Around this time exactly a year ago, it was as if the spring had arrived in Bengal. A new government had taken over after a gap of over three decades and the change, whatever be the causal relationship, came as a gush of fresh air.
After the din and bustle of the state elections there was euphoria all around, not least because Mamata Banerjee took over the reins of the beleaguered state but because the Communists had been thrown out of power, exposing their vulnerability.
I remember the ray of hope I saw in the eyes of a young driver whose father lost his job following rampant and irresponsible trade unionism of the Left leaders.
The pout-faced chief ministers the people of the state were used to gave way to a leader who mingled with the masses, drank tea from earthen pots with the proverbial 'proletariat' after getting drenched in rain, responded to phone calls even from political opponents, tried to dissolve the government's partisan position which dominated the political sphere of Bengal for decades and made it a point to prove that she was indeed a people's leader.
The late spring that sprang in the midst of a humid summer filled the air with hope even when the people of the state were despairing the torrential monsoon downpour.
The situation in Darjeeling, the favourite destination of Bengali tourists for generations, was much different from a lull before the storm. The ultra-radical Maoists of Junglemahal took a breather probably to celebrate the downfall of a regime which tried to crush them to the ground only using force without initiating any political process.
And as the newly elected chief minister relished the positive changes that came her way, Mamata Banerjee's followers gradually took the people of the state for a ride.
The ever lasting influence of the CPI-M started showing even in its bitter rival, only driving home the fact the 'party' was one of the few things which got intrinsically associated with the institution of the state in Bengal.
Some of the intellectuals who helped the Trinamool Congress supremo to get the better of the polls started smelling rat. Questions were raked up in people's minds as to whether the transformation that the state underwent actually adhered to the much aspired 'change'. Signs of cracks started surfacing in the rock solid bond between the Trinamool Congress supremo and her intellectual backers.
Soon the waves of 'change' would turn into a Nor'wester that is very common when spring gives way to a baking summer in rural Bengal. This time it was the entire state, and to some extent the national politics, which seemed perplexed by the caricature that came along.
On the one hand, India's central government, led by the Congress, stood helpless in the face of the political onslaught launched by Mamata Banerjee to keep her image as a people's person intact, on the other she epitomised a typical politician in power who saw ghosts in her dreams.
The result was a political disarray gripping the state, and taking advantage of the overall confusion, the CPI-M supporters made full use of their imagination to ridicule and undermine the Trinamool Congress government. It was an irony that the CPI-M which once vehemently opposed the introduction of computers in the state was now trying to make full use of technology to launch a vitriolic campaign against Mamata Banerjee.
Despite some desperate efforts, which often seem mindless and trivial, the opposition is yet to cut any ice in the support base of Mamata Banerjee. The irony again is that the social media campaign of the Left hardly made any impact in rural Bengal, which once formed the crux of their power base.
My sources say whatever impact, if any, the vitriolic campaign could achieve was mainly confined to the urban middle class.
The triviality of such mindless campaign of the Left and the way the Trinamool Congress conducted itself, by getting into a slanging match, in effect brought down the gravitas of the politics in the state to such a level that the real issues facing the people of Bengal got mired in the humdrum of naive political point scoring and brinkmanship.
The sudden spring which ushered in the horizon of Bengal around the same time last year had been short-lived and the people of the state again got stuck in the alley of moribund politics.
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Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
Spring has come and gone. The people were happy, but now some definitely are not. Some fail to see the state slipping from the frying pan into the fire. Sycophants abound. The central government stands by helplessly as its arm is twisted again and again by its ally. Maybe the change that most expected might take place yet. There are still four years to go. If the Mamata Banerjee government does well in the concluding years, people will remember that and not the beginning. But then, perhaps I am being optimistic.
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