If someone lacks ability, success comes at a cost. However, it does not mean that the individual has to bear it on his/ her own. At times relatives take care of it, at time friends and at times it is shouldered by unsuspecting unknown people known as mass. In the later case the feeling is the sweetest. Today, when Mamata Banerjee takes her oath as chief minister of west Bengal, she must be feeling the same sweet sensation.
Do any one still remembers Swapan Chakraborty? An ordiney man- who got stuck between stone and crude bomb pelting crusaders and demonic state police in 1992. Mamata quickly played a few popular tricks to politicise the killing. Swapan's wife got a job in Manjusha and slowly went out of public attention and memory.
Same goes with 13 nameless youth, who were sacrificed to get anti govt sentiment rolling on July 21 1993. Yes that was the day Mamata had called for a march into Writers building to get power by force in French revolution style.
Time and again she played the same politics of killing and trying to gather momentary public support. However, soon she realised that this trick would not give her the mileage she is looking for. She needed something big. Something so huge that lakhs of people pay price for her rise to the zenith. Nandigram and Singur gave the same opportunity to her. She was very good in realising that Bengalies had a super inertia. They would do anything to resist the change. That was precisely the reason of CPM clinging to power, despite not delivering anything significant from 1977-2001.
She was quick to understand that CM Buddhadeb's attempts to change to work culture, his attempts to bring in Industry would only make the Bengalis feel uneasy. She fanned air to that sentiment. Thousands of people in Nandigram and Singur paid the price. What could have been a prosperous industrial hub was turned into a land of lost opportunity. Bengalis took a sigh of relief. They were not robbed off the opportunity to moan and complain… to discuss in length that how all other states conspire against us… So status quo continued… Intelligently Mamata very quickly named the status quo as "Paribartan" (Change). Top notch comedy indeed. Bengalis thought- whoa… what an idea!!! If I need not actually change but get the claim of a change- that is like getting a free lunch. Or what the corporate try to do- get "new" claim from the same old product.
Very soon people started talking about punishing CPM for doing nothing- when actually they had started doing something meaningful. It is like Keshto kaku beating up Bhombol for a mischief he had done 10 years ago. Though Bhombol is a changed and refined person now, doing meaningful work- Kesto kaku would still punish him- because he failed to do that 10 years ago.
By now Mamata had started seeing her dream come true. The whole state of Bengal was ready to pay the price for Mamata's hunger for power. And they did the same in two phases in 2009 and 2011.
May be years from now, this moment would not be rejoiced and pages of analysis would be done on how Bengalis committed another suicide. May be it would be too late then. May be our roots of inertia would be so deep that even if we want- we would not be able to move at all. May be I am wrong- May be Mamata would do a fantastic job. But at this moment all I see is another 7-8 years of stagnation and slide backwards. Pray to god that I am wrong in my prediction…
The price has been paid – for one lady's ambition by a suicide prone community.
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