 "Mamata Banerjee")
Mamata Banerjee, and her Trinamool Congress, swept the recent civic body elections in West Bengal, winning 70 of the 92 municipalities. In Kolkata, her party won in 115 of the 144 wards. The Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, which many pundits had predicted would soon finish off Banerjee, drew a blank. As these elections were being seen as the "semi-final" before next year's state elections, the feisty 60-year-old politician-painter can breathe easy.
The various chit-fund scams that played out in West Bengal in the last couple of years, audaciously fanned by BJP, seem to have left Banerjee unscathed - at least for now. The charges of being anti-business haven't diminished her charm, and neither have the widespread student unrest and cases of sexual assault on women.
Banerjee's detractors, and there is no shortage of them, insist she won only because the opposition is in disarray. Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury, professor of political science at Rabindra Bharati University, feels that people of West Bengal do not like frequent changes, as was evidenced in the long Congress rule after Independence and then even longer Communist rule. This made them vote in favour of Banerjee.
They, Basu Ray Chaudhury adds, don't like radical change either: Banerjee's predecessor, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee of the Left Front, paid the price of introducing dramatic changes in the state's socio-economic ethos when he started to court Big Business.
Banerjee's friends say that rivals have accepted defeat. Thus, BJP is now warming up to her - it has many bills to push through in the Rajya Sabha. The new-found bonhomie between the two camps has been flagged off by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi who chose Kolkata to launch three national social security schemes and who will be in Burnpur tomorrow to launch IISCO Steel Plant's expansion and modernisation programme with Banerjee by his side.
Her friends also insist that Banerjee has done some solid work on the ground after she came to power in 2011. Politically, she has lived up to at least two of her three key electoral promises: ridding Lalgarh of Naxals, bringing peace to Darjeeling and returning 400 acres to farmers at Singur. These days, Banerjee often says: "Pahar (the hills of Darjeeling) hansche (smiling), Lalgarh hansche" - her lyrical take on the peace in Darjeeling as well as Lalgarh. The strikes that caused widespread disruption in Darjeeling are now infrequent. In Lalgarh, where the death toll caused by Naxal violence was as high as 100 every quarter, there is peace and unmistakable signs of development: bridges, roads and jobs.
Trinamool Congress workers celebrate the party’s win in the recent civic body polls
In Kolkata, Banerjee has fared far better than the Left Front on beautification, notwithstanding the blue and white stripes here and there. "The city is much better lit and cleaner and that is for all to see. Solar lamps have been installed in some of the public parks," points out Dipankar Dasgupta, former professor of economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, who lives in South Kolkata. Waterlogging doesn't throw the city out of gear any more.
Banerjee has brought in accountability on the administrative front. To enable close monitoring of the government's social welfare schemes, she conducts at least two meetings in a year with all the district magistrates and other relevant officials in Kolkata. Points are assigned to them on the basis of performance, and every six months, Banerjee visits each district with all the top officials to oversee the development work. Thus, cardiac care, critical baby care and dialysis units have been set up in every district. The fair-price medicine shops have also struck a chord with the people. "There is closer scrutiny and constant pressure to perform," says a district magistrate.
The crucial test for any state is to what extent it can attract investments. And here Banerjee's record is abysmal. West Bengal's single largest investment, the Rs 35,000-crore Salboni steel plant of JSW Steel, is in limbo, though for reasons beyond the state's control. Sajjan Jindal has returned the 294 acres his company had purchased for the project to the state government for free, though he has promised to revisit the project later.
Banerjee's strident pitch against special economic zones has led to uncertainty over Infosys and Wipro's campuses. Both the companies were promised SEZ status by the Left Front government, which would have entailed big tax concessions, but Banerjee is unwilling to fulfil the promises. There are several other investment proposals that have got either stalled or shelved.
To be fair, Banerjee never promised West Bengal large investments by big business. Her poll plank in 2011 was agitation against acquisition of farmland for industry in Nandigram and Singur, which ultimately led to Tata Motors relocating its Nano project from Singur to Sanand in Gujarat. That's when Ratan Tata, then Tata Sons chairman, called her "the bad M" and Modi, then Gujarat chief minister, "the good M".
Still, over the past year or so, Banerjee has managed to get some projects going. The airport city project at Andal is in the final stages of take-off. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has granted the aerodrome licence to the airport which is now in the process of getting carriers to operate out of it. Banerjee has done her bit by offering sales tax waiver on aviation turbine fuel, concessions on parking-landing charges and seat underwriting.
The Rs 6,500-crore Bengal Shriram Hi-Tech City, a real estate project that had been pending since 2006 for want of clearances from the state government, was given the green signal last September. "Work on the project is currently under way," says Bengal Shriram Hi-Tech City CEO Debasish Som.
In fact, real estate is one sector that is truly buzzing in West Bengal: 22 new townships entailing an investment of Rs 76,000 crore will be set up in the state. This became possible after the government last year restored the exemption for townships from the cap of 24 acres on land ownership it had imposed in 2011. Practicality has finally got the better of rhetoric.
The shareholders' dispute in Haldia Petrochemicals, which dates back to 2005, seems to have been finally settled with the state government agreeing to transfer its holding in favour of The Chatterjee Group. The shares are yet to be transferred, but at least resolution is in sight.
Some policy initiatives may help attract companies. Last month, Banerjee's government passed the West Bengal Agricultural Produce Marketing (Regulation) (Amendment) Bill, 2014, which paves the way for private players to buy directly from farmers and allows them to operate wholesale yards for a fee. The state also plans to set up Krishak Bazaars, through public-private partnerships, which will allow farmers to sell their produce directly to retailers.
Banerjee, who is considered more Left than the Left Front, had fought divestment in Coal India and Hindustan Copper when it was first brought up by the United Progressive Alliance government in 2010, but has successfully divested five tea gardens in Darjeeling and Dooars that belonged to West Bengal Tea Development Corporation. Safeguard clauses were built in to ensure that there was no retrenchment of workers.
That's a leaf out of the Left Front's book. In 2005, the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government sold 90 per cent of its holding in the heritage property, Great Eastern Hotel, to Bharat Hotels after two aborted attempts in 1995 and 2001. Smaller divestments were also made during that time.
Banerjee's close aides don't think there is any conflict in her views on divestment. "Our position on divestment is that we will first try and revive the public sector units. Only if we fail will we consider divesting," former West Bengal industry minister Partha Chatterjee explains.
At least one businessman insists that Banerjee is no longer anti-industry. "My problem was solved by her in weeks. I took it to her and she made an exception. Of course, I can't tell what the problem was," says an overawed Marwari businessman from Kolkata.
That's a far cry from Banerjee's early days when the Marwari promoters of Emami were taken into custody after a fire killed 90 people at their AMRI Hospital. There was widespread resentment against the establishment and Kolkata's Marwaris felt they were being discriminated against. Many had openly voiced their concerns - a rare sight for the city's conservative lot.
That heartburn is history. Banerjee made sure to drive home the point before the civic body polls. Her emissaries (Industry Minister Amit Mitra, Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim and Kolkata Mayor Sovan Chatterjee) participated in a pre-Holi event organised by The International Marwari Federation. Participation is an understatement - Mitra and Hakim were seen playing the dafli to Rang barse, the rambunctious Holi number sung by Amitabh Bachchan in Silsila.
Banerjee is making discreet changes to her other populist policies as well. Remember how Banerjee withdrew support to UPA in 2012 in protest against the rise in diesel prices, reduction in LPG subsidy and foreign investment in retail? Things are different now. Between 2013 and 2014, West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Corporation has been allowed to up user charges by 26 per cent in five installments. Last August, after dragging her feet for a while, Banerjee let bus operators raise fares by Rs 1 on the back of an increase in diesel prices.
A simplified tax payment system, curbing leakages and reform in value added tax have helped the state register a nearly 30 per cent increase in tax collections in 2012-13 (revised estimates) to Rs 32,405 crore.
Information technology has been used in other areas of administration as well. The government has rolled out initiatives like e-tendering and e-treasury in the financial sector. Any tender under Rs 5 lakh can be submitted online, while under the e-treasury reforms, the government has restructured the entire system of fund allocation to enable real time monitoring and management of fund movement in government departments.
"Nothing much has happened for big industry to come and set up shop here. But the medium- and small-scale sectors which are equally important for employment generation are growing significantly," Dasgupta says. Figures speak for themselves. Bank credit to the sectors between 2008-09 and 2010-11 was Rs 14,557 crore - it jumped to Rs 40,713 crore between 2011-12 and 2013-14. In 2011, there were only 54 medium- and small-scale clusters in the state; now there are 215.
This may help Banerjee in the 2016 elections. That there is no credible opposition only makes her task easier.
