BJP’s first months of office in West Bengal have revealed twin outcomes. They are the possibilities which Subhendu Adhikari-led state government can turn into positive upshots together with the limits of regime change.
A hundred days is too short a time to judge a government. But it is long enough to understand it’s instincts.
The BJP is a party which has spent decades on the margins of the state ‘s poltics. Once unimaginable, it is now occupying the corridors of power.
Investment proposals are no longer on paper. Both private and public sector investments are hitting the headlines, if war ship building projects at Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers and a plethora of private sector enterprises putting their money in West Bengal are anything to go by.
But there is no denying institutions with Left Liberal culture like Jadavpur University being the target of the new regime. These institutions will now become arenas of assertion of a new ideology which the BJP regime espouses.
Chief minister Subhendu Adhikari speaks a different ideological language at variance from his predecessors. He has challenged what he has called a culture of intimidation.
It underlines a larger ambition to alter West Bengal’s political vocabulary. There is no quarrel yet with this endeavour.and let the ideology more attuned to the times win, but it is easier said than done.
The chief minister has not minced his words saying that he would ensure that his predecessor Mamata Banerjee does not venture out from her home. This poses a risk of unnecessary confrontation.
It is certainly not an attempt to accomodate dissent.But a change of scene has definitely taken place.
Transfer of long-pending land for border infrastructure is a case in point. It shows an intent to unblock decisions stalled by political conflict.
Bengal’s real crisis is economic.Inviting industrial incentives and inking investment proposals are pointers to it.
But a hurry to change at least outwardly some institutions does not fit in the ideology of liberal humanism championed by the saffron camp. Painting the walls of the ticket counter of Academy of Fine Arts saffron is a case in point.
This theatre has a long tradition of staging plays which does not conform to the rules laid down by Establishment Queering the pitch for the saffron painters, state BJP chief Samik Bhattacharya drops in frequently at this theatre to watch the plays.
Bhattacharya has taken umbrage at the incident. How he seeks to repair the damage to his party’s image is yet to unfold.
Then surfacing of charges of extortion by a section of the rank and file of the ruling dispensation have put the 100-day regime in a poor light. Incidentally, some of the claimants seeking to wet their beaks from the coffers of the investors have invoked Bhattacharya’s name
He has promptly denied any connection and promised disciplinary action. But these incidents certainly smudge the spanking clean image of the new dispensation.
Moreover, it tars it with the same brush which smeared the Trinamool Congress regime. One wonders whether it will set the alarm bells ringing within the ruling party.
This is hardly the stuff that could be BJP campaign fodder in the coming civic elections including in Kolkata Municipal Corporation. But it would unlikely to be in the Opposition’s aid as it has
lost enormous credibility in the alleged scams surfacing in the post poll debacle.
Given the political situation, it should have been a tailor-made campaign for the Left and the Congress. Yet it needs to be mentioned that
the organisational capacity of these two political outfits is doubtful given previous poll results.
The organisational muscles of both Congress and Left are lax. It gives a leg up in the forthcoming civic polls to the depleted TMC faction loyal to Mamata Banerjee which on August 16 rally drew a larger crowd than its breakaway faction.
The BJP has won the Assembly elections convincingly. It has to repeat it’s electoral success at the coming civic polls.
For achieving it, the new dispensation has to demonstrate its earnestness to bring about economic recovery of West Bengal. Changing the symbols of a divergent ideology by whitewashing the walls of Jadavpur University can wait as economic renewal cannot be achieved overnight
