Mamata for once should think beyond herself
Are the mercurial West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s political skills getting a little rusty? Ever since the BJP got a surprising 18 Lok Sabha seats from the state and Modi 2.0 became a reality, her handling of political violence, gesticulations to the chants of Jai Shri Ram and her initial lack of empathy for government doctors who were brutally attacked showed the didi of histrionics in a rather poor light. Time was when Mamata could do no wrong; when turning adversities into strengths was a given. No longer.
Had she been as savvy as she is known to be, Mamata wouldn’t have let the ongoing agitation by government doctors spin out of control. Her berating of medical professionals who sought protection at the workplace after a couple of them were attacked by a mob over the death of a patient, and issuing a two-hour ultimatum to join work, which led to the snowballing of the agitation, smacked of arrogance.
She is yet to visit the NRS hospital, the epicentre of the agitation, where the doctors were physically attacked. Mamata first sought to give it a communal hue and then made it a linguistic issue saying those living in West Bengal must learn to speak Bengali. With the protestors raising the pitch seeking her unqualified apology, she later piped down and invited them for talks. There was no word on the apology though. Instead she sought to blame them in softer words: “They are young, they made a mistake. I forgive them.”
With the agitation entering the sixth day on Sunday, a joint forum of junior doctors that is spearheading the protest, accepted the chief minister’s offer for talks, but wanted it held in an open venue in the presence of the media and not behind closed doors. The ball is back in Mamata’s court. It’s up to the chief minister to wrap up the matter quickly, at least in the interest of the poor patients and not let her ego come in the way. For once, Mamata has been forced to do the mop up for a botched operation. She needs to quickly find a face-saving endgame.