two spaces in the politics of India and one of them is largely empty. They reflect the classic division between those who look ahead and aspire versus those who look back and complain. India’s political parties still tend to cater to the second – to the victim in us – through their politics of grievance.”
Leading this list is the Congress party. “The Congress appeals to the victim in policies for the aam aadmi…with an ever expanding menu of job guarantees, food security and subsidy for gas diesel, kerosene, fertilizers and more…All this is about the politics of grievance…grievance admittedly can be a powerful motivator to action.”
This has put India in an economic mess and has forced the Congress-led UPA to suddenly turn reformist. As Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes in the Indian Express, “these reforms are coming after four years of colossal mismanagement in making the reform narrative problematic…politically it is not easy for the government, after running all fiscal responsibility into the ground for four years, and after stoking structural inflation, to turn back and accuse opponents of being populist.”
Given this, Mamata is only doing what Congress has done all these years. She is practicing the politics of grievance and appealing to the victim in us – i.e. the voters. She is trying to project herself on the national stage, as someone who cares about the poor and the not-so-well off. With the Congress talking reforms someone has to fill the space that has been left empty for the time being.
And how does that help Mamata and the Trinamool Congress? The panchayat polls in West Bengal slated for May next year could be advanced to the coming winter months. Mamata is appealing to the victim in the voters, by asking for a partial repeal in the diesel price hike and an increase in the number of subsidised cooking gas cylinders, which the government of India has limited to six.
She is also trying to influence the traders and the small shopkeepers by projecting FDI in multi-brand foreign retailing as a devil and asking for it to be squashed. A victory in the panchayat elections would really make Trinamool Congress stand true to its name.
The word Trinamool means grassroots. And currently the Trinamool Congress only controls two out of the 17 zilla parishads in the state. A victory here for the Trinamool Congress would be a further dent to the Left parties in West Bengal and would help consolidate Mamata’s position.
Also, any instability in Delhi benefits Mamata and Trinamool. The party currently has 19 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal. An early Lok Sabha election will clearly benefit Trinamool. Hence by withdrawing support Mamata is trying to destabilise the UPA government, and hoping that UPA loses its majority in the Lok Sabha.
If an early Lok Sabha poll does happen and the Trinamool Congress does get 30-35 seats, then Mamata Banerjee will clearly become an important player in the so called “fourth” or “federal” front that is now being talked about. It is a likely coalition of strong chief ministers like Nitish Kumar (JD-U), Naveen Patnaik (who runs the Biju Janata Dal), J Jayalalithaa (who runs the AIADMK) and Mamata.
This could mean that Mamata Banerjee could end up playing a very important role in the government of India. If the sleepy HD Deve Gowda could become the Prime Minister of India, why can’t Mamata Banerjee? That is the game at play.
And what about West Bengal? Well a state that has gone through 35 years of mis-governance and is an economic mess can surely wait for a few years more. In the meanwhile, their Didi is meant for bigger things.
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