There is a remarkable difference in both style and substance of the first 100 days in office between Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. To be sure, the two situations are not comparable apart from the fact that both chief ministers happen to be women. Ms Banerjee swept to power on a tidal wave of high expectations of change and progress after three decades of Left Front rule which had become moribund. Ms Jayalalithaa is dealing with a less dramatic situation. Though both are mercurial in their own ways, Ms Jayalalithaa has proved to be more combative in office than Ms Banerjee, who has so far gone about doing her work in a quiet manner. The Tamil Nadu chief minister has declared war on land grabbing by influential people. This has resulted in scores of arrests, including those of several former ministers of the Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam (DMK) regime. Several schemes and projects of the DMK period have been either reversed or replaced. The scheme of distributing free TV sets has been dropped, a new state secretariat-cum-assembly complex is to be converted into a hospital and a grass-roots heath scheme has been redone.
As opposed to this, the new West Bengal chief minister has sought and obtained the co-operation of the Opposition Left Front to rename the state “Paschimbanga”, so that it can travel up the alphabetical order and secure better central mind space. Also, Ms Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress party has not sought revenge, as was widely feared, and there has been little violence after the change of power. Instead of taking revenge or badla, Ms Banerjee asked her party cadre to play Rabindra Sangeet at public places! The West Bengal government has gone ahead with alacrity in burying the Tata’s Singur project to manufacture the Nano by undertaking to return the land to the cultivators as promised during the election campaign. Similarly, a question mark hangs over the development at Rajarhat in East Kolkata and the proposed chemical complex in Nayachar seems as good as dead.
Both chief ministers have asked for financial assistance from the Centre. Though Ms Jayalalithaa would not be as dependent on central revenues as Ms Banerjee, neither can fulfill all their populist promises to the electorate without New Delhi’s help. Tamil Nadu is of course better placed to forge ahead on the industrial front than West Bengal. The Trinamool government took its own time to present a Budget and, unfortunately, seems non-serious about raising resources. Ms Banerjee has already sent the wrong signals on water and power charges and has been promising to create thousands of new jobs for teachers and policemen. The latter can be financially ruinous. Thus, while Tamil Nadu can hope to survive the unpredictability of Ms Jayalalithaa, West Bengal is in danger of going down further if Ms Banerjee’s populism is not reined in.
