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It's characteristic of West Bengal Election Commissioner, Mira Pande, to stick to her principles and not buckle under pressure. It's, therefore, not surprising that she has stood by her demand for central forces during the panchayat elections against all kinds of aspersions, from the government and the ruling party.
But, what could have prompted Pande to be so vehement in her demand that the matter was now to be decided by the court? Undoubtedly, it's the spectre of political violence that was playing on Pande's mind.
Last year, P Chidambaram, then Union home minister, had said that in the first half of 2012, as many as 82 people had been killed in 455 incidents of political violence in the state. It didn't go down well with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. But as unruly scenes of vandalism at the Presidency University flashed across television channels last week, both Chidambaram and Pande must have felt vindicated.
The elite college was taken over by complete outsiders, carrying flags of the ruling Trinamool Congress, with students and faculty members rendered helpless. The century-old Baker Laboratory bore most of the brunt, with the ruling party allegedly out to avenge the assault on Finance Minister Amit Mitra and the CM in Delhi the previous day.
It all started with the death of Sudipto Gupta, 22, a leader of the Students Federation of India, considered linked to the Communist Party of India (Marxist), who died in police custody. The union had resorted to breaching the law in protest against suspension of elections in colleges for six months, as advised by the state government. The episode went awry and Gupta died under mysterious circumstances. The CM termed it an "accident" and then went on to describe it a "small" and "petty" matter.
Accountability issues
Educationist Sunanda Sanyal, who fought on the same side as Banerjee to usher paribartan in Bengal, is utterly disappointed. "There is an attempt to downplay any incident," he pointed out. People like Sanyal are disillusioned by a string of events that have sullied the image of the state government.
For instance, the Park Street rape case was said to be a conspiracy against Mamata Banerjee's government, a Jadavpur University professor was arrested for forwarding a cartoon, a poor farmer was arrested for questioning the CM about rising fertiliser prices, a university student was publicly labelled a Maoist for raising uncomfortable issues. The list goes on.
"There is a centralised authority. This has made the administration ineffective," a senior bureaucrat explained.
Five commissionerates have been created in a state with a population of 90 million. "BDOs (block development officers) have been asked to communicate directly with the chief minister. This has destroyed the command structure and the same is true for police administration," the bureaucrat said.
It couldn't have been more apparent than in the Garden Reach incident, when a police officer was killed over a college election nomination issue but a minister went all out to publicly defend the accused. A police case was finally lodged after widespread anger in the police ranks but at the cost of the Police Commissioner, who was transferred.
Past as present
Yet, besides the whims and fancies surrounding the current dispensation, there is a sense of dejà vu in what's happening. The violence that has engulfed Bengal is hardly new to the state. Bengal courted Naxalism in the 1970s. Siddhartha Sankar Ray, when he took charge in 1972 as Chief Minister of a Congress government, curbed it with extreme measures. The police was given a free hand to deal with it and it did. Innumerable students associated with the movement went missing overnight.
Every era in Bengal has seen violence. The Marichjhapi incident that marked forcible eviction of Bengali Hindu refugees from East Pakistan is a blot on Jyoti Basu’s era. The 80s was also marked by militant trade unionism that led to the flight of capital.
From the mid-1980s, one company after another moved its headquarters away, from tea major Brooke Bond India to ICI India, Shaw Wallace, the Singhanias of JK Tyre and electronics giant Philips India, which was actually born in Kolkata.
“Gherao is our contribution to the Oxford dictionary,” Basu’s successor, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, would tell industrialists. He vowed to change that and was in a tearing hurry to bag big-ticket investments. Investors flocked to Bengal, for a change. But it was possibly Bhattacharjee’s hurry that led him to acquire land at Singur for Ratan Tata’s small car project, the Nano, without consultation. Supported by Mamata Banerjee, people reared up in protest, which ultimately led to the pullout of the project.
In Nandigram, land acquisition for a chemical hub project led to widespread agitation. Though the government called off the project eventually, it was too little, too late. Backed by the Trinamool Congress and Naxals, Nandigram revolted against the state government. A turf war erupted and police firing killed 14 people. After which, Bhattacharjee said, they have been paid back in the same coin. Apologies followed but the damage was done. Bengal read it as an act of arrogance and it was followed by apolitical rallies.
Bhattacharjee has vacated the seat of power since, but apolitical rallies against the current administration continue in Bengal. Obviously, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
