For India’s rail minister, all tracks lead to West Bengal

Here in the world’s largest democracy, monsoons and Bollywood blockbusters may come and go, but one thing has proven proved remarkably consistent: government in West Bengal.

The populous eastern state boasts the world’s longest-serving popularly elected Communist government, with 33 years under its (bright red) belt.

That record is now threatened, however, by Mamata Banerjee, known as the scrappy “Bengal tigress,” who is redefining politics here from her perch atop India’s bloated Ministry of Railways.

Banerjee, the national railways minister, has routed millions of dollars’ worth of projects to her state and renamed numerous metro stations after heroes, including Mother Teresa and Bengali freedom fighter “Masterda” Surya Sen, presumably in the hope that some of their glory will rub off.

From a single seat in 2004 — hers — Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress Party has expanded its reach and now controls nearly half the state’s 42 seats in the national Parliament as well as most local and municipal assemblies. Her goal is to become West Bengal’s chief minister, a post akin to governor.

Trinamool’s widely predicted defeat of the Communists in state elections expected early next year could alter national politics as well, given the Communist Party of India’s longstanding opposition to economic restructuring, foreign investment and the U.S.-India nuclear deal, which paved the way for India to acquire nuclear fuel and technology for civilian energy after its 1998 nuclear test.

India’s top rail job, to which she was nominated by the prime minister after joining the Congress Party-led national coalition, is a coveted post for politicians. With 1.5 million employees, Indian Railways is the second-largest employer in the world after the Chinese military, giving the minister jobs galore to award, factories to relocate, train lines to redirect.

Banerjee, 55, has proved adept at delivering pork to West Bengal voters. She has commissioned two new rail museums, named a special train after a Bengali poet and unveiled plans for a new rail carriage factory, research and development center, rail axle factory, pilot training center and advanced training facility.

“While this happens everywhere, she’s extreme,” said B.G. Deshmukh, chairman of Public Concern for Governance, a civic group.

Banerjee’s focus on West Bengal has fueled criticism that she’s an “absentee minister,” having missed 63% of the Cabinet meetings and rarely leaving her state, even when a strike by motormen crippled Mumbai or a New Delhi railway stampede left two dead and 15 injured. During her 15-month tenure as minister, 269 people have died in 16 rail accidents. Critics say she has given little attention to safety concerns, but coalition politics in India mean that political clout can trump ability in determining Cabinet selections, analysts said.

“As a common Yankee saying goes, this is ‘No way to run a railroad,’ “an Indian Express editorial said.

But if all politics are local, the “instigator in chief” knows the score. She’s tough, unpredictable and theatrical: threatening suicide when a political ally disappointed her, scuffling (literally) with political opponents in Parliament, throwing papers, shedding tears, shouting, threatening to resign.

“She’s very populist, without much thought to long-term programs,” said Sanjeeb Mukherjee, a political science professor at Kolkata University. “She works on the anger of the people.”

Among her few outlined programs in her quest to become chief minister are turning the decrepit state capital, Kolkata, into a London, north Bengal into a Switzerland and the state’s beaches into a Goa.

But local voters see her as a fighter for the little guy and a politician who isn’t corrupt, considered a rarity, and who still lives modestly in a down-market Kolkata neighborhood.

Banerjee was unavailable for an interview, but Trinamool party general secretary Partha Chatterjee said the minister didn’t favor West Bengal with her rail budget but as an underdeveloped state deserving more projects. “Her enemies who fear her are spreading these rumors,” he said.

Banerjee’s freight-train momentum has heads hanging at Communist Party of India (Marxist) offices, a world where Stalin’s portrait still graces the walls, “politburos” and “central committees” map out strategy and capitalists are considered “class enemies.”

“Sometimes we eat sweets, but for a change, we’re tasting bitter fruit,” said Haripada Biswas, a local representative of the Left Front, the alliance lead by CPI-M. “The outsiders are jealous. No one else could have held power for 33 years.”

That staying power was built on land reform and a strong grass-roots organization, but in recent years, allegations of corruption have dented its popularity even as grudging overtures to big business alienated its base.

“The first five or 10 years, the Left was good,” said Arnab Nandi, 52, a salesman. “But it’s slowly become tyrannical. Keeping someone in power for too long is bad. People now want a change.”

Recently, Nandi said, his family had a property dispute. “They made me run around, they wanted bribes everywhere,” he said. “Politicians have gotten richer despite their ‘fixed’ salaries and being ‘Marxist.” Most people I meet don’t like them.”

Still, Banerjee’s largesse goes only so far.

Ask for Kolkata’s Mahanayak Uttam Kumar station, which she recently renamed after a deceased Bengali movie star, and you get a blank stare. Use the name the neighborhood has enjoyed since 1777, Tollygunge, and there’s immediate understanding.

“Kumar is a legend, but slapping his name on a train station is foolishness,” said Nizamuddin Ahmad, 49, a commuter at the station. “Banerjee is just doing this for cheap popularity. These politicians are like mafia. If you rise in the film industry, you need experience and talent, but if you’re a minister, you don’t need anything.”

As Kolkata residents grapple with their new station names, several said it would be years before these caught on, if ever.

“For politicians, it’s a way to get attention,” said Gourav Ghosh, 24, a hotel manager, at the recently renamed Mother Teresa Station. “They can rename it, but everyone still knows Park Street as Park Street.”

mark.magnier@latimes.com

Anshul Rana of The Times’ New Delhi Bureau contributed to this report.