Opinion It Happened in Bengal

Can’t,won’t,she muttered,and sloped off to Jalpaiguri on a peace mission ahead of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration elections. ABP Ananda,the new avatar of Star Ananda,showed her announcing the inauguration of a circuit bench for the hills. With startling political candour,she said,“Now see,I’m the first to give you the good news!” She was just as candid in her attempts to sour Mukherjee’s Kolkata visit. Television stations gave much play to her rejection of Hamid Ansari for a second term as vice-president,and to Mukherjee’s cosy meeting with Left leaders in the Assembly.

West Bengal’s media has betrayed an embarrassing pro-Trinamool tilt from the last state election. It mirrors a naive streak in a supposedly intellectual polity which had unquestioningly supported the Left for decades,then swung marionette-like towards the Trinamool. Now,everyone complains that they see no “poriborton”,though they could have forced change by denying a clear mandate to all parties. Within the media folder,Bengali TV news is an endangered species crushed between juggernaut soaps,serials,game shows and performance shows. And the tilt of this tiny sliver of news is visible — only Zee’s 24 Ghanta remains loyal to the decimated Left.

It was the obvious channel to watch when Mamata Banerjee launched a preemptive strike by celebrating Jyoti Basu’s 99th birthday two days in advance,in order to leave out the Left. But Leader of the Opposition Surya Kant Mishra counter-attacked with a public sting operation,phoning the speaker of the assembly for permission for senior Left leaders to pay tribute on Basu’s actual birth date — with the TV cameras rolling. He was fobbed off with procedural folderol. The Reds should have submitted their names well in advance for consideration,never mind that they were Basu’s friends and comrades. The Trinamool came across as boorish,since the applicants were former ministers and prominent leaders who think of the assembly as home.

But like the rest of humanity,Bengalis aren’t significantly turned on by presidential elections or birthdays of leaders past. Scandalous sleaze works better magic,and the biggest scandals in Bengal concern track athlete Pinki Pramanik’s gender and the schoolgirl in a hostel in Santiniketan who was forced to lick her urine as a totka (traditional remedy) for bedwetting.

So 24 Ghanta went gleeful all over when “the songster’s guitar roared in protest” for Pramanik. It was the usual suspect,the popular singer and despair of the Trinamool,its legislator Kabir Suman. But

Pramanik’s harassment is indeed obscene. An MMS of her physical examination is apparently doing the rounds. Everyone claims to know of it. Everyone denies having seen it. Even if it is a figment of the internet’s imagination,the exposure that Pramanik has suffered is offensive.

I found redemption in ABP Ananda,which ran a sensitive interview of the abused schoolgirl in Santiniketan,in which she rejected a court award of medical costs for her trauma because it would “add to [her humiliation”. She said with amazing dignity,“I’m only 10. I don’t believe in totkas but my hostel warden,who is so much older,does. What do you say to that?” I was speechless,and the high questions concerning Pranab Mukherjee,Jyoti Basu and Mamata Banerjee paled into insignificance.

pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com