by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
Five years back, Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Mamata Banerjee stormed to power in West Bengal wearing her trademark Hawaii flip-flop, as a symbol of simplicity in the country's then simmering with allegations of corruption on a humongous scale. Thanks to the 2G scam and 'coalgate', booties in trillions of rupees had just become commonplace. Mamata did not have to make much effort to appear saintly, until the Saradha chit fund scandal began unfolding and one of her ministers, known as her 'bagman', went to jail. Then came a series of 'sting' videos of her party and cabinet bigwigs grabbing for wads of currencies offered to them for promise to pull strings on bribe-givers' behalf.
But voters seemed to take even such striking record of loss of innocence in their stride. Until it was shattered last week, when a large flyover long in the making in Kolkata came crashing down on unsuspecting pedestrians and drivers. The death toll reached 23 with 78 injured, many of whom grievously. True to her style, the churlish chief minister, extricating herself from the busy campaign schedule (the assembly elections began yesterday), washed her hand of it by claiming that work on the flyover had begun in 2008 when the Left Front was in power.
She was stretching the truth, as IVRCL, the Hyderabad-based infra company that had indeed bagged the contract from the CPI(M)-led government, was highly rated at that time. Its reputation nosedived from 2011, the year TMC came to power in Bengal, for a series of its failures—collapse of a sewage pipe-laying trench in Hyderabad, a goof-up with a Rail Vikas Nigam project, another with Uttar Pradesh water authorities, a big trouble with Jharkhand state electricity board and even problem with the Indian Navy. It got blacklisted by the Central and most state governments. But, for some inexplicable reason, the TMC government in West Bengal turned a deaf ear to it. As CPI(M) leader and former urban development minister Ashok Bhattacharya observed, "IVRCL won the contract in a transparent auction, and that too at a time when its reputation was at its zenith, with its share price ruling well over 200 rupees. But the company's reputation became mud from 2011, with its share price now at five rupees. TMC came to power when not even five per cent of work was completed. Why did Mamata not show the door to the company and go for a re-tendering?"
Rather than being just a tale of urbanisation mishap, the crumbling of the flyover near Burrabazar, the bustling centuries-old wholesale market, is a metaphor of state-sponsored corruption. Since TMC took charge of the state government, there has been a dramatic expansion of its capital allocation. And it has reportedly been used questionable purposes, like financing clubs and organisations. Many of such outfits are the catchment basin of musclemen who prove useful to the ruling party during elections. Instead of going by the rule of law, the police in Bengal dutifully do dance attendance on Mamata Banerjee and her men.
It is not easy for a government to afford a standing army of musclemen whose sole mission is to intimidate opposition supporters and deter them from voting. Banerjee has tried to buy them at government cost, like showering money on hundreds of those clubs that are not necessarily of gentlemen. But the top funding of the TMC private army was coming from an entity called "syndicate". Nurtured by the party and protected by police, it is a cartel in control of all construction activities in the state, each locality having its own syndicate. The cartel has monopoly of supply of not only building material but all subcontracts issued to third party. If work is made to bypass the syndicate, its official clearances will inevitably get stuck at various government departments. Some businessmen whom I know say on condition of anonymity that syndicates keep a margin of 25 per cent or more just on materials. And land deeds are hardly cleared without syndidate's blessings.
It is likely that IVRCL, instead of being shown the door after its being blasklisted, was retained and made to do TMC's bidding. After the flyover tragedy, it transpired that material as well as labour contract for the spans that collapsed had been given to family member of the local TMC MLA whose husband is a known toughie of North Kolkata. IVRCL could be too weak, and too much plagued by its internal problems, to stand up to TMC bigwigs' demand, but it is the fear of syndicate that is the reason why the state is shunned by industrialists. It has plenty of resources, plenty of brainy boys and girls, but industrial investors continue to dread the state.
The inherent crookedness of TMC's cohorts began coming to the fore only a couple of weeks before the flyover collapse. A series of sting operations showed the party's MPs and ministers readily accepting cash from a fictitious company. If the worthies did not accept the bribe ungrudgingly, it was because they expected more than c Banerjee projects herself as politically savvy but she has built an empire based on corruption of 1980’s vintage, when there was no RTI, no cell phone that is anything but secret, no sting, no social media. With the toppling in Kolkata of a bridge built on corruption, the CM may find the ground slipping under her Hawaii flip-flops sooner than she expected.
