Mamata's merely repeating the past

Mamata Banerjee is being roundly flogged for what is being termed as a Bong budget. She has been accused of concentrating on her home turf, West Bengal, while ignoring rest of the country.

But then, hasn't every railway minister done that? One started reading newspapers at a young age and the tales of Ghani Khan Chaudhury are still etched in memory. He, too, was accused of being generous to his Lok Sabha constituency, Malda, in West Bengal. Then there was CK Jaffer Sharif who famously got a railway crossing adjusted to ensure his car travel to his house was not disturbed. Members of parliament from the south were so irked with Lalu Prasad Yadav recruiting only Biharis across the country during his tenure as rail minister that they wrote a letter to the prime minister Manmohan Singh and even led a delegation to rein on him. Ram Naik, during his tenure as minister of state for railways, converted a yard in Goregaon as his camp office and then made the petroleum ministry pay the rent after he became petroleum minister.

There were a few glorious exceptions, the late Madhu Dandavate, for instance. He did not give a recommendation letter for recruitment to a party activist who was injured in police firing while participating in party agitations. His greatest gift to his own Lok Sabha constituency Rajapur was the Konkan railway, but that came during George Fernandes's tenure. Dandavate was finance minister and raised the money through bonds, forming a separate body for Konkan Railway. People paid from their own pockets to get a railway line in the Konkan. It is another story that the trains are more convenient for people further south.

One must note here that despite fulfilling the aspirations of his people, Dandavate lost miserably. So how should a minister function? Should he take care of his constituency to ensure he gets another term or should he think of the country and lose the local elections? That is a tricky question.

A good insight came from a friend in the BJP. He pointed out that Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi never paid special attention to their own Lok Sabha constituencies. They were always the statesman of India. Coming from a BJP leader, that is a great compliment. But then the people of Uttar Pradesh must be cursing them for not doing enough for the development of their region.

Politics is not such a simple business, after all. You never know what will work in your favour and what won't