For all the Schadenfreude in the ranks of the Trinamul Congress over the decimation of the Opposition in West Bengal’s panchayat elections, the somewhat unexpected victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Junglemahal belt has jolted both the ministry and the district administrations in West Midnapore, Bankura, Purulia, and the newly-created Jhargram. As much is the signal emitted by the Chief Minister. In point of fact, she has cracked the whip against sloth, almost palpable. It thus comes about that she will monitor tribal development in an effort to regain lost ground in a potentially volatile swathe of Bengal before the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
The Chief Minister has conveyed the message that she will not depend on any cabinet colleague to oversee the uplift of the subaltern. She appears to be acutely aware that the social sector benefits have not yielded dividend at the hustings in any of the four districts. Which explains why she has accepted the resignation of the tribal affairs development minister, Churamani Mahato, a leader from the predominantly tribal area of Jhargram. Clearly, the department created in 2014 ostensibly to be riveted to this segment of the populace has failed to deliver. The other striking feature of the cabinet reshuffle is that Mayor Sovan Chatterjee’s wings have been clipped. He has been divested of the environment portfolio.
The Chief Minister appears to have reacted to allegations relating to the conversion of the nature of land around the East Kolkata Wetlands, indeed the nerve-centre of the real estate boom, as often as not illegal. It is pretty obvious that there was a conflict of interest between Chatterjee’s responsibility as the Mayor of Kolkata and Bengal’s environment minister. In the net, there has been the development of under-development. No less a critical change is that Subrata Mukherjee has been stripped of the public health engineering (PHE) department, though he might feel relieved that he still holds the Panchayat portfolio. There is more power to the elbow of labour minister Moloy Ghatak, who has been accorded the additional responsibility of PHE. The idea almost certainly is to strengthen his base in Asansol, the Lok Sabha constituency that Trinamul had lost to the BJP’s Babul Supriyo in the 2014 election.
Not wholly unrelated to the changes in portfolios is the transfer orders served to as many as eight District Magistrates, three of whom were based in Bankura, West Midnapore, and Jhargram. This follows the transfer of the SP, Purulia, after the death of two BJP activists. Markedly, the executive heads of North and South Dinajpur, Birbhum, Hooghly, and Alipurduar have been moved out not the least because the surge of the BJP in these areas has somewhat unnerved the ruling party. The changes effected at the pivotal level of the district hierarchy must translate into subaltern welfare. At the end of the day, it is the development paradigm that is at stake.