Shikha Mukerjee | As public trust wanes, Didi faces her biggest challenge

The postponement of the football Derby as a mark of support to the ongoing protests and demand for justice that includes the vow to “Reclaim the Night” is one sign of that distrust. The refusal of a sprinkling of Durga Puja committees of the Rs 85,000 grant by the Mamata Banerjee government is another. These are signs of the of the spread of discontent and disappointment in Didi’s response to the horrific gangrape and barbaric murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor at the government-run R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital and public solidarity with the tens of thousands of women who spontaneously mobilised across 300 locations in West Bengal on August 14-15 night.

Football obsession is the stuff of epic tales of multi-generational loyalty to either the Mohun Bagan Athletic Club or its rival, East Bengal Football Club, in West Bengal. So is Durga Puja and the clubs and committees that organise the celebrations. When the football clubs decide to take a stand on a civil-political issue, it is an event even bigger than the Derby. Mamata Banerjee, who knows this, should have thought over her government’s decisions on tackling the crisis that she has mismanaged big time.

Instead of sitting across the table with the very seriously disturbed young doctors of R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital other medical colleges across the state to understand their protest and their fears, by not announcing a major overhaul of the medical college administration structure and a shakeup of the bureaucracy, the police and the political leadership, Mamata Banerjee has opted for policy changes that excluded women by discouraging them from night shifts. In doing so she confirmed the Opposition’s point that Kolkata and indeed West Bengal was not safe for working women.

By her mindless response to the R.G. Kar Medical College incident, she belied the National Crime Records Bureau data which ranked Kolkata as the safest of cities for women, where the incidence of reported crimes was comparatively the lowest. In doing so, she revealed her preferred fallback position, a ghastly patriarchal remedy for a problem that challenged the prevailing toxic masculinity of perceiving women as prey.

The decisions and her inaction, possibly born of a lack of confidence in her ability to take on the extremely sensitive and certainly volatile task of persuading the protesting doctors to return to work, and restore normalcy in healthcare services, will cost her dearly. For over a week, emergency and outdoor patient services have been disrupted not only in R.G. Kar Hospital, one of the busiest in the state, but in most of the government hospitals in West Bengal.

The public, meaning patients and their families, have not voiced their discontent over the enforced deprivation of services. That tolerance could end any time and then it would be up to Mamata Banerjee to clean up the mess. Knowing all this, her choice of joining battle with the Opposition, going on a rally with her women warriors as a mark of her support to the women’s organic mobilisation demanding justice and the necessary conditions for them to Reclaim the Night have been formulaic, in other words predictable.

What Mamata Banerjee has not figured out yet is that time is against her for two reasons. First, ever since she became chief minister in 2011, the clock has been ticking; a generation has grown up on the promise and in the expectation of “Poriborton”. “Abhaya” too, as the victim has been named by the public, grew up in the belief that Mamata Banerjee would deliver “Poriborton”, because the doctor trainee and her colleagues all belong to that generation.

The prolonged protest and disruption in healthcare services by the young doctors is part of a deeper malaise; anti-incumbency that invariably catches up with all ruling parties and governments that have remained in office for more than one five-year term. It does not mean that any one of the three Opposition parties in West Bengal, be it the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress or the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its Left allies, are a better alternative. It does not mean that any of them could, as of now, singly or jointly, defeat the Trinamul Congress.

It does mean, however, that Mamata Banerjee is possibly past her peak. The out in the open rumblings within the Trinamul Congress, from Abhishek Banerjee, who probably reads the pulse of the younger, more educated and ambitious generation better to the very senior leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, are indications that Didi has mismanaged the problem.

There is no denying that party governance under Mamata Banerjee’s aegis has spread its tentacles within the bureaucracy, the police and the state administration. The Chief Minister, herself a captive of this parallel system, had railed against her party’s high-profile and petty leaders who wielded power, managed illegalities, including usurping government land, running land mafias and construction syndicates, encroachments of urban spaces, at a meeting on June 24. The hawker eviction drive that followed was deliberately botched, forcing her to backtrack on her deadline of cleaned-up streets and vacated spaces.

The Opposition’s call for her ouster is rhetorical; so is her response. The real challenge to Mamata Banerjee is the spontaneous mobilisation by women, her most dependable vote bank since 2008, when she began her ascent to power. The other mobilisation, some of it politically organised or inspired, some of it not, of the younger generation is what should worry her most. The convergence of women, football fanatics and youth voters in support of the same cause can destabilise her. The bell, as it were, has begun to toll for Mamata Banerjee.

All that separates her from serious trouble and certain victory is a bare two per cent of the vote share. The Trinamul Congress vote share went up by two per cent to 45.77 per cent, and the BJP’s vote share declined by two per cent to 38.73 per cent in the just-concluded Lok Sabha elections.

She may be correct in calculating that public attention will fade once the perpetrators of the heinous crime are charged and the legal process begins its slow crawl of pronouncing judgment. If, however, her actions are perceived as a breach of trust, breaking a promise of “Poriborton” she had made, it could prove to be politically expensive.