Author: Our Bureau
Publication: The telegraph
Date: May 4, 2013
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130504/jsp/frontpage/story_16857669.jsp#.UYSWgJbBF65

Mamata Banerjee today let loose a burst of questions dipped in sarcasm, staking the credibility of her government on the unuttered answers.

“Kunal chor? Madan chor? Tumpai chor? Mukul chor? Aami chor? Sabai chor? Baki ra shob sadhu (Is Kunal a thief? Is Madan a thief? Is Tumpai a thief? Is Mukul a thief? Am I a thief? Are all of us thieves? And the rest are saints)!” a Trinamul leader quoted the chief minister as telling a general council meeting of the party.

Mamata was talking about the campaign against the party and the government, the Trinamul leader added, alluding to the Saradha scandal that is still unfolding and manifesting itself in suspected suicides.

The chief minister’s rhetorical questions were immediately seen as a virtual clean chit to party colleagues whose proximity to the Saradha Group has come under the public scanner.

Some Trinamul loyalists heard a clarion call for cleaning up the party. They cited Mamata’s reference to herself as evidence that she was holding up her own example and asking others to stick to the straight and narrow.

But the personal reference itself and several political tea leaves floating about at the venue strengthened the perception that the chief minister was lending her shield of honesty to the leaders under fire.

Such a strategy — the unquestioned leader positioning herself or himself in front of besieged lesser mortals, prompting blanket genuflection — usually works in the country.

But not always. Veterans recalled how Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had tried to shield then defence minister V.K. Krishna Menon when troubles with China were mounting in the 1960s. But veteran socialist Acharya J.B. Kripalani recounted in the Lok Sabha how Britain’s Conservatives had once compelled their Prime Minister to resign and appealed to those “Congressmen who were not afraid of the British bullets and bayonets to place the good of the nation above the good of the party”. Menon eventually had to resign after the Chinese war.

No Kripalani is known to have sprung to his feet this afternoon at the Kshudiram Anushilan Kendra, near the Netaji Indoor Stadium, where over 500 Trinamul leaders were listening to Mamata.

Kunal Ghosh, Trinamul Rajya Sabha MP and former executive chairman of Saradha media, did not attend the meeting after being advised to stay away. MPs Srinjoy Bose, Tapas Paul and Satabdi Roy and transport minister Madan Mitra, whose names have been linked with the Saradha Group or other deposit-mobilising companies, attended.

An intervention from Mamata to defend the leaders had become a necessity after party MPs Sisir Adhikari, Subhendu Adhikari and Somen Mitra suggested at party forums that heads must roll.

But the message the audience appeared to have imbibed was strikingly different. “Those who are accusing us, we have to outshout them,” a Trinamul leader said later. It was not clear if the leader was referring to critics within the party’s own ranks.

The choice of speakers suggested Mamata was in no mood to hear criticism. Trinamul all-India general secretary Mukul Roy and state ministers Partha Chatterjee, Subrata Mukherjee and Amit Mitra did not broach the default crisis in their speeches while MPs Sisir Adhikari and his son Subhendu did not get an opportunity to speak.

“Outshouting others or denying them an opportunity to speak can be a strategy in party forums, but will it work outside?” wondered aloud a party leader but in private.

He appeared to be suggesting that the last word had not yet been spoken and the course could still change if the feedback from the ground continued to be grim.

According to him, ground-level party activists who were facing uncomfortable questions in the districts had expected Mamata to take some action against some leaders. They had also expected a set of directives on dealing with such companies. Mamata confined herself to rolling out a list of dos and don’ts for the trade union and student wings of the party.

“She has not explained what we must tell the people, except for attacking the CPM and the Congress…. People are questioning us about the ties some of our leaders had with these (deposit-mobilisation) companies. What do we tell them?” asked a Trinamul MP.

In shying away from sending a message to her party leaders who had links with Saradha and other sham companies, Mamata has followed in the footsteps of her political rival, the CPM, which squandered a chance to rectify itself after the debacle in Bengal.

The CPM state committee held a series of meetings to analyse the reasons behind the 2011 drubbing and drew the conclusion that the high-handedness of a section of its leaders and growing social disconnect had led to the defeat.

Although CPM insiders said some “action like suspension and expulsion” was taken in North 24-Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, Burdwan, Purulia, Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri, prominent faces were spared.

At the behest of former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, former MPs Lakshman Seth and Amitava Nandi were dropped from the state committee at the party’s state conference in February 2012, but their pre-eminence in the party continued.