{"id":5255,"date":"2012-11-30T10:39:40","date_gmt":"2012-11-30T09:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/socialism.in\/?p=5255"},"modified":"2012-11-30T10:39:40","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T09:39:40","slug":"a-change-for-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/?p=5255","title":{"rendered":"A change for Worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>While the people celebrated a new dawn in West Bengal politics<\/a> (2011), behind the cover the smiling tyrant was assuming more power by every strike of the clock. Bengal went to assembly elections in the summer of 2011 in the hope of a better future. Out of the 35 years of Left rule, the Bengali masses who had eargerly awaited for the CPI(M) to deliver on its promises, turned out to be oppressors in the garb of a Marxist flag. This was a clear case of the prophet turning the devil!<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The attempt to put the \u201cIndian Left\u201d to sleep had been reflected in agitations since the Singur and the Nandigram incident<\/a> against forcible land acquisition and the final nail on the CPI(M) coffin was hammered in the 2011 polls. But all the great hopes of the Bengali masses have steadily faded and the real face of Mamata Banerjee<\/a>‘s government soon became apparent. The civil society withdrew its support and then came the day when the autocratic attitude of Mamata Banerjee came into full light, when during a Television show<\/a>, a teenage girl asked her some very uncomfortable questions. Having no satisfactory response in her armoury, she instead chose to brand the 19 year old a Maoist and staged a walk out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Flip flops have not been new to the Mamata Banerjee’s genre of politics for she has been quite infamous for switching parties and changing alliances in lieu of greater political power. This sort of political brinkmanship had always been the hallmark of her politics. This took a new turn, when the Congress led UPA government decided to go ahead with the highly unpopular FDI<\/a> in multibrand retail.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In her election manifesto, Mamata Banerjee had promised support to FDI in retail to gain support of the corporates and funds for her election campaign. However sensing the mood of the masses against FDI, she decided to oppose the bill. To earn some legitimacy in the public eye and avoid the discomfort of having to justify her turnaround post elections; she decided to withdraw her support to the government. She took it a step further by bringing a no-confidence motion against the central government with a clear knowledge of the fact that she did not have the requisite numbers to bring down the government.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In a more recent development Markandey Katju<\/a> (otherwise known for his twisted understanding of peoples’ rights and freedom of the Press), the current chairman of the Press Council of India<\/a>, made a strong criticism<\/a> of her role in media censorship and shot off a letter <\/a>criticising the West Bengal State government. Asked for comments, Mamata Banerjee refused to even acknowledge the receipt of such a letter and in her signature style hurled abuses at the media and indirectly at Katju himself by saying \u201cthe king walks unperturbed as dogs bark\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Such brazen display of arrogance and power cannot continue for too long, especially without making any meaning-full change on the ground economically speaking. If anything, this one-upmanship is turning out to be much worse than what anyone had actually bargained for. And pretty soon Mamata Banerjee will also be shown the door, just as her predecessors who had taken their anti-people’s rule for granted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Saptarshi Banerjee<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Bangalore<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the people celebrated a new dawn in West Bengal politics (2011), behind the cover the smiling tyrant was assuming…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":5265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kolkata"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5255"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5277,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5255\/revisions\/5277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}