DOLES AT THEIR DOORSTEPS

Not even her critics doubt Mamata Banerjee’s street-fighter cred—there is easy recall of many moments in her political career that offer evidence.

- Romita Datta

Of her early days as a Youth Congress activist, during the Emergency, atop iconic socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan’s car in Kolkata. Or the blockade of a national highway for eight days during her party’s Singur land agitation in 2008. That feistiness appears undiminished even in the more recent dharnas she has staged against the BJP-led central government and its policies. The other feature of Mamata’s political flair has been her connect with common folk, her keen sense of what matters in their lives. It’s a skill the West Bengal chief minister is employing quite deftly in the run-up to a most challenging election.

The Mamata administration, on December 1, unveiled ‘Duare Sarkar (Government at the doorstep)’, an initiative to speed up delivery of social welfare schemes by going ‘door to door’, identifying legitimate beneficiaries and transferring benefits directly, without procedural delay—and, most importantly, cutting out rent-seeking middlemen in her own party. Eleven schemes have been listed under the programme. The aim is to ensure that no eligible person or family misses out on government benefits due to systemic failures, or is denied these benefits due to political discrimination or corruption—a common grievance, most recently voiced in the distribution of Cyclone Amphan relief this year and, earlier, in housing and other allotments for the poor.