The poor are paying the price for the failure of the West Bengal Government to discharge its responsibilities because it is busy promoting its political interests
There is an obscure nursery rhyme that tells of how a kingdom was lost for the want of a nail. The lost nail that someone carelessly failed to replace had consequences that were extraordinary. The same can be said of the failure of the West Bengal Government in responding to all the signals, from the vertiginous drop in postal and small savings between 2010 and 2012 to the letters and reminders from the Securities and Exchange Board of India to act against the so-called chit fund companies, including Saradha, that were collecting money and promising fantastic returns.
If the West Bengal Government had paid heed to what was happening under its nose, instead of encouraging the elected members of the Trinamool Congress and its Government to lend their support to shady operators like Sudipta Sen, then there would be far less destruction and perhaps no one would have died. The suicides of agents and investors of Saradha and indeed other chit fund companies, including Rose Valley is the ghastly consequence of abuse by the powerful of the clout they enjoyed.
Each suicide is a terrible indictment of Government’s failure to act against the interests of the political leadership. Far too many of the Trinamool Congress's leading men have been well known associates of the Saradha boss to avoid reaching the obvious conclusion, that the West Bengal Government ignored the signs in order to promote the relationship. The decision to promote the Saradha Group's media business was evident when the West Bengal Government issued a notification that public libraries supported by the State exchequer would stock three newspapers from the same media house, cancelling the subscription to the leading Bengali daily, Ananda Bazar Patrika, and the leading opposition daily, Ganashakti. The scathing indictment of the ‘big’ television channels and newspapers by Ms Banerjee on more than one occasion, her advocacy of small and new media products were endorsements that contributed to the popularity of operators like Sudipta Sen. The Chief Minister had indeed threatened that she would list the TV channels and the newspapers that people should see and read. It is not difficult to surmise that the TV channels and newspapers she preferred — Pratidin and Sakal Bela and Channel 10 — were run by her hand-picked men.
The connection between the Trinamool Congress, right up to the top, and Saradha Group cannot be denied. The first demonstrators who mobbed Harish Chatterjee Street, the Chief Minister's residence and those who rushed to the Trinamool Congress headquarters bears testimony to the connection. No denials can delete the scenes that were captured on camera of panicking agents and desperate investors who sought protection from the Trinamool Congress supremo and her team of leaders.
Even though a Minister in Ms Banerjee's Cabinet claimed that the State Government was the “fastest” acting Government “in the world” in nabbing the absconder Sudipta Sen, there is no doubt that the same Government slept over warning messages from SEBI and the headlong drop in small savings. By ignoring the signs, the West Bengal Government is guilty of a breach of trust, between its vow to serve the people and its failure to do so. The destruction of the trust that bound Ms Banerjee to the promise of poriborton for Ma-Mati-Manush is to be measured in the numbers of people who have killed themselves over the chit fund fiasco.
The poor are paying the price for the failure of the West Bengal Government to discharge its responsibilities because it was busy promoting the interests of some of its political leaders, however absurd that description may be for sundry journalists and businessmen who crowded under the Trinamool Congress banner in the last few years. If just one agent of the Saradha Group, interviewed on television, succeeded in collecting Rs 1 crore, then how far can the kitty be stretched of the Rs 500 crore announced by Ms Banerjee to bail out the hundreds of thousands of investors who believed that the chit fund was blessed because of its closeness to the Trinamool CongressIJ Was the kitty announced to protect depositor interests or to support sundry individualsIJ In any event, the taxpayer who will contribute to the kitty, must do so by jeopardising their health by consuming larger amounts of tobacco and tobacco products.
