Mamata Banerjee - India's Political Superwoman

Mamata Banerjee, once derided for her humble beginnings, just stunned her country by sweeping the entrenched communists from power in Bengal. As she prepares to take over as chief minister, Shoma Chaudhury has the story of the firebrand who broke all of India's rules.

Imagine a tiny sparrow of a woman in a crumpled white sari, in a narrow, crowded lane in Kolkata, yelling colloquially into a microphone, asking the heaving, sweating sea of people around her to go home and bathe and relax. All around her is a jubilant crescendo: conch shells blowing, drums beating, a celebratory vapor of green powder everywhere. A moment later, she shouts over the din to call out to a young girl in the crowd, urging her to bring all the children out of the scorching sun and into the modest house behind her. She is raucous, tactile, familiar. Everyone calls her Didi, elder sister.

Fifty-six-year-old Mamata Banerjee may not fit the global image of the political superstar, but she has just turned India on its head. Politics in India is no stranger to tectonic shifts, but few electoral upheavals in the country's 64-year history as an independent nation can match what Banerjee pulled off last week. On May 13, Indian democracy served up one of its most triumphal stories. With the world media jostling outside her office, she swept a seemingly invincible communist government out of Bengal after 34 years of unbroken rule. It's a feat not even the 125-year-old Congress Party could dream of. Banerjee's party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), is only 13 years old.

Banerjee's victory will have major national repercussions. The Left Front, the alliance of doctrinaire communist parties she defeated, has always led governments in only three Indian states, but its clout in Bengal gave it disproportionate teeth, making it a formidable player on the national stage. It was a bulwark against the communal politics of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party; it reined in the excesses of the Congress Party's economic policies, and it was the natural glue for any combination of parties that wished to cobble together a third political front nationally. (In 2008, in fact, the Left Front almost unseated the government when it opposed a trust vote over the Indo-U.S. Nuclear Bill.) The Front's defeat in Bengal, therefore, will open up a crucial power vacuum at the center. Banerjee will wield greater influence.

But for the moment, all the transformative exhilarations of Banerjee's story, and the incredible power of democracy, lie back in Bengal. On May 20, when she is sworn in, she will have stormed a male bastion to become Bengal's first woman chief minister. With her victory, India now has powerful women chief ministers in three of its most populous states: Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. India also has a woman president; a woman leader of the opposition in parliament, and a woman at the head of India's oldest party, the Congress. That is probably a record unmatched anywhere in the world.

In a curious twist, none of these female chief ministers is married or has children. But that's where the similarities among them end. Unlike the other two—Jayalalitha and Mayawati, who use only one name—Banerjee is a self-made woman. She has had no political godfathers; she did not inherit her party from any mentor. Banerjee started life as the daughter of poor, working-class parents in a dingy Kolkata neighborhood, close to a notorious red-light district and a putrid canal. She was 13 when her father died, and Banerjee not only brought up all six of her siblings, she put herself through college as well. They were hard years. The house was a box, and space was at a premium. At night, the family doubled up on the bed: Some lay on it, some beneath it on the floor. Banerjee still lives with her mother in that house, now only modestly improved and enlarged to accommodate the TMC party office next door.

Unlike other political leaders, she is scrupulously honest and has not used caste, class, religion, language, money, or any divisive argument to wrest power.

Article - Chaudhury Banerjee Trinamool Congress party leader Mamata Banerjee speaks to the supporters in Kolkata, India on May 13, 2011. (Photo: AP Photos)

This humble beginning is one of the high notes in the story. In a land of legendary snobberies, ruled by starched patrician elders known as the bhadralok, the firebrand Banerjee has broken all the rules. She has taken on the entrenched party machinery. She has refused to groom herself into acceptability. She has heaped abuse on foes; danced on a politician's car; threatened to commit suicide publicly from a pole; picketed inside the well of parliament; hurled her shawl at the august speaker; and grabbed political opponents by their collars. For years, the Kolkata elite derided her as a jhee—an ugly diminutive for a housemaid—and witheringly mocked her accent and clothes. Unfazed, the mercurial Banerjee blazed on, rising in the ranks of the Congress Party.

In 1993, while on a protest march with other Congress workers, Banerjee was brutally beaten by the police and communist cadres. Thirteen of her colleagues lost their lives, and her skull was cracked. This proved to be a huge turning point. Banerjee swore she would not rest till she had wiped out the Communist Party and its autocratic regime. In 1999, disillusioned with the Congress as well, she floated the Trinamool Congress, a ragtag band of rebels, disenfranchised workers, and sullen lumpen.

Political parties ask Matua community

For Karl Marx, religion was the opium of the masses. But for the political parties in West Bengal — even for the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) — it is a straw to clutch in on the do-or-die election battle.

As the state is high on poll fever, both the CPM and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) are trying to woo the Matua community, which is a deciding factor in more than 74 constituencies. It has more than 1 crore followers in West Bengal and around Rs 4 crore across the country. When the Left front government tried to impress them with sops, the TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee had herself became a follower and became the chief patron of the All India Matua Mahasabha in 2010.

Moreover, the TMC is fielding Manjulkrishna Thakur — the son of Binapani Devi (Boroma), the 92-year-old spiritual leader of Matua Mahasabha —from Gaighata constituency in North 24 Parganas district. Gaighata has gone to polls on Wednesday. This move is supposed to swing majority of the community votes in favour of the TMC. Matuas are scheduled castes or scheduled tribes, who mainly live in eight districts of West Bengal — including Howrah, North and South 24-Parganas, Nadia, Cooch Behar, Malda, South Dinajpur and North Dinajpur.

“The votes of our community would be the deciding factor during this election. For years, political parties didn’t listen to our necessities. Now, Didi has become a part of us and is working for the overall development of Matuas. Our votes are crucial in atleast 78 assembly seats. About 50 per cent of voters in my seat are Matuas,” Thakur said. The Railways minister had even shared a dias with Boroma. She promised to upgrade the Thakurnagar railway station, build a stadium and a railway hospital.Earlier, the community was a vote bank for the left parties, but in 2008 Panchayat polls and 2009 Lok Sabha polls, those votes shifted in favour of Trinamool and it reflected in the results. The Left promised them a college and a function in the state capital to recognize the contribution of the Thakur family, the founding family of Matuas.

The state government has also offered the Matua Mahasangha 20 cottah of land to build a research oganisation and instituted a scholarship in the name of Harichand Thakur, its founder.To counter the Trinamool’s tactics, leaders of different political parties like Biman Bose and Brinda Karat of the CPM and Manas Bhunia, president of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress had visited Baroma. Infact, CPM stalwart Goutam Deb and the TMC leader Mukul Roy even shared a dias together with Baroma late last year.Though tried to nullify the impact of Matuas in the elections, Manoj Kanti Biswas, the CPM candidate in Gaighata also seemed to be on defence and attacked Banerjee’s moves. As political parties are fighting for their share of votes, people hope that the promises will turn out to reality once the elections are are over.

Politicians snatch religious fervour in Damdama Sahib

Baisakhi at Damdama Sahib might signify fun, fair and devotion for the Punjabis, but the occasion, which is considered most auspicious in the region, had only one connotation for the politicians-rival bashing.  With a full-fledged political agenda, heavily-loaded with political bashing, the two main parties of Punjab, SAD and Congress, used the occasion of Baisakhi at Talwandi Sabo, as another platform to fire salvos at each other before the electoral battle actually begins. Both political parties left no stone unturned to outshine their opponents in their show of strength at their political conferences.

Private vehicles, tractor-trolleys, tempos and buses were seen transporting people from far-flung areas to the respective rallies as political hangover threatened to hijack religious fervour at this fifth temporal seat of Sikhs, Takht Damdama Sahib. Highly confident of returning to power in the next assembly elections, Congress leaders, led by Amarinder Singh, on Thursday gave a call to the party rank and file to throw Akalis out of power to ensure proper development and welfare of all people in the state.

While Congress leaders accused Akalis of "unbridled corruption" in the state, SAD patron and Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal and his son Sukhbir Badal, on their part, slammed Congress led UPA government for "rampant corruption in the country".  Religion figured in their speeches by way of religious hymns from Guru Granth Sahib, but that too, only to paint their opponents as "anti-social, antireligious persons''.

Seeking a return to power on the poll plank of development, SAD claimed that the state was on "fast track development and people thus need to vote for the party to maintain this tempo of development''.  Former Congress CM Amarinder, however, asserted that the Akalis "had lost the confidence of people as they had not done anything during their four years rule, except for victimizing political opponents and robbing the state of its assets''.

Chatwal ideas about politics

 

‘I have no interest in Indian politics,’ said high-profile Indian American hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal as he again denied a purported WikiLeaks report suggesting that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was trying to win Akali Dal support during the 2008 trust vote through him.  ‘I have no interest in Indian politics because I live in this country and spend most of my time here,’ said Chatwal.

The purported WikiLeaks cable from the US embassy said that Captain Satish Sharma ‘considered to be a very close family friend of Sonia Gandhi’ told the US political counsellor that the Congress party was working hard to ensure that the UPA government wins the July 22 confidence vote on the India-US nuclear deal.

‘Sharma said that PM Singh and others were trying to work on the Akali Dal (8 votes) through financier Sant Chatwal and others, but unfortunately it did not work out,’ according to the leaked cable. Chatwal said he worked day and night to get the landmark India-US nuclear deal approved by the US Congress, but played no role for its passage in India.

‘India is my passion. My heart is there’ and ‘this deal is fantastic for India and fantastic for America’, Chatwal, who is known to be close to the Clintons, told IANS in an interview in his Manhattan office. ‘So I had to work hard. I had to be in Washington every week and put up my day and night’ on the job, he said.

Because he knew members of the US Congress, Manmohan Singh asked him to work on that with planning and a proper strategy to get the deal done in the face of lobbying by China, Pakistan and ‘our enemies’ against the pact, Chatwal said. Initially ‘Hillary Clinton was not helping as she thought it could be a political issue as she was planning a presidential run,’ he said.

‘But when I put the whole package together, she also came on board.’ ‘That’s how it started on May 17, 2006,’ when he hosted a Congressional reception in support of the deal under the aegis of the US-India Friendship Council, Chatwal said recalling that as many as 18 senators and 60 members of the House attended.

After intense lobbying when the deal was finally approved by the US Congress, Chatwal received a letter of appreciation from Manmohan Singh in November 2008 congratulating him ‘for the important contribution you have made in bringing the two countries together’.  The Padma Bhushan award followed.

Manmohan Singh was ‘the only one who knew how hard I worked, spending a lot of time and money’, he said proffering a copy of the letter from the Indian prime minister. ‘In politics nothing comes free. You have to write cheques in the American political system,’ Chatwal said. ‘I know the system. I had to work very hard. So I did as much as I could.’

‘I was interested in building a relationship between India and America,’ he said. For that he cultivated US Congress members and ‘I invested a lot of money in’ Michael Dukakis, Democratic presidential nominee in 1988. ‘But he lost the election because he failed in the debate.’

‘Then I thought, let me bet on (Bill) Clinton,’ Chatwal said recalling how he went to meet the then Arkansas governor before the 1992 primaries when ‘nobody looked at Clinton and realised his potential’. Chatwal said he had been making efforts to build US-India relations since 1979. ‘But real break I got with President Clinton, whom I helped before he became president.’

‘I bet on him. He became president. Already we were good friends like a family,’ he said. ‘And really he (Clinton) was the one who opened the door for India.’ ‘Clinton said ‘what do you want? I said ‘I want to build relations between India and America. He said, ‘That’s it. I thought you were looking for a position in the White House’.’

‘No, I am not. I am a businessman. I don’t want any political position. So he promised’ to help build US-India relations, Chatwal recalled. But ‘Indian politics, I have no interest,’ he said. ‘Whether it’s BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) or Samajwadi Party’ he had helped them all in reaching out to Clinton, Chatwal said, suggesting that Clinton had invited then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at his behest.

‘Our relationship is with India’. Be it BJP or United Progressive Alliance, he had looked after leaders of all partes, Chatwal said. But ‘I have nothing to do with any political party. I don’t want to get involved in Indian politics. No sense in that.’

Political agitations disturb railway service

 

A string of political agitations has virtually stopped the Indian Railways in its tracks. As Jats threaten a siege of Delhi, the damages calculated by the railways have already amounted to, on an average, 10 trains getting cancelled daily. According to the railways, 3,611 trains were cancelled and 3,100 more diverted between April 2010 and this March because of political agitations. This not only resulted in a loss of Rs 1,700 crore to the railways but dented the on-time performance of trains by 30 per cent.

The protests were spread far and wide across the country - from Rajasthan (where the Gujjars agitated) and Andhra Pradesh (where supporters are demanding a separate Telangana state) to Jharkhand and West Bengal (where the writ of Maoists run), and Haryana and Uttar Pradesh (where the Jats are agitating). The agitations affected more than 7,000 trains between April 2010 and March 2011. Not to be missed, the movement of more than 12,000 trains was also affected during the same period because of law and order problems.

With the agitating Jats threatening to block the movement of trains on the busy Delhi-Ambala route in the coming days, the number of trains affected will rise, so will the losses for the railways by the end of the current financial year. On Friday also, 80 trains were cancelled, besides 38 more being terminated midway. The Northern Railways cancelled 56 trains and have curtailed the routes of 26 more trains on Saturday.

A senior Railway Board official said: "It has not even been two months since we got over the Gujjar agitation, which made the railways bleed in the last quarter of the current fiscal year. Just a week after the Budget, the Jats were on the tracks and continue to disrupt services. About 2,600 trains have been affected since March 5, including 1,250 trains getting cancelled. We paid refunds to about eight lakh passengers and are worried about the future with the rush holiday season approaching." The Gujjar agitation, which started on December 20 and continued till January 6 this year, led to the cancellation of 394 trains. Another 516 were diverted. About 440 trains were delayed during those 17 days of protests that blocked the entire Delhi- Mumbai and Delhi- Jaipur sections.

A big chunk of the cancellations has been in the Maoist- affected areas in Jharkhand and West Bengal. "From May 2010 to March this year, about 1,656 trains were cancelled and 1,698 more were diverted. About 3,800 trains were rescheduled in the insurgency-hit areas, where rail roko protests resulted in huge losses to the railways," a senior officer said. With demands for statehood and reservation becoming intense in some parts of the country, railway officials fear such agitations would further strain the railway infrastructure.

Two days of Telangana agitation on March 1 and 10 not only led to the cancellation of 311 trains, but also disrupted local transport services between Hyderabad, Secunderabad, Ligampally and Falaknuma. The railways get worst hit due to blockade of freight movement during agitations, railway officials said.

Govt drive to 49% FDI in insurance

 

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday said the government is talking to political parties to garner support required to push through a bill that allows 49% FDI in the insurance sector. Speaking on the sidelines of an event to commemorate the centenary of Central Bank of India, Mukherjee said: "We have started talking to various stakeholders which, in this case, are political parties because we do not have 272 Congress MPs. Therefore, we would require support of other political parties. I have started talking to them and I hope there will be a broad consensus in the matter."

He said the government has set up a Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC), which will have its first meeting in a few days to rewrite and clean up the financial sector laws and bring them in line with the requirements of the sector. Later, talking to industry leaders at a conference organized by industry trade body Assocham, Mukherjee said that all the tax proposals in this year's Budget were aimed at aligning them with the Goods & Services Tax (GST). The FM also said that the GST has to align with the tax rates in different states in force now.

Mukherjee pointed out that the government wanted to undertake reforms to simplify and place administrative procedures concerning taxation, trade and tariffs and subsidies on electronic interface, which would be free of discretion and bureaucratic delays. "This would also prepare the ground for the implementation of the DTC and hopefully the GST as well, from April 2012," he added. The FM said he was expecting companies to increase investments in return for higher margins that they enjoyed through Budget proposals like not going for any hike in excise duty. "Just as I have to meet your expectations to get you to scale new heights of productivity and growth, you also have to meet my hopes, in the process strengthening my hands."

He also said that he wanted corporates to help him in pursuing the government's economic reforms agenda. "I can do more, when I have the space to do more. You have to do your bit to create that space for me," Mukherjee said. On this year's Budget proposals, Mukherjee said that he had the option to roll back the central excise duty to levels prevailing in November 2008. At that time, duties were cut as a corrective measure in response to the financial crisis, with the aim of arresting the then deteriorating economic situation. "I have chosen not to do so and retain the rates at 10% for two reasons. I would like to see improved business margins translated into higher investment rates. I would also like to stay my course towards GST," he added.

Earlier, delivering the Sir Sorabji Pochkhanawala Memorial Lecture 2011, the finance minister said that although public sector banks have done a good job in their outreach, the cost of intermediation remained high. "The cost of banking intermediaries in India is high and bank penetration is limited to only a few customer segments and geographies. We are trying to address this in collaboration with the Reserve Bank of India and with the active participation of the banking and non-banking financial entities." He said that financial inclusion is a key determinant of sustainable and inclusive growth which, in turn, is essential for building an equitable society.

Mukherjee said that for fiscal year 2010-11, the Indian economy was expected to record a GDP growth of 8.6%, which will take it back on the high-growth path that the economy was traversing on in the years prior to the crisis. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, who was in Mumbai on Sunday, said that the government is talking to other political parties to garner support required to push through a bill that allows 49% FDI in the insurance sector. He also said that all the tax proposals in this year's Budget were aimed at aligning them with the Goods & Services Tax (GST) , a new and simplified indirect tax code that the government is trying to introduce next year. The FM also said that the GST has to align with the tax rates in different states that are in force now.

Speaking on the sidelines of an event to commemorate the centenary celebrations of Central Bank of India, Mukherjee said: "We have started talking to various stakeholders which, in this case, are political parties because we do not have 272 Congress MPs. Therefore, we would require support of other political parties. I have started talking to them and I hope there will be a broad consensus in the matter." He said the government has also set up a Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC), which will have its first meeting in a few days to rewrite and clean up the financial sector laws and bring them in line with the requirements of the sector.

Talking to industry leaders at a conference organized by industry trade body Assocham, Mukherjee pointed out that the government wanted to undertake reforms to simplify and place administrative procedures concerning taxation, trade and tariffs and subsidies on electronic interface, which would be free of discretion and bureaucratic delays. "This would also prepare the ground for the implementation of the DTC and hopefully the GST as well, from April 2012," he added. The FM said he was expecting companies to increase investments in return for higher margins that companies enjoyed through Budget proposals like not going for any hike in excise duty. "Just as I have to meet your expectations to get you to scale new heights of productivity and growth, you also have to meet my hopes, in the process strengthening my hands."

He also said that he wanted corporates to help him in pursuing the government's economic reforms agenda. "I can do more, when I have the space to do more. You have to do your bit to create that space for me," Mukherjee said. In reply to a question from one of those present about setting up a monitoring body for monetary expenditure, the FM said that could be taken up during the formulations of the 12th five year plan. On this year's Budget proposals, Mukherjee said that he had the option to roll back the central excise duty to levels prevailing in November 2008. At that time, duties were cut as a corrective measure in response to the financial crisis, with the aim of arresting the then deteriorating economic situation. "I have chosen not to do so and retain the rates at 10% for two reasons. I would like to see improved business margins translated into higher investment rates. I would also like to stay my course towards GST," he added.

The FM also said that he wanted to address some topical and emerging concerns through his budget proposals, because only then the government could hope to bring a convergence in the expectations of investors, entrepreneurs and consumers "on the macroeconomic prospects of the economy, and elicit the required response from them." Earlier, delivering the Sir Sorabji Pochkhanawala Memorial Lecture 2011, the finance minister said that although public sector banks have done a good job in their outreach, the cost of intermediation remained high. "The cost of banking intermediaries in India is high and bank penetration is limited to only a few customer segments and geographies. We are trying to address this in collaboration with the Reserve Bank of India and with the active participation of the banking and non-banking financial entities." He said that financial inclusion is a key determinant of sustainable and inclusive growth which, in turn, is essential for building an equitable society. "We have accorded high importance to financial inclusion to cover the entire gamut of financial services pertaining to savings, credit, insurance and transfers. A major unfinished, in some sense ongoing, task in this context is to promote greater financial literacy and investor protection," he said.

Mukherjee said that for fiscal year 2010-11, the Indian economy was expected to record a GDP growth of 8.6%, which will take it back on the high-growth path that the economy was traversing on in the years prior to the crisis. He added that following the global financial crisis, the government has been compelled to some of the principles of economic and financial policy making. "The global developments underscore the importance of understanding and regulating the financial markets and the innovative financial products in the interest of sustaining growth and development. We have seen how unfettered growth of financial sector can have dangerous implications for the real sector, both in the developed and the developing world," he said.

"The fact that India has not gone through any financial turbulence, as a result of the earlier phase of financial deregulation is a testimony to our consistent view that reforms in global standards have to be adapted to local conditions" he said. The FM also said he was expecting companies to increase investments in return for higher margins that companies enjoyed through budget proposals like not going for any hike in excise duty. "Just as I have to meet your expectations to get you to scale new heights of productivity and growth, you also have to meet my hopes, in the process strengthening my hands," Mukherjee told industry leaders at a conference organised by industry trade body Assocham.

The FM also said that he wanted corporates to help him in pursuing the government's economic reforms agenda. "I can do more, when I have the space to do more. You have to do your bit to create that space for me," Mukherjee said. In reply to a question from one of those present about setting up a monitoring body for monetary expenditure, the FM said that could be taken up during the formulations of the 12th five year plan.

On this year budget proposals, Mukherjee said that he had the option to roll back the central excise duty to levels prevailing in November 2008. At that time, duties were cut as a corrective measure in response to the financial crisis, with the aim of arresting the then deteriorating economic situation. "I have chosen not to do so and retain the rates at 10% for two reasons. I would like to see improved business margins translated into higher investment rates. I would also like to stay my course towards GST," he added.

The FM also said that he wanted to address some topical and emerging concerns through his budget proposals, because only then the government could hope to bring a convergence in the expectations of investors, entrepreneurs and consumers "on the macroeconomic prospects of the economy, and elicit the required response from them."

Ekta Yatra brings BJP political dividends

 

The showdown at Lal Chowk has further fuelled BJP’s ambitions which is contemplating to move the court on the one hand and also to raise the issue in Parliament on the other hand. It wants to make the debate a vigorous one.

The legal aspects of Omar Abdullah’s government’s to block and detain Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj at the Jammu airport as well as stopping of special train carrying BJP workers in Maharashtra are being assessed so as to follow the best legal line. By moving the court for confining the leaders for about six hours at the airport and then “physically abducting” them and sending out of the state; the party wants to keep the matter alive. What might be seen as an administrative ‘victory’ for Omar Abdullah will prove to be a political “triumph” for the BJP.