Mamata meltdown warning for power to fear anger
Image credit X.com @Indian_Doctor
Crimes thrive with political normalization of administrative incompetence
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, September 13: Netai killings in 2011 had broken last surviving bones in the CPI (M) skeletons. The 34-year-old iron-clad rule of the Left vanished within a few months in West Bengal.
Late Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the last chief minister of West Bengal from the Left stable, admitted later that the Netai killings had been “grave mistakes”. Reports claimed that armed CPI (M) workers had killed 14 villagers in Netai in 2011.
Before Netai killings, the long list of “grave mistakes” in West Bengal could fill several books. The political normalisation of violence had been norms of the day.
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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee yesterday accused the protesting junior doctor of eying her chair. She offered a qualified apology for the rape-murder of the RG Kar Medical College Hospital junior doctor.
“They (protestors) are not interested in discussions. They want my chair,” Banerjee said. The protestors retorted in a subsequent presser that “all that they want is live-streaming of the meeting with the chief minister”.
The message of the protesting doctors was clear that they don’t trust the Banerjee-led dispensation. On a long shot, the events unfolding in Kolkata refresh memories of 2010-11 in West Bengal when events and incidents came in succession to throw the Left hegemony in the state politics.
Bannerjee’s political shrinking of space comes amid the news break of an Army officer gangraped in Mhow in Madhya Pradesh. A few weeks ago, a woman was raped in daylight in Indore.
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The Mhow gangrape was reported from area near the Army cantonment. The victim is yet to record her statement while reports say that the area had long been witnessing miscreants freely roaming around.
The Madhya Pradesh Police should give an account of policing record when a woman Army officer could be gangraped near a cantonment area. Indeed, it shows that the high security zone is also not safe for women.
The people in Madhya Pradesh are not yet sufficiently angry against headline-grabbing incidents from the state.
A cow-vigilante in Faridabad in Haryana killed a school-going boy last month. The victim’s father with folded hands pleaded with local reporters that violence by cow vigilantes must stop forthwith.
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The Imphal University students set up camps in bazaar to hold protests against firing of drones and rockets in civilian areas. The protesting students broke the make-believe normalcy in Manipur.
The strife-torn Manipur is back to days of curfew and internet blackouts. The students want sacking of top security officials of Manipur.
The emerging message should pierce the deafness of the political class that their administrative incompetence will come at a cost. They could be thrown out of power with a gust of anger.
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