The maiden Maa, Mati, Manush government has completed a year. Although a year is too short a time to correctly assess the performance of a government, I with all humility must say that we have been 100% successful in meeting all the promises made in our election manifesto. However, it is impossible to assess our performance correctly and objectively unless viewed in the right perspective of what we had inherited. When we first set foot in the Writers’ Building a year ago, we had an insurmountable task at hand. We knew what the challenges were and how those looked like.
For starters, we knew our coffers were empty. Every child born in this state has a huge debt hanging like the sword of Damocles on h/his head. For every rupee that the government earns, it has to spend 94 paise on salaries and interests on debts. Our task was to redeem a wrongdoing which was not ours. If one chooses to oversee this fact while judging our performance, it will definitely be a distortion of facts.
Throughout the last one year, we have tried to reason with the central government about our predicament. We have only one demand which we believe is just and fair and that is we are unable and unwilling to bear the brunt of the sin that is not ours. Every other state had accepted the recommendations of the Finance Commission and had implemented the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (FRBM). West Bengal is the only exception. We merely stated that the central government cannot shirk its responsibility of allowing successive left front governments to go scot-free in financial wrongdoings and we demand that the entire structure of this huge debt trap needs to be re-laid. We should be allowed a moratorium of three years for the interest that the state pays. On top of this fiscal liability and rigid non-cooperation of the Centre, we have been subjected to relentless and baseless malice from those with vested interests and some influential media. Our detractors entirely ignore the facts and reality: how vulnerable we are and how we are making impossible things happen through sheer determination and hard work.
Everyday, we are pressurized to change our stand on many issues and threatened to do so from many quarters. A sustained campaign of lies and malice is carried out. But I am convinced that the people of Bengal do not believe in this collective slander, they know that we are a government for the weak and the forlorn. We are not against reforms and are entirely aware of the irreversible trends that globalization brings with it. But we are against any reform that brings joy to a few and gloom for many.
In this short span, we have been able to keep all our promises made to the people and in the remaining years of our tenure we will surely fulfill all our pledges. We have never lost sight of our ultimate goal of bringing back those lost golden years in every sphere of life in this state, and we are confident that we shall achieve it. Even in the face of sustained non-cooperation and discriminatory treatment from many quarters, our government did not lose sight of its agenda and mission even for a single day.
On our first anniversary, we renew our pledge to serve our motherland notwithstanding the challenges and hardships that we face. We will do away with our inheritance of darkness and we will make the proverbial words come true again: “What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow.”
