Nostalgia noose

Arresting a Jadavpur University (JU) professor for emailing an innocuous cartoon that poked fun at Mamata Banerjee is just indefensible. Coming only weeks after the West Bengal chief minister made a thoughtless remark about the victim of a rape incident in the heart of Kolkata — accusing the lady of lying — it has become the second PR disaster for the Trinamul Congress in quick succession. It has also allowed the CPI(M), acting artfully through frontal organisations and sympathiser entities, the opportunity to disparage Ms Banerjee’s government.
Small-time Trinamul leaders have not helped matters by making ridiculous statements that CPI(M) members and their families should be socially ostracised. Another Trinamul functionary was quoted as saying that the party had a team of 500 people across the country (or the world, it was unclear) monitoring social media sites for anti-Mamata content. This was, of course, comic and later denied as misleading reportage, but the damage had been done.
The CPI(M) would like nothing more than for public opinion to believe that the Trinamul Congress is a party of foolish, dangerous people who cannot be trusted with government. The Trinamul is only helping the CPI(M) in this endeavour.
To be fair, reports of the Trinamul’s demise as an electoral force are grossly exaggerated. This does not mean, however, that the party is doing nothing wrong or that Ms Banerjee is on the cusp of becoming a model administrator. The two are entirely different. The Trinamul can still remain a viable political entity while providing indifferent and even poor government. This is not an unrealistic paradox. West Bengal lived with it for three decades under the CPI(M)’s cadre raj.
In turn, all of this leads to a broader, more compelling question: Is Mamata Banerjee West Bengal’s problem or is she a symptom of the problem? If the latter, then what really is West Bengal’s problem?
Whatever the metropolitan and New Delhi media may say, electorally the Trinamul remains a potent force. It may face some disaffection in Kolkata. It may not be in a position to win again in the Jadavpur Assembly constituency — a long-time CPI(M) bastion where the incumbent chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, lost in the 2011 state election — but its graph is still rising. The CPI(M) is trapped in defeatism. The Marxists are fearing obliteration in the 2013 panchayat elections, which will be Ms Banerjee’s final assault on their once-impregnable rural fortress.
At a more elevated level, the CPI(M) has existential issues to sort out. It has to identify its positioning. Will it embrace the template Mr Bhattacharjee proposed in his final years in office, and gradually become a centrist, market-friendly entity that taps into a now comatose aspirational gene in young Bengal? Will it regress into so-called ideological purity? The bet is on the former but there are enough elements in the party favouring the latter.
Till the debate is sorted out — and till a leader appropriate to the chosen persona is selected — the CPI(M) will continue to remain a sub-optimal election machine. This could take two years, it could take five. Nobody knows. The state of the post-2004 BJP is there for all to see. This gives Ms Banerjee time to make mistakes.
Yet, can she learn from the mistakes? In truth, West Bengal has seen a change of government but not a change in regime. The obsession of the ruling party with becoming not just a political but also a social and economic hegemon; the fear of street thugs who want a cut in all contracts distributed by factories or even residents’ welfare associations — at the core of the troubles of the JU professor and the apartment complex in which he lives; the subservience of the police and the panchayat bureaucracy, the auto-rickshaw syndicates and the vegetable vendors’ associations, to local party bosses: these were all cornerstones of the CPI(M) era. Ms Banerjee’s ambitions for Trinamul are no worse. Sadly they are no better either.
At the root of the Bengali’s pride — and sometimes his imperiousness — is Bengal’s past. Ironically, at the root of the Bengali’s predicament — and sometimes his defensiveness — is also Bengal’s past. History and nostalgia are not so much an advantage and an indulgence here but an albatross round the neck. It will take a strong, down-to-earth yet contemporarily alive leader to break out of this trap — and shake up Bengali society.
For example, Kolkata needs to be pushed not towards some imperial reference point (“We will have a riverfront like London”) and by flattering its sense of being a great city (which it was but no longer is) — but by being forced to acknowledge it now needs to compete with and identify its comparative advantage vis-a-vis a series of smaller urban centres in India.
Kolkata is not in the league of Bengaluru and Delhi any more. In any reckoning of provinces, a Gujarat or a Haryana would outpace West Bengal. The state must know its benchmarks. Everything else — economic policies, relationship with public and private investment, role of the party in community life — can only be tackled after an honest appraisal and an honest admission of where West Bengal stands today. A clear-headed leader has to have that conversation with his or her people. Ms Banerjee has not convinced she is that leader.
Unfortunately, this refusal to face facts is not limited to the supreme presence in Writers’ Buildings. Bengal is also afflicted by a diaspora that is harking back to a mythical yesterday — even whitewashing the CPI(M) period when convenient to make an immediate argument. Frankly, this diaspora will never be satisfied with West Bengal, even if its GDP starts growing at 10 per cent and half-a-dozen world-class universities relocate there. None of this will measure up to the power of nostalgia.
That nostalgia — with its emotionalism and at once its toxicity — dominates media and social media discourse on West Bengal. It leaves the state tantalisingly poised — frozen — between Ms Banerjee’s imagined conspiracies and the non-resident Bengali’s imagined past. Ultimately, it leaves Bengal cheated by all those who claim to cherish it.