Are we there yet? Bengal Doctors’ protest in the broad spectrum

Symbolic use of spine in the protest march (Source: https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/kolkata/doctors-gift-a-spine-to-kolkata-police-commissioner-demand-his-resignation/article68601747.ece)

The junior doctors’ protest which rocked West Bengal since August 09 2024, as a junior lady doctor's body was recovered from within the premises of R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, one of the most famous medical colleges in the country, demands a broad spectrum analysis.  The incident of rape and murder sparked huge protests with a call to 'reclaim the night’ directive which addressed a spatio-temporal dimensions of vulnerabilities of women in the state, perhaps in the country. It was followed by a series of protests at different places in the state, including some of the villages. Eventually, it engulfed an entire spectrum of people ranging from singers to painters, IT sector employees to students, working women to housewives. The protest ran for months, with a hunger strike by junior doctors and it created a massive upheaval of common people's participation, innovative sloganeering, and songs by famous singers such as Arijit Sing and Shreya Ghoshal. People expected that this protest could end much of the malpractices designed and implemented by the ruling Trinamool Congress (henceforth TMC). One of the most significant anthropological features that came out of the protest is the coexistence of radical self-contradictions, such as, while the protest is political, the Joint Platform of Doctors consciously avoided any party affiliation. The protest is against the administration and existing political regime, but their carefully orchestrated slogans do not talk much of the administration or of the political clout that controls it. While the protest has called for and got people's participation at a large scale, it demanded people forego their political identities and affiliations before coming and participating in the rallies or at the protest sites. This conscious attempt of keeping the movement ‘apolitical’ was replicated at a microscopic level and people chose to participate in rallies which did not carry any party banner.

How to explain this paradox? What does it tell about the political spectrum of the state at large? As we will see, a careful political anthropological analysis would speak a lot about how politics has been constructed in TMC regime, and in what ways this has influenced and won over such an unprecedented protest.

 

TMC's creation of new politics of corruption and violence:

 

TMC came to power with a promise to end the party rule - famously theorised by Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya (2009) as the party society. The Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India Marxist (CPIM) created a detailed and sustained party architecture to rule the state for more than three decades. Party, over the years, with the help of a dedicated cadre base, and a section of educated white-collar professionals such the school teachers installed a system of social mediation which could supersede all other channels of public transactions like the caste and religion. Nath (2018) shows that this created a multilayered mechanism of public transactions. Hence, anyone willing to avail of certain public services had to go through the party, thereby, blurring the boundaries between the party and the government at large. TMC promised to change it. While Ms. Mamata Banerjee ensured that there was no post-election violence at large by asking her followers to play Rabindrasangeet (Tagor's song) as a mark of celebration of Left's defeat in 2011, the immediate fallout was area demarcation and capturing of party offices of the left by the TMC. This was followed by a massive exodus of people from the Left to TMC. Eventually, we have witnessed a breakdown of trade unions and government employees’ associations and pressure groups. Soon, the TMC-run government banned participating in strikes by government employees by making their attendance on such days mandatory.

This was a hint towards the future of the democratic functioning of the state as, during its first term, TMC successfully made prominent societal divisions along the line of occupation. A section of TMC supporters were 'encouraged' to heckle government employees ranging from doctors and professors to clerks and officers. This must be seen as the beginning of what was termed as the 'threat culture.'

While, TMC successfully dismantled the Left's party machinery, the leadership swiftly transferred to a handful of local influential leaders. In my several ethnographic works, I have interacted with these people and found several similarities among them:

a) Most of them have an erstwhile Indian National Congress background

b) They are generally well off in terms of economic status 

c) They have strong networking even during the Left era through local organisations such as the Clubs and Puja Committees

 

Instead of a party organisation, these new players successfully attracted local youths and formed several close-knit grid of 'networks' and 'syndicates.' They started to appropriate not only the public service delivery mechanisms such as the imposition of levy, popularly the ‘cut money’ on development works undertaken by the Panchayat and Municipalities, but also extort on the private players. Over the years, their accumulated wealth enabled some of them to become entrepreneurs. Their entrepreneurial endeavours are heavily dependent on the continuation of TMC rule so that they continue to get 'cut money' in different financial exchanges and 'sanctions' from the local administration. Their capital is crony but the nature of their capital is non-formal as suggested by Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya in his argument of franchisee politics in West Bengal.

 

What happened to the public sphere?

 

It is important to recall that during the 2011 election, a major call for political change was by the civil society representatives ranging from writers to film directors, and actors to painters. As West Bengal has a rich legacy of valuing cultural and academic attainments, TMC used this cultural capital to translate the sentiment into gaining a popular mandate. TMC included key civil society representatives in different government committees to make them what was popularly termed as "Trinamool Panthi Buddhijibi" or TMC-aligned civil society representatives. This seriously affected their public image and reduced their legitimacy and mass appeal. Common people either complied with the corrupt medium of public transactions by paying small amounts of bribes to the local leaders to get public services or become rather aloof. Such petty corruption was legitimised to a great extent and I have shown that the opposition couldn't capitalise on corruption charges brought against the TMC (Nath 2017).

Dutta and Ray (2018) show that for the delivery of public services, TMC started to depend more on the administrative wing of the Local Government. This seriously affected the spirit of local governance and decentralisation. Eventually, West Bengal experienced a disappearance of the active and politically engaged public sphere. Such an over-dependence on individual local leaders, and lack of concrete steps to build up organisations, instead, tapping existing cultural fronts such the clubs and puja committees, Masjid boards, TMC brought something theorised by Nath (2018, 2023) as cultural misrecognition. Here TMC used cultural fronts to legitimise their decisions and reinvent their legitimacy. At about the same time, Mr. Narendra Modi led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power at the centre and there was a proliferation of Hindutva sentiments followed by a series of low-intense riots in Bengal (Nath, 2022). The public sphere has undergone a serious transformation from being partisan to being partisan and sectarian. In places where riots took place, the Hindu/Muslim divide became extremely prominent.

This moment of transformation completes a full circle from party to identity, from party society to sectarian society, where grassroots organisations became identity-based. BJP became the main opposition party replacing the erstwhile Left and Congress, which essentially gave birth to sectarian organisations under a variety of names affiliated with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

West Bengal opened up new possibilities of political economy where TMC local leaders constructing franchisee politics, indulging in the black economy became the major players and their opposition force worked solely on identity dynamics with narratives like West Bengal is becoming East Pakistan.

 

Doctor's protest - a fresh air?

 

Within this sectarian, violence-infested political atmosphere R.G.Kar incident opened up Pandora's box. While the movement started against the rape and murder of the lady junior doctor, it soon tapped several unaddressed but burning issues like a) widespread corrupt networks operating both inside and outside of the medical educational institutions, b) corrupt people and their affiliation with ruling TMC, c) the extent of alleged malpractice and unconditional support extended allegedly by the party and administration, to name a few. This movement brought out a hidden grudge against the ruling regime. Thus, thousands of people participated in rallies, did social media campaigning and made their presence felt in different parts of the Capital city Kolkata also at different suburbs and also in villages. However, even the slightest intrusion of any political party in the movement was violently rejected by the protesters. The Joint platform of doctors ensured no party involvement in their movement to maintain its ‘apolitical’ character. However, technically, it remained a non-party, but essentially a political protest. It was clear that the intrusion of existing party forces would make it partisan and TMC would label it as a political conspiracy against their regime. The public sphere, which wholeheartedly supported them would turn away.

This apolitical nature of protest and the way by which it ended shows a peculiar nature of West Bengal public sphere. The protest ended with a rather credible escape route provided by the Chief Minister. This needs to be seen as a political win of Ms. Banerjee by creating a public sphere which is apathetic towards the existing parties, be it the ruling regime or the opposition. People are placed in between a party which indulges corruption and malpractices, installed a culture of violence and created a welfare dependent beneficiary survivor and a party which is sectarian and carries an ideology which is alien to Bengal culture. The large-scale support for the doctors’ protest also reflective of the fact that West Bengal is in a condition of liminality, where there are enough reasons and evidence that the existing system is not working like it should be, yet, the new system is yet to be born. Perhaps, the unprecedented support to the doctors’ movement shows that people are desperately looking for a fresh start in politics led by educated youths. The question remains, are we there yet?