A Tale Of Missteps

Mamata Banerjee's handling of the doctors’ strike betrays her anxiety in the aftermath of electoral reverses at the hands of the BJP.

- Romita Datta

It couldn’t have been easy for an imperious Mamata Banerjee to offer the “unconditional apology” agitating doctors in West Bengal were demanding to return to work. But as the medics’ strike in the state spilled over to the second week, and doctors across the country ceased work in solidarity, the chief minister thought it prudent to tone down her instinctive belligerence and end the crisis.

Not before she’d betrayed a sense of insecurity, which has been palpable in her knee-jerk reactions to the needling, probing political gambits of a triumphant BJP. It’s as much real as imagined, and has been playing out ever since the Lok Sabha election verdict, in which the BJP emerged as the primary challenger to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal, winning a 40 per cent vote share and 18 of the 42 seats—just four less than the TMC. Mamata is now seeing a BJP conspiracy in everything— from her party’s electoral reverses to the doctors’ strike, triggered by the June 10 thrashing of their colleagues at Kolkata’s NRS Medical College & Hospital by the relatives of a deceased 75-year-old patient, Mohammad Shahid. One of the doctors, Paribaha Mukhopadhyay, had suffered grievous head injuries in the attack.

Mamata first tried to brazen it out. She called the protesting doctors BJP/ CPI(M) cadre, ‘outsiders’, ‘urban Naxals’ and communal agents. “A fanatic fundamentalist frenzy is on,” she alleged. “This is a BJP-CPI(M) conspiracy to create communal tension by asking doctors not to examine Muslim patients. If doctors look at surnames before treating patients, or fire officials and the army do the same, can it be tolerated?”