Mamata Banerjee: When others get, and you don’t want

Beware the fury of a CM scorned. Mamata Banerjee, arch critic of central governments when she isn’t part of them, has followed an old Bengal tradition. This tradition of blaming the central government for all ills and shortcomings of the state was honed and sharpened by the card-holding Marxists who preceded her (Trinamool is Marxist without holding a card or candle). Seeing Didi pick up the baton in response to the Union budget last week was both reassuring and beguiling at the same time. ‘It is an anti-poor, anti-people budget, and Bengal has been deprived,’ was her pithy reaction, adding for effect, ‘I don’t see any light. It is dark, dark and dark.’

The paradox in her ‘anger’ was also interesting: ‘Bengal has been deprived, though we do not need anything.’ The state, not known yet for its talent for wealth-creation since jute became out of fashion, if one gets Banerjee’s message right, wants supply even if it has no demand. Almost pre-empting what we may have had in mind in terms of marking her as a jealous CM, she said that despite her ire, she did not have any objection that ‘Andhra Pradesh and Bihar have got money. But you cannot discriminate against others.’ Like the colleague who insists he doesn’t need more money but can’t understand why others have got a bigger raise, Didi is upset that politics plays a part in economics.