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8 ISSUES AND INSIGHTS MUMBAI | 18 MAY 2019 > Somnath Chatterjee, from Jadavpur, defeat- ing him so thoroughly that he could never Why this kolaveri di, didi? contest from that constituency again. Reforms reach Mukherjee privately rues the day he let You can't beat Mamata Banerjee in street politics — she pours her heart and soul Mamata loose on Bengal. The man who got the Calcutta Corporation to pass a resolution a dead end into pulverising her rivals that Sourav Ganguly should get a Padma award, says he deserves the Bharat Ratna: anmohan At a cabinet meeting, just after the is alone — presumably because she lives “Dancing on my head is Mamata Banerjee; Singh’s hand- Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo (and among people who don’t know where their under my command is the army of sweepers Msome reelection make no mistake, supremo is what she is) next meal is coming from. employed by the corporation. With all this, win in 2009 was seen as a Mamata Banerjee had thrown a tantrum, a Banerjee grew up in straitened circum- I am still running the corporation. Shouldn’t chance to recreate the minister exclaimed in exasperation: “What stances, having lost her father when she was I get an award for this feat?” he once said in reforms momentum of the is wrong with Mamata Banerjee?” just a teenager. Her “people” are her family. a TV interview. 1990s when he had been The question was a rhetorical one, but one So much so that she has an unbroken rule: With all this, how did Mamata allow the finance minister. More of his Bengal colleagues took his time to She never attends any family functions. (Her BJP to acquire a mass presence in Bengal? banner headlines greeted answer it. He took off his glasses, polished nephew Abhishek, widely seen as her suc- Trinamool supporters say she has only Prime Minister Narendra them, put them back on and said evenly: “If cessor, got engaged to a girl in Delhi some herself to blame. New mosques are sprout- Modi as India’s Margaret someone thinks she’s a better poet than years ago. Festivities went on for three days. ing all over Bengal on public land. Tourists COUNTRY CODE Thatcher or Shinzo Abe PLAIN POLITICS Rabindranath Tagore, a better musician than Although Mamata had no other pressing are warned by well-wishers never to get into RAHUL JACOB when Modi received an ADITI PHADNIS Beethoven and a better painter than Leonardo engagements, she just stayed away.) an altercation with a Muslim on the streets: absolute majority in 2014, da Vinci, then everything is a problem”. Her strongest bond was with her mother. the police have orders to arrest you first and but neither made progress Banerjee is viewed by the political com- When she used to leave her Kalighat home ask you questions later. Mamata has substantially revising labour laws, for instance. Ikea and ll this past week, if elections were munity (cutting across party lines) as a prob- for work, her mother would come to the door imposed affirmative action to the point of Coke announced billion-dollar bets on India in the summer being “fought”, they were being lem child who should not be allowed among to see her off. She would crane her neck, look absurdity. This has naturally led to count- of 2012. But some time in 2012, Rahul Gandhi told NDTV a Afought in West Bengal. Mamata grown-ups unescorted. But to the people of back and settle back in the car only when er-action: The Hindus who never thought of week ago, Congress’ leadership, including Singh, decided Banerjee singlehandedly turned the last Bengal, her life is an open book and she is she had lost sight of her mother. Contrary themselves as Hindus are now banding liberalisation had run its course. Now, Gandhi feels India phase of the elections into a gladiatorial always, unfailingly one of them. In a state to common perception, Mamata is not par- behind the BJP. Ram has entered the land needs to find a “new model” that doesn’t enrich just the top fight, forcing the Bharatiya Janata Party that lionises poverty, she continues to live ticularly close to her brothers. She is impul- of Durga. 2-3 per cent. He wouldn’t let on whether this meant, say, a (BJP) to come out on the streets. in a simple house with a tin roof near a mos- sive, has strong likes and dislikes and trusts Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a ral- marginal tax rate of 70 per cent. Gandhi’s English is enig- You cannot beat Mamata Banerjee in quito-infested open canal. Her style state- very few people. ly in the state that many, many MLAs from matic and his Hindi unidiomatic. Elaborating, he sounded street politics. The Congress, the Left parties ment runs to simple handloom saris, rubber Her mentor in politics was the Mayor of Trinamool Congress are in touch with the like Robin Hood played by Ajit, the movie star of yesteryear: — they are all her victims. She pours her chappals and a modest Indian watch. Not Calcutta, Subroto Mukherjee who got BJP. If the Trinamool Congress does badly, “Past se future ko jodhna padega”. heart and soul into pulverising her rivals. for her flashy mobiles and fancy cars. She Mamata’s first lok Sabha nomination in there will be an exodus of MLAs into the It was a stark repudiation of Congress’ most notable achieve- Not for her sophistication and intellectual- has a rule that she never breaks: She never 1984. She contested against a CPI (M) heavy- BJP: Assembly elections are due in just 24 ment in the past three decades. The manifestoes of the ism. She believes in raw power. eats in anyone’s presence — only when she weight, lawyer and later Lok Sabha Speaker months. Bengal is the BJP’s new frontier. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress are dispiriting if you are foolishly hoping that privatisation would be included even just for discussion. The headlines about widespread unemployment should have prompted — in a country more LUNCH WITH BS > GAUTAM SINGHANIA | CHAIRMAN & MANAGING DIRECTOR | RAYMOND honest with itself — proposals to make it easier for companies to hire and fire workers. “What I don’t understand is the mindset that leads to the perpetuation of resistance to labour law That isn't marketing spiel. Inside reform,” observes Pronab Sen, India’s former chief statistician. the Atelier a sales associate shows Both parties aspire to building India into an export pow- customers a large touch monitor erhouse — never mind that data released Thursday showed with several combinations and per- export growth in April slid to 0.64 per cent, compared with a Simple is the new cool mutations for ordering hand-craft- year ago, as many labour-intensive sectors continue to face ed leather shoes. It's cutting edge liquidity issues. Congress may call it “Make for the world” Singhania tells Pavan Lall why Trump's sparring with China has been good for and quite unlike what many inter- and the BJP “Make in India”, but neither has a clue about national labels offer. So what has he what it will take to embed India into mobile phone or athletic business and how he keeps tabs on the goings-on in his company while done different in the last year? shoe supply chains. The Reserve Bank of India’s industry Singhania says the focus has been credit data for the year ended March 2019 shows that many not being involved day to day on the real estate business — sectors that are typically labour intensive, such as leather, Raymond has just launched its first textiles, and gems and jewellery, saw gross bank credit lad in a V-necked, orange then says: “There is nothing hidden paper. “It was challenging to go from situation and the paper was sold to project in Thane — which is com- decline. Both manifestos read like a wishlist for Santa: pima cotton T-shirt embla- about the dispute between my textiles to newspapers, which was a Gujarat Samachar.” pletely different from textiles. "It's Congress would raise expenditure on education to 6 per cent C zoned with his team logo father and me. "He wants me to do perishable commodity and which I Today, Raymond has over 1,100 all about the permissions," he says. of GDP while the BJP thinks a global yoga industry is a spring- “GHS”, grey track pants and Tommy things that are not possible. The knew nothing about. But my time stores across 550 cities, a retail dis- Raymond owns 130 acres in Thane, board to becoming the third largest economy in the world. Hilfiger flip flops, Gautam Hari company is on one side and my there was great,” he says. "In the end, tribution network spread over valued around ~5,200 crore accord- Even before this campaign of non-stop abuse and majori- Singhania, chairman and managing father on the other. The dispute is I was caught between other media 20,000 locations, from metro cities ing to market estimates. tarian flag-waving, Indian elections scarcely ever mentioned director of the Raymond Group, is personal and my job is to firewall giants and an unfortunate political all the way to tier 10 towns. But there Lunch over, the waiters arrive reforms. The poor are infinitely more numerous than the mid- meeting me on a warm afternoon at my family issues from that of the are challenges. If earlier it was about with a mango roulade cake for dle class, and voter turnout in poor rural areas much higher the JK House, Raymond’s headquar- organisation.” Is resolution likely? licences to do business — one could dessert for me which I decline and than in Mumbai or Bengaluru, even more so this year.

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