Train-Spotting with Mamata Banerjee

“’Cos for 24 years I’ve been living next door to the Communists,

Now, who the hell are these Neo-Communists?”

[Definition:  a new form of communism; revived communism that addresses current issues]

“Well, I don’t know what would reflect my mood about this unstoppable and fast  approaching political doomsday , in a better way, but this Neo-Communism      tactics has earned Mamata Banerjee quite a few brownie points in  Bengal; if not from me, but from the majority.

To me Bengal has always carried an image associated with the communists, the blood  red Marxism, ideologies and “at-the-drop-of-a-hat-call-a-strike-attitude”. We have  been taught to support strikes and think like the communists since the time, we had  our political senses.

Growing up in a joint family, and a freedom-fighter-turned leftist head of the family, I  used to wake up to the Ganashakti (the communist party newsletter) and the vintage  “Statesman”. Pretty and idle days, as I look back.  What nobody realized at that point  of time, that there was a storm brewing at the other end of the string, and Bengal  would see an insurgency of sorts and a change-no-matter-what-comes attitude by  the next decade.

Many suns have crossed the horizon, in the national political sky.

In the process, we have been forcefully acquainted with many Mamata-avatars, but the most worth-a-watch has been her latest stint as our national railway minister cum aspiring CM of Bengal. It’s hard to divert the public eye and hush the media, who had always fancied how she handles both offices in tandem. And nobody knows better than her that she has failed miserably in this aspect. The talking point here is not how she rates as a railways minister, but how one’s personal aspirations and egoism, can kill a good growth trajectory.

The two successive Bengal railways accident threw up a can of worms among the media and the masses. Issues were(blown out of proportions or not will be a debatable statement) brought to the table, fingers raised, the opposition tore open the minister. Newspapers and media flashing a grim-faced Mamata at the accident zone, dining table discussions, Pranab Mukherjee coming into the rescue act (as always), things went hazy to awry. But the sticky point is, in spite of all these Didi went on with mass state political rally this week where the same old story was repeated, the politicizing of religion, poor masses and blame games. Nothing much has changed in Bengal, with the onset of this so-called insurgency. She’s using the communist antidote to stop the communist juggernaut and the change hungry people are left with no choice but to follow our belligerent leader.

Catch the fish (the Bengal CM chair) with the bait (the railway ministry) that’s very clearly the strategy that she’s relying on, right now. She knows public memory is short and exactly the reason why it doesn’t deter her spreading the fire that the leftist lighted years ago, and sadly she using the same tools that destroyed the state.

Internet forums and news channels are abuzz with her not attending cabinet meetings, and playing truant, but I don’t know, if that should be the talking point at all. The point is she needs the delegate and stop having the megalomaniac feeling that she’s the ‘one-man-army’ I don’t know how different the political management is from the management in corporate environments, but what she needs to understand how the work that cannot be done, because of ‘whatever’ priorities, should be delegated so that no fingers are pointed at her.  Didi is keeping her priorities right. Point Taken! But that doesn’t give her the rights to play truant, play with people’s lives, and mobilize mass at some suburbs in Calcutta for the elections in early 2011.

I do appreciate the fact, that she has gone all the way, (well almost) in crumbling the red fortress, but she cannot tread this path of thorns with such make-shift mentality, neo-communist agenda, and obviously the age-old vote bank politics.

Somewhere she has to fall. It’s just that the people of Bengal are strapped of options.

Let the change come, whatever be it!