Kolkata rape-murder case: TMC MP Jawhar Sircar echoes the angst of urban voters, will Mamata care to listen?
Night after night, different urban pockets of Bengal including the capital city Kolkata, are witnessing spontaneous rallies and protests seeking justice.
'Believe me, the present spontaneous outpouring of public anger is against this unchecked overbearing attitude of the favoured few and the corrupt.'- these lines from TMC MP Jawhar Sircar's resignation letter perhaps most aptly sums up the current mood of Kolkata reeling from street protests even after a month has been passed since the brutal rape and murder of the RG Kar Hospital intern. Hence, even a light-hearted suggestion from chief minister Mamata Banerjee to return to festivity aka 'Utsabe firun' has been met with strong reactions from the educated Bengali public.
The intensity of the relentless protests has sent ripples through TMC's rank and files and the party is currently grappling for a counter strategy to neutralise the movement. The TMC leadership and its IT Cell have tried to push back on the protesting junior doctors, with state's lawyer Kapil Sibal in the Supreme Court claiming 23 patients have already died due to lack of medical attention. They have also sought to discredit the protests saying BJP and Left are fanning the unrest. They have attempted to corner the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which took over the probe following the Calcutta high court order, for still not filing the chargesheet. By bringing the Aparajita Act, the state has tried to project a proactive image of looking to fix the larger issue. But nothing seems to have worked in their favour or changed the public mood so far.
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Night after night, different urban pockets of Bengal including the capital city Kolkata, which are electoral strongholds of the ruling TMC, are witnessing spontaneous rallies and protests seeking justice. From IT professionals in Rajarhat to the humble rickshaw pullers in College Street, the civil society uprising has touched people from different strata of the society up in unison with the battle cry of 'justice for RG Kar'. The participation of women in these rallies has been much higher than run-of-the-mill political congregations. Videos are flooding social media with three generations of families including the infirm going out together to voice their protest. The thoroughfares are blocked, and people are taking hours to get back home, but none complaining.
While demanding justice for the victim, these protest marches have been largely anti-governmental in mood. With just months after a resounding victory in the Lok Sabha polls, this civil society uprising against the TMC has definitely put Mamata Banerjee in terrible discomfort as she seems to be drowning in political quicksand.
Not only about RG Kar:
As the retired IAS and Rajya Sabha MP Jawhar Sircar mentions in his scathing letter, these protests are not merely about the omissions and commissions of the state machinery in the RG Kar fiasco. Rather it has become a rallying point for people to vent their frustration about wide-scale corruption which has been unearthed not only in the health department but earlier in education scam, cow smuggling and ration scam, to name a few. No less than TMC's national general secretary Partha Chatterjee was hauled up to jail after wads of cash were recovered from the apartment of his alleged accomplice. TMC's reaction to all these scams tumbling out of their closet has been boilerplate. The party has removed functionaries from their posts after their position had become untenable, and subsequently claimed to have zero tolerance for corruption. Also, TMC has sought to downplay the litany of scams by highlighting their impressive electoral performance in essence branding it as people's hallmark of support against what they claim is a political witch hunt. However, merely cobbling up a favourable voting block in a first-past-the-post electoral system especially where the main opposition party doesn't really have a leader of Mamata's stature is no guarantee that the party would be immune to public unrest. From Sheikh Sajahan to Tajmul aka JCB, there have been multiple reports of local strongmen who seem to run roughshod over not only political adversaries but even common people.
Jawhar Sircar in his letter expresses disappointment at Mamata Banerjee for not doing enough to clean up the mess in governance, particularly lack of action against institutionalised corruption and being aloof to the doctors' protest. He had wondered why the CM was not directly communicating with the protestors. Now after over a month, Mamata has given overtures to the protesting doctors to come for a discussion. It remains to be seen how that plays out. However, this protest could have been nipped in the bud if the administration had been awake to what was brewing on the ground and showed a modicum of empathy. Sircar, a former culture secretary, resigned from the plum post of Rajya Sabha member protesting against the TMC government's rather inept handling of the fiasco. Several missteps by the hospital management and the police in the initial hours and later by the state government have meant that there are grave allegations of possible cover-up. While conspiracy theories have flown thick and fast, some already debunked and others gaining credence owing to selective leak of CCTV footage among other pieces of evidence, the RG Kar protest has coalesced and become much larger than getting justice for the hapless murdered lady.
The unanswered questions
Now, if one looks back at both the Singur and Nandigram movements, which catapulted Mamata Banerjee to power, ending 34 years of Left rule, the then leadership was misguided by poor inputs from ground zero and shoddy handling of protests including opening fire at agitators. At its core, it was an example of the breakdown of trust between the political executive and their biggest stakeholder, the general public. Sircar's letter alludes to a similar issue here where he fears that it is already too late and even the correct steps taken by the government are dealt with disdain and mistrust. The TMC line of defence in the entire issue has been that Kolkata Police had cracked the case within a day, and CBI hasn't done anything substantial since then. It fails to give any convincing answer to the serious allegations levelled by the victim's parents regarding the tearing hurry by the administration to conduct postmortem of the body, alleged pressure exerted by police and political leaders to cremate the body, of being coerced to say they weren't offered money on camera. Till the time, these questions are not being answered satisfactorily, the protests are unlikely to die down.
So far, there has been no probe initiated about whether corruption in hospitals, which Sandip Ghosh has now been accused of, is widespread or only confined to RG Kar. The junior doctors have alleged that a so-called 'North Bengal lobby' of doctors is unleashing massive corruption in conducting medical exams in the state. There has been no order of probe regarding that. How a group of men could breach police barricades and ransack RG Kar Hospital remains unanswered. Whether the police on that fateful night were really hyperactive in cremating the body remains a matter of speculation. There is no clarity regarding who ordered then-principal Sandip Ghosh's transfer to Calcutta Medical after being forced out by the high court. The civil society-led movement has been asking these questions but to no avail.
Mamata Banerjee, after the 2019 Lok Sabha election, which saw a meteoric rise of BJP in the state, undertook a massive outreach programme with 'Didi ke Bolo', where people could call in and air their grievances regarding any local issue. This simple gesture significantly helped TMC supremo blunt the tide of anti-incumbency which was aiding BJP's growth in the state. It is perhaps now time for a rebranded Didi ke Bolo ( Tell your CM). The demand of the hour is honest introspection and thorough clean-up of the moth-eaten system which has eroded public trust. The rumbles within TMC are growing only louder. The only saving grace for Didi is that the next assembly election is still a couple of years down the line. So there is time to get the house in order. But as the Left found out to its peril, cosmetic changes without structural upscaling can crumble the edifice in a flash. People may or may not get back to festivities, but it is time for Mamata to get back to the drawing board.
Arghya Prasun Roychowdhury is Editor at HT Bangla. The views expressed are personal.