Darjeeling’s deliverance

Hope, fostered by change, has brought Darjeeling back to Kolkata. If that euphoria sounds petty, it should also be mitigated by caution. For, hope, in West Bengal, is the proverbial rare animal. It is still more so in the hills of northern Bengal. But, if 18 days after assuming charge, Mamata Banerjee could deliver a bipartite agreement, signed between the West Bengal government and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, there must be reason enough to feel good on the plains and in the hills.

The GJM, of course, was not as euphoric and effusive as the chief minister. But they seem to be happy enough for now. The CM hasn’t “solved” the “Gorkhaland problem”. And yet, a remarkable beginning has been made. What the GJM delegation didn’t say in as many words, but gave more than one indication of, is that representatives of the hills have never felt this warm and welcome in Kolkata. Well, Banerjee in these early days has been a demonstration of the goodwill a personal touch and hint of interest and ownership can generate. It is this visible difference in chief ministerial style that was called for to bridge the gulf that had rapidly expanded between the people of the state and its former CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. The GJM was attracted to and won over by this personal attribute of the new CM that is defining her public dealings.
But there was something bigger at work, tying together politics in the hills and on the plains. Far away from the Kolkata of paribartan, the Darjeeling Hills were witnessing a new dawn. The GJM — discredited due to its disruptive politics and violence, capped by the murder of Madan Tamang blamed on it — won resounding victories in each assembly constituency. Clearly, Darjeeling had chosen to repose its confidence in Bimal Gurung, at least for a while, and in the absence of a capable alternative. But despite its mandate, the GJM is on a tightrope, knowing there was no way to offer the hills jobs and development, to say nothing of “Gorkhaland”, without the state government.
Voices of protest have framed the negotiations between the GJM and Banerjee’s government. However, Darjeeling had invested almost as much in the hope of a Trinamool-Congress victory as had the plains. For, the erstwhile Left Front government had been given up on as a sincere party to the Gorkhaland problem long ago. So it is necessary to note that the cries of betrayal have come from political outfits, not so much from the people on the street. In fact, the people of the hills are a tired lot, despairing and demoralised, in the wake of Shubash Ghising, the expired Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council and the return of chaos under a GJM muscling out everybody else.

The GJM seems to have grasped that desperation, understanding how suicidal it would be to revert to the indefinite strikes that shut the hills down for weeks at a stretch and subject people to the privations of a choked economy. Darjeeling may smirk at the CM’s call for putting the deprivations of the past behind and turning north Bengal into India’s “Switzerland”, but the cry for development — infrastructure (building and repairing roads), jobs, education, and the still unsolved problem of drinking water — is the people’s own. In fact, the state’s higher education minister should think beyond the grand scheme of an IIT or IIM for Darjeeling. There are very good schools in Darjeeling. But what is needed first is a complete overhaul of the North Bengal University and more quality colleges, not just one planned model college.
Without dismissing the emotional charge of “Gorkhaland” and the likelihood of the GJM once again jettisoning everything else to chase that convergence of identity and political boundary, these everyday necessities and promises of future affluence need foremost a climbing down from maximalist positions that push solutions over the horizon. Revolutions are fine; but what they almost always beget are political orphans. If the GJM has understood this, then it has matured. It will need to mature further as part of the board of administrators before elections to a new hill council are held. What it cannot degenerate into is the DGHC under the GNLF. The GNLF is the GJM’s (and everybody else’s) portrait of hell. With more money and more powers for the new authority, with the possibility of still more in future, Ghising’s failure to account for almost Rs 80 crore will be on everyone’s mind.
Mamata Banerjee will not grant Gorkhaland, and even the loss of the northern plains to the new hill council can generate a political backlash against her. But she will be much kinder to the hills than the Left Front was. Observing this nuance and hoping to capitalise on it, Gurung has postponed raising the demand for statehood. Whether or not the tripartite talks take place within a week, today is when Kolkata must begin to look at Darjeeling as more than a summer holiday. Then, maybe, one day Darjeeling will mean more than tea to the rest of the world.

sudeep.paul@expressindia.com