My diagnosis of Mamata

Around the 18th minute, she completely flips out and walks out later, much to the shock and amusement of the audience. Why, Mamata?

The problem :

The WB CM, Mamata Banerjee, has been in the news of late for all the wrong reasons. Right now I’m thinking that most people in WB themselves are regretting the day they voted for her and sent the Commies packing to kingdom “Fuckoff You Stupid Reds”

Let’s look at her report card, shall we :

1) She vehemently opposed FDI in retail and the Congress-led UPA was forced to comply, seeing how she’s a major ally and all.

2) She raged against an increase in rail fares and chucked out her partyman who was responsible for the hike. According to her, poor must be kept on subsidies and doles always. It’s worked for her so far because being pro-poor in a state that is full of poor people is win-win. The poor vote for her because she’s seen as a savior and she’s happy they vote for her.

3) She was instrumental in preventing Tata from entering WB to make the Nano. Remember Nandigram?

4) She dismissed a series of rapes happening in Calcutta as communist conspiracy to defame her and blamed the Maoists and the Commies for what happened. Basically she said the rapes happened to discredit her Government. The cops who worked against time to arrest the rapists was given a dose of her infamous temper.

5) Everyone knows the poor professor who was arrested for outraging the modesty of a woman (or something) because he made a half-assed comic about Mamata.

6) She demanded that her Government be allowed a 3 year halt in payment of loans taken by the previous Communists because “those were Communist mistakes” and she can’t pay them back.

7) She went live on air on CNN-IBN and walked out of the show because she was being grilled by a bunch of students. She even accused them of being Communist and Maoist cadre who were out to defame her.

8) She directed libraries to have just select newspapers and not display others. Seeing how this is a democracy and all, that was an extremely foolish move.

9) Yesterday she spoke of how Hungarians, Venezuelans and North Koreans of financing a plot to kill her. This supposed plot is the brainchild of Pakistans ISI and the CPI Marxist and Maoist (who actually hate each other over differing ideologies).

Why Hungary? It makes zero sense.

Diagnosis :

A lot of things are clear from Mamata’s actions over the last one year. She’s clearly forgotten she’s leading a party which is responsible for millions of people in one of India’s poorest states. Also, it’s a fucking democracy, which seems to have slipped her mind so repeatedly that I’m wondering if she’s even aware of it.

It’s also more than obvious she really, really hates the Communists. I would too, if I was arrested and beaten repeatedly over 20 years because I dared opposed them. So I’ll give that to her.

But what she’s doing amounts to a mild-to-severe form of McCarthyism. Joe McCarthy was an American senator who randomly went about arresting people when fear and distrust against the Communists was beginning. He helped jail a variety of people from all strata and fields of society in the US. Among those he went after included Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, the guy who led the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb.

Ring a bell, Bengalis?

Accusing students who are grilling her of being Maoists is stupid. First of all, even if they were Maoist, it’s not criminal to be so. Her reaction simply spoke volumes of her disgust and repulsion at the prospect of even interacting with the alleged Leftists.

Second of all, what was her proof? Getting taken to the cleaners by students on live TV doesn’t mean they’re Maoists, it simply means she’s inept at answering questions and facing up to various realities. It also means she really hates dissent which doesn’t really work in a “democracy” like India’s.

Whatever anyone does, critics will be there. That doesn’t mean she can go calling them and accusing them of being someone they’re not. There is no proper configuration of words that can describe how simply lame that is.

And she’s seriously clouded in judgement by these two things :

1) Her idea that the poor must be protected.

This is stopping development not just in West Bengal but also in India (by virtue of her being a major UPA ally). Any policy-change that the UPA becomes bold enough to introduce, is hit badly and killed by the Mamata Express. Then it crash lands in Chile only to be eaten by it’s soccer teammates.

Actually she’s doing exactly what she’s accusing the Left of having done. Her extreme anti-industry stance and her pro-poor stance is extremely leftist. And clearly she’s blind to what miracles Nitish Kumar has managed to do in previously lawless Bihar. No one even needs to talk about Gujarat or Tamil Nadu, and the example is there for her to see.

So she seriously needs to review her policies before embarking on any more half-assed nonsense.

2) Her severe hate for the Communists.

Its a fact : the Communists have done nothing good for West Bengal. Calcutta, which was one an awesome city, is now decomposing and extremely stagnant. There’s just nothing happening there. You can imagine how horrible it will be in other non-urban West Bengal. So her paranoia of Communists is acceptable to a certain degree.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if this was pasted on Calcutta walls soon.

But apparently she doesn’t know limits. There are people who voted her into power and who she is responsible for. Not all of them are Communists, not all of them are Maoists or any body else. She’s failing them.

And she’s clearly a thorn in the side of the Congress, who don’t want to antagonize her because she’s, again, a major UPA ally.

When she gets over her Communist hate and realizes that poor people are not to be kept on doles and subsidies forever, then she will help produce the change that the people of WB expected from her.

Conclusion :

She’s possibly a paranoid schizophrenic, seeing how her latest accusation involved her fearing for her life because of a plot financed by :

1) Hungary, a random country in a random part of Europe, and

2) Venezuela, a country that has its own oil and drug problems, and

3) North Korea, a country that is struggling to even attack South Korean and Japanese leaders, let alone obscure Indian ones.

North Korea shows how adept it is at launching rockets.

But she’s most definitely high on power and extremely stubborn. I need to mention here that she still stays in a modest house, like the one all of us stay in, despite being CM because she refuses to forget her roots. That’s remarkable. So I wonder why she’s screwing up so badly and epically and frequently, because she used to come across as well-meaning and sincere.

I guess politicians will be politicians.

Read this short The Economist post about how Mamata Banerjee’s policies are negatively affecting the Indian growth story as a whole. It’s a good read so I recommend you do it.