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Trinamool's politics of violence

The shocking scenes of violence in the West Bengal Assembly on Thursday highlighted the political bankruptcy of the principal opposition party, the Trinamool Congress, and its leader, Mamata Banerjee, who is fast running out of ideas. A growing sense of frustration born out of a series of major electoral reverses has morphed into a desperation that seeks expression in the politics of violence. This was reflected in the bedlam within the Assembly when Trinamool legislators went berserk. As if this was not enough, Ms Banerjee has fallen into the habit of calling bandhs after engineering personal brushes with the law-enforcers. The reason for calling a 12-hour State-wide bandh on Friday was virtually identical to the reason cited for the October 9 bandh: alleged police atrocities against a leader who is determined to derail the development process initiated by the Left Front Government headed by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. By such tactics, Ms Banerjee has succeeded in alienating considerable sections of the urban middle class that, until not too many elections ago, was her major support base. The Trinamool chief has also signalled her rejection of any reasonable political debate on contentious issues such as the acquisition of farmland for setting up industries. Whatever might be the arguments behind her opposition to Tata Motors setting up a car manufacturing plant at Singur in Hooghly district, the violence and rowdiness of the Trinamool campaign has, ironically, taken the wind out of the sails of any emerging public campaign against the project.

The business community will no doubt draw its own conclusions about the calibre of the political opposition in West Bengal from Ms. Banerjee's threat of a prolonged agitation against Tata Motors. Her capricious ways, political unreliability, and theatrical and brusque style of dealing with opponents, party colleagues, a section of her followers, and also those within the Congress who might have begun to think that they had found in her a partner to take on the formidable might of the Left in West Bengal are guaranteed to erode her political stock and reputation further. The Bharatiya Janata Party has learnt to its cost what junior partnership with Trinamool means. The Congress is now in that kind of unenviable position. Its high command will need quickly to decide whether the party will make common cause with Trinamool in the politics of disruption and violence, and also in hampering development and investment in the State.

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