West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s letter to the Prime Minister, pontificating on the need to have stringent punishment laws for perpetrators of rape, is a stark example of how brazen and disconnected she is from the hard realities of the ground in the state. For someone who keeps boasting that she has been a seven-term Member of Parliament and a cabinet minister with various governments in Delhi, Mamata Banerjee’s letter reeks of chicanery and insensitiveness, and is a brazen and ill-timed effort to try and submerge the RG Kar Hospital episode by placing it before a wider national narrative that she assumes would eventually dilute or blanket the failings of her administration and her police, and of her as a chief minister who had come to power promising change.
The enforcement of laws against rape will, and is, happening. Prime Minister Modi’s government’s and his stand on women’s safety, dignity, and women-led development, as articulated by him from the ramparts of the Red Fort this Independence Day, amply made that clear. PM Modi’s call for ensuring exemplary and stringent punishment for perpetrators was unequivocal. Why did Mamata Banerjee wait more than a week to issue her homily? Why didn’t she immediately endorse the PM’s views and sentiments on the issue? Her habit of peddling a cheap political narrative or trying to score a shallow political point is assuming a fatiguing and irritating regularity.
Seeing her invite Bangladeshi infiltrators, defend Rohingyas, call for a United Nations referendum on the CAA, argue that Covid-19 was a ploy to divert attention from the anti-CAA Delhi riots, and heap calumny on those who celebrate Ram Navami, one wonders whether Mamata Banerjee has completely lost the sense of the nation and of the federal structure and framework within which the Indian Republic has functioned for the seven-odd decades. Her well-choreographed theatrics at the recent NITI Aayog meeting, in which she lied that her microphone was switched off in order to prevent her from speaking, only proved that she was the only non-serious chief minister in the entire meeting and exercise. It also proved that affairs of the state no more interest her and her increasing irrelevance has begun to irk her. The gimmick, such as the one in the NITI Aayog meeting, was just an attempt to keep afloat and in the news.
Her reaction and utterances on the RG Kar crime reinforce the belief that she has lost touch, is immersed in arrogance, and feels that she is doing a favour to the people of the state by continuing as chief minister. In fact, for those who have observed her, her reaction to the RG Kar crime is no different. For years she has often displayed such brazenness. For example, when the Park Street rape case shook the state in 2012, she casually referred to the episode as a “fake incident”, while her party’s MP from Barasat, a doctor, Kakoli Ghosh-Dastidar, shockingly dismissed the case as a “misunderstanding” between the lady and her client. In the past too, on several occasions, Mamata Banerjee has displayed a strangely dark attitude to women’s safety and security. She said, for instance, that rapes have increased because men and women mix more often now. She cast aspersions on the character of the victim of rape at Hanskhali in Nadia, asking her police to also probe that angle. Her approach in the RG Kar episode, therefore, must not come as a surprise. Her insensitiveness has hardened. But people are not ready to absorb that anymore.
People cutting across strata and social privileges are insisting on action. The demand for justice extends to identifying, exposing, and arresting those who have been part of the crime — the perpetrators, the patrons and those within the system who seem to have extended political patronage to various cartels and cabals.
What pushes Mamata’s administration to repeatedly attempt to reinstate RG Kar principal Sandip Ghosh, the latest being his appointment as OSD of the health department is what continues to baffle observers and the general public. That some of the major government-run hospitals in West Bengal have become cesspools of corruption and illicit activities and trade was evident during the Covid-19 pandemic when several cases of black-marketeering began emerging from these hospitals. Cartels active in these hospitals seem to be thriving under political patronage. Why is Mamata Banerjee resisting attempts to expose these cartels and networks? Is it because the rot is too deep — a rot that has penetrated deeper with her and her party’s active patronage and protection?
In the last 10 days, the protests have spread across West Bengal. It is a people-led and driven protest, across age groups and social and professional strata. The episode has left the entire country shocked. Mamata’s bravado-laced comment — that her opponents were trying a Bangladesh-like attempt to unseat her — has not helped. In these comments, she comes across as a cheap street-fighting politician with a self-centred and myopic perception of things. She is no Sheikh Hasina, and those protesting across West Bengal and Kolkata are not dancing to the tunes of some external agencies or forums.
Mamata chooses to forget that less than two months back she had won more parliamentary seats than she did in 2019 and that eleven of her Members of Parliament are women. Not one of them has spoken up. Even when the TMC’s former MP from Jadavpur, Mimi Chakraborty, was threatened with rape and harm because she had spoken out against the RG Kar episode, her party’s women lawmakers, including the newly elected one from Jadavpur, a woman, has chosen to keep silent and look the other way.
It is not enough to keep bragging, as Mamata Banerjee does ad infinitum, that she is the only woman chief minister in the country. The bragging needs to be followed up by concrete action or governance initiatives that will make her stand apart in that category or league. Mamata Banerjee has failed on all counts. Her reaction to the gruesome and deeply shocking RG Kar murder has left the whole country shocked. Her and her party’s attempts to force the CBI to conclude the investigation within a stipulated time frame is hypocritical, to say the least.
With the protests and indignation spreading across West Bengal, a senior observer of the state’s politics described the situation here as “a functioning anarchy”. That functioning anarchy is on the way to stop functioning and eventually lapsing into anarchy driven by an anarchical political mindset that brooks no questioning and refuses to be accountable or responsive. Such a mindset needs to be relentlessly opposed, exposed and unseated.
The author is Chairman, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation & Member, BJP National Executive Committee. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.