West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress Chief Mamata Banerjee has been rightly described as a firebrand leader. To her credit though, she evokes mass appeal and as evident, Mamata is that type of a leader who can single handedly win you elections. Such kind of leader is rare to find these days in Indian politics. All of us are witness to how she was able to wrest power for the first time after decades of communist rule in West Bengal. Mamata worked hard to give a political alternative to the people of Bengal and through her mass contact she succeeded in winning support to be democratically elected as Chief Minister and her party coming to power. The Trinamool Congress is also the single largest alliance partner in the Congress led UPA government at the Centre. So with power as they say comes responsibility. Now questions are being raised whether Mamata can shoulder the needs, expectations and duty of a democratically elected leader. Earlier in the year, barely into her new role as head of the government, the Chief Minister had two persons arrested, one a Jadavpur University Professor for allegedly circulating a spoof mail (cartoon) on Mamata. Even the West Bengal Human Rights Commission has asked the Mamata Banerjee government to compensate the two who have been ‘victimised’. Okay one could have mulled over this particular incident as perhaps a rare aberration of the Mamata regime.
But no, it appears to be that Mamata is allergic to any sort of criticism, which is not something that one would have expected of a people’s leader. Take the case of the talk show programme in popular TV channel NDTV where the West Bengal Chief Minister was the special guest taking question from the audience. One young participant (a girl student) asked Mamata a question, which obviously did not go down well with the CM. Accusing the particular student of being a Maoist, Mamata walked out of the TV show to the amusement of one and all. Even after seeing this incident on national TV, one may still want to give the benefit of doubt to Mamata as it could have been an ‘emotional outburst’. But again no. Because when such things are repeated, one is left to wonder if there is something seriously wrong with Mamata’s leadership trait. Just consider the latest incident where Mamata dubbed a person as Maoist and had him arrested after he asked her a question during a rally.
Apparently the questioner had told the Chief Minister at her public meeting at the former Maoist stronghold of Belpahari on August 8 that farmers were dying and asked her what steps her government was taking since “empty promises were not enough”. According to media reports, the CM had expressed surprise and dubbed the man a Maoist while asking the police to arrest him. As they say the proof of the pudding lies in the eating. Now even the head of the Press Council of India Markandey Katju has called Mamata ‘dictatorial, intolerant and whimsical’. Whether such strong negative qualities attributed to her is true or not, only Mamata can disprove them through her conduct. It’s not that Mamata is incapable of leading but she needs to perhaps control her emotion. At the same time she will do well to realize that she is not a sovereign in the Hobbesian sense—omnipotent and infallible. For years she opposed the Left Front communist rule through democratic means, including raising uncomfortable question to those in power. By that same measure she will be tested because this is a democratic country. Mamata must learn to accept criticism.
