Is the game up for Mamata Banerjee and TMC?

The Assembly election this time gives me back a whole lot of fun and faith. Who had ever thought that the central forces and the state police would actively help conduct a free and fair election? But this has thrown Ms Mamata Banerjee in a fit of rage and has her threatening her own police.

One more phase remains to the election. It's to be held on the 5th. 25 seats. The election commission is deploying thirty two thousand forces for this phase. And the police seem determined to play it out the way it did in earlier phases.

Is the game up for Ms Banerjee and TMC?

After the Saradha scam

These days I'm trying to understand the post-Saradha-scam stratosphere in West Bengal. The scam, to the tune of twenty thousand crores, has left millions of people, in rural areas specially, battered and wretched in an unprecedented way.

Sudipta Sen is the man responsible for the mess, but this massive scam is a gigantic feat, and is only possible with people in power. Who is going to believe in Mamata Banerjee's  explanation that she didn't know anything about the activities of the group?

The fact is, she and her party actively patronized Sudipta Sen. Still fresh in our memory, she recommended the group's two daily newspapers for  the state's public libraries. She was seen in numerous occasions promoting Saradha's stuff.

She might have a personal reason. Sudipta Sen would buy her pictures. Most recently, he got to buy one of her artwork with a whopping one crore and eighty six lac rupees.

It's now confirmed that Sudipta Sen funded her party in the last Assembly election and helped it win the power. No wonder the conman wanted his return by duping lacs of depositors with connivance of its leaders and party men.

Mamata's on back foot. She loses her credibility. Pity it occurred so soon - in barely two years.

This may be the beginning of her fall..

But the thing that emerges in the din is the devaluation of money in people's perception. Being a crorepati is no big deal now. You find ordinary people talking money in terms of crores, not in lacs, these days.

The July 21 Big Rally

It’s the biggest rally ever, in recent memory. People poured in spontaneously from every corner of the state. I was scanning the morning papers for an estimate of size of the mass. Most papers described it just as "lakhs of people”. Actually, it was kind of inestimable. However, it could be anything between seven to ten lakhs.

The sea of mass was enough to evoke a flutter in the heart of present rulers. The police took a detour to make Buddhadeb reach his home – late by half an hour flat.

Mamata Banerjee has really made it after a long time. I liked her call of restraint to her supporters. I was also impressed by her gesture towards Mahasweta Devi, one of our geart living Bengali authors.

Mamata, it seems, has gone past all her vices and antics to become herself. She gets to be credible day by day. I don’t buy her all her promises, but for now she’s a better choice than any other Bengal politician.

Mamata Wave in Bengal

There's an unprecedented Mamata wave here in Bengal right now. While the media is all agog with Mamata Banerjee's new Raliway portfolio and its benifis for the state, her fans have gone really crazy celebrating their Didi's success in a big, but restrained, way.

I'm no Mamata fan, but to be fair, she has mellowed and matured in a wonderful way now. She no longer shrieks, and has learnt to speak sensibly and with decency. Her talks, though not as sophisticated and polished, seem natural and sincere.

She is now talking against SEZ(Special Economic Zones)in the fashion of a real Leftist. I wonder where she musters this courage from. Has she really changed, or, is this a transitional attitude?

During Singur-Nandigram rising, Mamata had to keep company and interact with some hard-core Maoists. I strongly suspect the latter might have something to do to change her attitude and viewpoint about an anti-people programme like SEZ.

These days she frequently says that she's not against Leftism as such.

I like to watch the way Mamata seems to be changing.