Mamta Banerjee TMC - ‘the Super Left’ – $30 Per Capita GDP Registered Industry
Mamta Banerjee TMC has not been able to change the image of WB and ignite new hope. It is pathetic to learn WB contribution of Registered Industry to state GDP is not even $3b for almost 100m population.
It is important to note WB received Rs. 12,903 crores to Rs. 13,755 crores to Bihar in 2005-06 but in 2009-10 respected figures were Rs.20,729 crores and Rs.35,362 crores - Gulf Expanded to Rs.14,367 crores.
CPM adopted confrontationist policies than seeking more funds for WB and executed projects. Mamta Banerjee TMC started with the Super Left.
Registered Industries in WB contribute just Rs. 13,333 crores to state GDP or $3b – per capita contribution of Organized Industry for almost 100m population is not even $30.
Manoj has perfectly described the political developments and how WB Government after defeating CPM ruling for 30 years has not moved away from CPM policies that kept WB in darkness in spite of first to mine coal, first to industrialize and first to have electric railways etc. is at the bottom in per capita income.
Ravinder Singh
Inventor & Consultant
December07, 2011
Retail FDI, Wholesale Politics
C L MANOJ
Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, with political play, too. How do various political leaders look at the temporary freeze on the proposal to allow majority foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail, aided by Mamata, the Opposition and the dithering Congress, resisted by Manmohan Singh and mourned by India Inc?
Never mind his spicy sound bites for TV, Prakash Karat could have mixed feelings. Happy — that the badly mauled and ejected Left could still block the ‘ideologically incorrect’ policy decision of the UPA-II. Bewildered — never in the recent past could the Left get the Indian Right, the BJP, to play pupil to its discourse on reform. But what should keep Karat privately engaged is the worrisome part of the Mamata power play; that the Trinamool Congress chief is not merely satisfied by capturing the Writers Building or by decimating the once-invincible CPI-M organisation in many parts of West Bengal. She, in fact, now aims to make her party ‘the Super Left’: the de facto ‘grassroots’ Communist Party of India (Mamata) of Bengal and Delhi by hijacking the original Marxists’ ‘pro-poor and anti-reform’ planks.
The post-poll Trinamool seems to work on two principles: ‘the dictatorship of proletarian Didi’ and ‘the insecurity of the confused administrator Didi’. It shouldn’t be a problem for her to get the entire party to turn left, even if that would, alas, make poor Amit Mitra formally bid tearful farewell to his pro-reform industry and bhadralok gallery, which had wished him Godspeed in ushering in a reformist era in ‘the liberated den of socialism’!
On this Mamata remake, the CPI-M’s and Left Front’s political worries are no lesser than Dr Mitra’s personal depression. If Mamata is stealing the CPI-M toolbox, where does that leave the Marxists? One way out is to revisit B T Ranadive’s Calcutta thesis, which called for armed rebellion against the state, outradicalising the Maoists. Or, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee can Speed Post an old copy of Shripad Amrit Dange’s ‘unity and struggle with the Congress’ thesis to AKG Bhavan and Ajoy Bhavan where Sitaram Yechury and A B Bardhan are updating/reworking their respective ideological/ tactical lines.
There are two ways to fight an enemy advancing menacingly: risk martyrdom in a head-on assault or cut through the enemy’s backend logistics. Maybe, lending a careful ear to Pranabbabu would help the Left tap the Congress’ new thinking on Mamata, just when the comrades are set for political and tactical overhaul.
For the BJP, the choice is cosmetic: how to clothe itself when politics is hotting up with UPA in its troubled second half, key assembly polls at hand and the party’s own leadership plot sizzling. The Hindutva BJP may also have a strong pro-reform DNA. But when the party is not in power, why not send that pro-reforms avatar on tactical leave? After all, why should the BJP help the ruling regime change the discourse and come out of its self-grown shell?
Deepak Parekh and Ashok Ganguly may be anguished, but BJP knows after its 1998-2004 spell in power, India Inc just can’t stop its two-way funding of politics, no matter how big the betrayal. The BJP’s trader base may not be big enough to win an election, but is rich enough to oil it. The BJP’s pro-reform urban fans might be in tears, but they are dispensable for now: the pro-Swadeshi RSS alone shall decide who will make it as the party’s new president and prime ministerial candidate. Maybe, the ‘Friends of BJP’ can hire the Ficci Auditorium for an anti-FDI seminar to see how all leadership aspirants will reserve front-row seats to cheer Mohan Bhagwat, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti all the way.
On the Congress stage, it is non-stop comedy. The Congress Core Committee cleared the FDI push because Sonia Gandhi was all convinced about its merits. If she hoped it would be a smooth run, then that was a tribute to her advisers’ grip on her. As political play, predictably, unfolded and when Dr Singh desperately looked for the Gandhis to politically back the profarmer, pro-consumer spin, the duo did a vanishing act. Maybe another demo of another set of advisers’ equal grip on the Gandhis, to convince them about the political, coalition and electoral perils of FDI!
The BJP’s daring poser to Mrs Gandhi to spell out her stand on FDI seems to have borne out its confidence in the 24×7 ability of 10, Janpath’s, seasonal advisers to keep it dithering and confused as per their convenience. There can be two views on the merits of FDI in retail, but there is no instance of any party and its government trying to win a planned political/ policy war by keeping its general in the risk-proof locker. That, one thought, was the crucial risk-taking lesson Mrs Gandhi, Dr Singh and her advisers learnt together, when they settled the nuclear deal war. But then, the fact that there are no full stops in politics and tactical (re)learning is what makes power-play worth watching.
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