MAMATA SITS FIRM AGAINST THE CENTRE

A slow crisis has been engulfing rural West Bengal, affecting tens of thousands of labourers. Around 10 million people, despite having MNREGA job cards, have had no work over the past one year, nor have most been paid for the work done under the central jobs scheme.

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It resulted in massive joblessness and migration out of the state in 2022. NREGA Sangharsh Manch, a civil rights group, also claims that over 10 million may have been affected. The ostensible reason for the Centre withholding funds for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) is the allegation of widespread corruption in the administration and the ruling Trinamool Congress. The issue has been politicised for long-the TMC has blamed the Centre's 'vendetta politics' for the withholding of funds; the principal opposition BJP has alleged that the situation arose from rampant corruption.

With the panchayat polls about a month away, it is politically imperative for West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to send the message to the state's 56.6 million rural voters that it is the Centre, and not the state, that is responsible for their predicament. Her 31-hour overnight sit-in protest from the afternoon on March 29 before the B.R. Ambedkar statue on Red Road in the heart of Kolkata ticked all the boxes: allegations of discrimination and economic blockade against the Modi government, invocation of Bengali pride in defying the BJP's alleged designs and a call for national Opposition unity.