Let West Bengal have their Didi's rule

Let West Bengal have their Didi's rule

CAMIL PARKHE
Sunday, June 06, 2010 AT 12:00 AM (IST)
Tags: West Bengal civic polls, Mamata Banerjee

http://sakaaltimes.com/SakaalTimesBeta/20100606/4845676999552011798.htm

Earlier this week, the news channels started flashing the reports of the West Bengal civic polls and soon I grew anxious about the poll outcome. Having a keen interest in political developments, I invariably find myself glued to news channels during the counting of votes of elections to state assemblies or Lok Sabha. This time, initially I was a neutral observer and did not owe my loyalty either to firebrand Mamata Banerjee or the world's longest surviving democratically elected Left Front government.
But as the days passed, I found the pendulum of my loyalty swinging violently between the two warring groups. On Tuesday, the total picture finally emerged with Mamata didi humbling the Left Front in sizable number of civic bodies. Now the question is: Will Mamata realise her ambition of occupying the throne in the Writers' Building?
I personally have been an admirer of the Left Front government and its leader Jyoti Basu for their success in winning the hearts of the masses in the border state for three decades -- not an ordinary feat when one sees the instability in Jharkhand or Goa. Mamata Banerjee's eccentric nature, her tantrums as a minister in the Atal Behari Vajpayee-led NDA government and now as railway minister in the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance government made me feel that it would be in the interests of the West Bengal public to keep the state in the trusted and well-tested safe hands of the Leftists. As the updates on the civic poll verdict came pouring in, a colleague said in a lighter vein, let Mamata rule West Bengal, the country can then have a new railway minister who can look beyond the interests of a single state.
Apparently, the image of Mamata Banerjee among the electorate of West Bengal is different than her image in the minds of people in rest of the country. Didi of course will be least bothered about what people outside West Bengal think of her as long as her tantrums in New Delhi are applauded by voters in her home state. Do we not see a similar phenomenon in the likes of Lalu Prasad Yadavs and Raj Thackerays? And so I guess we should keep our prejudices to ourselves and concede that the voters in West Bengal are the best judges to decide which political option suits them the most. If they want Mamata, so be it.