West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is now perhaps over-confident about her connection to the voter, and uneasy about it too. That’s the problem
Along with the dynamics, the compulsions that steer the trade- mark actions of political leaders, change. It is a fallacy of the naïve to expect that the ‘Didi’ of the opposition years will remain unchanged after becoming Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Responsibilities of governance and political management as the ruling regime demand that Didi alters her operating style.
What is true of the hand-pumping, baby-cuddling presidential candidates in the United States is true for the leader next door. Security considerations create undeniable barriers and these have to be accommodated by the successful political leader, who, if a populist one, must develop a strategy that leaps across the physical divide to retain that emotional connect that underlies the relationship to a fervent support base learn. Compulsions of security trotted out by a police chief after women demonstrators were grabbed and pulled away from the vicinity of Ms Banerjee’s residence is intriguing.
The need to make excuses and use security as a shield, by the leader and her minders, to provide an explanation that covers the inexplicable or downright insensitive reaction of Chief Minister Banerjee to the ghastly rape, mutilation and murder in Kamdoni, a village near Barasat, in North 24 Parganas, that is in the neighbourhood of Kolkata's airport, is an indicator of one of two things or both. First, that she is using security considerations to keep away from a problem, because geography is not even a part of the problem. Second, she is confident that despite the outrage and disappointment of the locals of Kamdoni, she can snap her fingers and they will return to the fold of fervent admirers. One week separates the demonstrators outside her house from the tragedy at Kamdoni; a week during which another two young women have been raped and murdered in West Bengal. And in that one week, security has become the reason for Didi's distance from the masses.
Taking supporters for granted is the mistake that the overconfident make. The Congress has done it. The CPI(M) and their left allies have done it too. And it now seems, Ms Banerjee is on the verge of toppling over into that abyss. The signals from the supporters are easy to track. The angry young men and women of Kamdoni as well as the older people, especially mothers, have questioned how she can spend time at a ‘festival’ and not make time for them. One activist arrested outside the Chief Minister's residence was clearly puzzled that Ms Banerjee did not even step out.
Real or perceived the threat to the Chief Minister from the Maoists, need to be taken as seriously, as the risk that the Opposition in its newly found resurgence presents. Sensing an opportunity that the details of the Howrah parliamentary by-election result revealed, confirming a possibility unveiled after the Assembly by-election to three seats, in which the Trinamool Congress, the Congress and the left won one seat each, the Opposition is pushing more and more assertively to make its presence felt and its voice heard. The now obvious reluctance of the Trinamool Congress to get the panchayat election over and done is another indication that the Opposition is working to take advantage of the West Bengal Government’s prevarications in the matter. A hostile relationship with the State Election Commissioner and the judicial intervention, have added to the perception that the timing is wrong for Trinamool Congress vis-à-vis the panchayat election.
It leads to the inescapable conclusion that Ms Banerjee is at once over-confident about her connection to the voter and uneasy about it too. Hence, the malingering that is curdling the political environment of which popularity is one part and flawed governance the other.
While Ms Banerjee has every reason to be confident, given the reaffirmation of support evident in the Howrah by-election result, the change of style from the time she was in the Opposition to her current one requires an explanation. It is possible that she will brush aside the very muted complaints of aggrieved demonstrators and villagers and emerge for the forthcoming panchayat election campaign in all her former glory in view of the police chief's efforts to reel off her ‘Z’ security status as a reason for hustling away a clutch of activists.