Mamata’s Immediate Challenges: Quick Demostration of Real and Impacting Change

People perceive change when such change perceptibly start affecting their lives and environment in regular intervals of short periods of successive six to eight months. If Mamata's call and promise for CHANGE in West Bengal has to become credible, She has to deliver in line with people's expectations of evidence of continuously yielding measruable, observable change results in the objective conditions. People would lose interest in CHANGE for which they have to wait for long.

Six months as Chief Minister is a short period to make a significant impact that the common citizens could feel for themselves. Mamata has 54 months more to last. But the strong Mamata wave in the minds of the electorate will not last more than another six to eight months unless Mamata’s actions make a perceptible impact on the lives of the people at large throughout the State and her party, now riding the Mamata wave is perceived as of much superior quality in terns of democratic culture, civilized values, honesty and integrity as compared to the CPM and her government is perceived as much more competent, non-corrupt, and result-yielding than the left government. At the same time, common people will soon try to see the impact of new government in stepping up private sector investments and employment creation while giving Mamata full five years’ time to rescue the State’s Finances from brinks of bankruptcy that the CPM govt. led the State to, and bring it back to long-term health.

Challenge#1: Prompt, Caring and Efficient Governance Delivery

Yes, Mamata has taken numerous steps to usher in a phase of all out economic development project initiatives together with specific programmes to deal with the problems of the hill and forest (jungle) areas as well as the problems of minority communities and backward groups in various regions. Yes, Mamata’s government and party have shown quicker reflexes in the face of natural disasters. She is seen to be quick in decision making, quick in correcting mistakes, quick in avoiding traps of controversy in low priority areas and quick in implementation follow-up. But, West Bengal government machinery has been extremely sloth (hoechey-hobay, cholchay-cholbay type) for long, probably since Independence and acquired the skills of non-performance and delay during the anti-work regime of 34 years under the so-called communists, dominated by older men and people more interested in acting as brokers, rather than as doers of hard, productive work for the State. This will be the biggest challenge to Mamata: the people expect Mamata to bring change in the delivery of Governance – fast, quick, prompt, caring. Are her bureaucracy and ministers and the police following her footsteps in radically raising the standard of delivery of Governance? This is critically important for Mamata. For each six month period, the common citizens must be able to feel an upward shift in the delivery of governance in terms promptness, quality and care as compared with the previous six month period.

Challenge #2: Much Superior Quality Political Party

A second challenge is to demonstrate on the ground that her party is fast cleansing itself from the usual pollution of the dominance of goons, hafta-collectors, murderers and corrupt party cadres and supporters at every level, particularly at the lower, small locality levels. In this area, it is not sufficient to say any more that her party has fewer armed goons and corrupt members and supporters than the CPM. Yes, the CPM’s goondaism, hooliganism, party-raj and corruption are well known and investigations and court cases will increasingly tarnish the image of the CPM’s image as a political party. But that will not improve the image of Mamata’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) Party significantly. The CPM is currently trying to strengthen its organization machinery and so is TMC. But these are geared to the objective of winning the next panchayat elections and Lok Sabha elections thereafter. CPM has a disadvantage of low morale among the cadres, loss of government power abuse opportunity and sudden distrust among the voters. But it will make the best efforts to come back to fight elections with a vibrant machinery sooner or later. The TMC however does not any advantage: it is weak as a party from the beginning and got the voters’ favour mainly because of its leader Mamata’s great energy to work, strong determination, struggle against oppression everywhere, her love for the people and her political strategies to exploit the fundamental weaknesses of the CPM. But that does not make TMC a party of quality that stands out above all other parties. Mamata has a great challenge to lift her Party to much higher plane than where the political parties in West Bengal lie. CPM will not ever go out to seek external assistance for upgrading the quality of its members: Mamata can choose to take the help of professional agencies and business schools to upgrade the quality of its members, cadres and ministers.

Challenge #3: Private Sector Investment and Employment Creation

Mamata has announced a large number of projects in the State that would be funded by the State Govt. Additionally, greater investments through projects largely funded by the Central Government is being arranged very systematically – an avenue largely ignored by the previous Govt. These investments together with large scale recruitment of teachers and policemen will increase employment. But this will take time and would not be enough. What would be needed is a significant step up in industrial investment activity and employment generation in the private sector within six months. The people would like to feel the vibrancy in small and medium scale private sector industrial projects. Single window clearance is a good initiative making the WBIDC responsible for coordinating speedy approval/ disapproval process in respect of the many State clearances that industrial projects need before they can start. But industrialists are not clear about getting lands soon. The land bank is not yet on the internet: nor is the State marketing large number of pieces of land of sizes between 50-100 acres to big industrial houses who may be willing to set up additional capacities in mid-sized factories for consumer goods manufacturing, agro-processing, milk processing, etc. Individual ministers and their secretaries need to be given the responsibility to move door to door of only the cash-rich industrialists’ offices to know their immediate requirement of lands and then after discussing within the Government go back to industrialists with alternative offers of lands. This is the only methods of enthusing industrial investment and can be done in a very transparent way to avoid getting trapped in corruption, discrimination and delays in effective utilization of land already available for speedy allocation to industrial use. Even if six months of hard work leads to two dozen factory investment proposals getting to reach first phase of implementation, the process may become self-sustaining and vibrant. This is what people expect the new Government to demonstrate within the next six months as a proof of CHANGE in West Bengal.

Time will soon tell if the Mamata Government is really set to meet the three immediate challenges to make its impact felt on the short-term aspirations of real CHANGE.