Mamata’s PM tirade raises Teesta doubts

Unprecedented and unexpected but true, this remark comes from the chief minister of an Indian state.

“Should I go and beat up the Prime Minister? If I do that, we all will be called gangsters. In any case, they call us gangsters,” Mamata Banerji said at a public rally at Canning, South of Kolkata late on Monday.

She was expressing her angst over Bengal’s failure to get a special financial package from the federal government, without which she is finding it difficult to bail out her cash-strapped government.

Paying salaries to government servants may become uncertain soon, according to local media reports.

Playing to a rural audience with the panchayat polls not far away, the mercurial Bengal chief minister actually did what the Left has often done before her – play on the Bengali’s usual anti-Delhi instincts.

But coming as it does within a few months after she publicly mimicked the Prime Minister on a national television channel, Mamata’s latest tirade against Manmohan Singh has attracted sharp criticism across the political divide.

More importantly, it has raised questions about a federal government effort to placate her so that she agrees to support the Teesta water sharing deal with Bangladesh and the Delhi-Dhaka land boundary agreement.

Indian foreign minister Salman Khurshid has said last week that he was trying to set up a meeting with Mamata Banerji, referring to her as ‘my good old friend’, to sort out her objections to the Teesta and the land boundary deal.

“We don’t want to bypass her but we want to assure her the interests of her state have been cared for. West Bengal is a part of India and we are not going to sacrifice her interests but Bangladesh is also a dear neighbour and we want our bilateral problems resolved,” Khurshid was quoted as saying.

But Congress and Trinamul Congress sources have said Khurshid has not been able to finalise a date for meeting Mamata. The Indian foreign minister is keen on the meeting this month, Congress sources said, because Khurshid is scheduled to visit Dhaka next month and wants to share “some good news” with the Bangladesh leaders.

But it appears that Mamata Banerji has not responded warmly to proposals for a meeting with Khurshid – so no date has been finalised. Trinamul Congress leaders say this is something “none else but Didi (Mamata Banerji) can decide”.

At a public level, Mamata’s party colleagues have been critical of the Teesta deal and the Land Boundary agreement, saying they will compromise West Bengal’s “vital interests.”

Mamata Banerji has said she is waiting for a report on the Teesta that is being compiled by hydrologist Kalyan Rudra – an expert opinion she wants to rely on.

But Bengal political circles are abuzz with speculations that the real catch likes in finance – Mamata’s government is in serious financial trouble compounded by her profligate spending on populist projects and she will not allow the Teesta or the Land Boundary deal to go through unless she gets a special financial package from Delhi.

"That does not augur well for India. It is in Delhi’s interest to push through both these deals to keep Dhaka in good humour at a time when the Hasina government has delivered on most of India’s concerns,” says a very senior official of the Manmohan government.

He was not willing to be named, but said the Prime Minister must find a way to honour his commitments to Dhaka, even if Mamata does not budge.

‘There is a limit to how much interference of a state government we can tolerate in matters of foreign policy. Under Indian constitution, foreign policy is an Union subject,” the official said. ‘Manmohan Singh has tried to take the states bordering Bangladesh into confidence but that does not mean he will have to bow to unreasonable postures.”

Analysts agree.

“Jyoti Basu played a great role in the Ganges waters deal in 1997. So did A B A Ghani Khan Choudhury, the Congress leader from Maldah, who had been in the Union cabinet for long years. They improved the relations of the two Bengals, which Mamata is upsetting,” says veteran journalist Sukhoranjan Dasgupta, author of “Midnight Massacre”, a book on the 1975 coup in Bangladesh.

Dasgupta says that the Congress has more lawmakers from northern Bengal than Mamata’s Trinamul Congress. “The Prime Minister could get his party lawmakers to push the Teesta deal at the grassroots if he wants to sideline Mamata and sign the deal with Dhaka.”