Mamata and Hungary

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s debt-ridden government’s advertising spree is just the start of its publicity efforts on its first anniversary. The chief minister has also granted several interviews. While her walkout from CNN-IBN’s question-and-answer session was widely noticed, some of her statements to foreign newspapers have raised eyebrows, too. She told The Washington Post, for example, that the CPM was plotting with the Maoists and Pakistan’s ISI to discredit and kill her — financed by bankrupt North Korea, Venezuela and, most puzzlingly of all, Hungary. Some people were also startled when she said recently that she had started working on Bengal’s development plans two years before the Assembly elections in which the Trinamool Congress routed the Left Front. Of course, that might explain why the government advertisements took credit for many investments lined up in the years she took power.