TC more Left than CPM, no Mamata for reforms

NEW DELHI: Mamata Banerjee���s objection to the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill 2007 and Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill 2007 in Thursday���s Cabinet meeting and her cold and distant posture vis-a-vis Congress on Friday hold ominous portents for the UPA government on the economic policy-making front.

After threatening to walk out of the Cabinet meet where she had to be convinced by senior Congress leaders Pranab Mukherjee and Vayalar Ravi to stay on, on Friday Ms Banerjee did not attend a lunch for parliamentary leaders of all political parties hosted by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.

Trinamool MPs were asked to boycott Parliament ��� she herself was missing from the Rajya Sabha, where questions related to her ministry were listed. The official Trinamool explanation on her absence from the parliamentary leaders��� lunch was that ���she did not attend lunches and dinners usually���.

If Ms Banerjee was sulking at noon about the Cabinet episode, then by dinner time Friday she is said to have hardened her position further after word got around that a senior Left leader had been told of the government���s firmness in bringing the twin Bill related to land acquisition for industry to Parliament.

The Bills, passed by the Cabinet, are slated to be sent to a parliamentary standing committee for further examination after being introduced in the Lok Sabha.

The Trinamool chief���s position on economic policy measures such as land acquisition and disinvestment is a page torn off the Left���s book of economic no-nos. Her main political plank in West Bengal has been her opposition to land acquisition for industry and it is no secret that Ms Banerjee has set herself the single-point agenda of besting Left in West Bengal.

The government is, therefore, confronted with an ultra Left voice in the Trinamool leader. Senior Congress ministers were predicting after Ms Banerjee���s show of ���unreasonableness��� that the government could find itself short of even the kind of traction that it had with the Left. Congress circles were full of nostalgia for the good old days of the Left, when the government could play one power group against another within CPM.

Congress should not be surprised at Ms Banerjee���s objections to the twin bills on land acquisition. Even in the first Cabinet meeting after the formation of the new government, it had put forth its objections to the Bills. Ms Banerjee is arguing against the 70:30 clause in the Land Acquisition Bill that makes it mandatory for the private party to acquire the major portion of the land, leaving the state to help with the rest of the 30%.

Trinamool is for the private entity acquiring the entire land from landowners, mostly farmers, in a bid to protect their interest. She has also objected to the use of money and muscle power by private developers to acquire land from farmers.

Trinamool Congress has also waved the red flag on disinvestment in public sector units, especially those in the insurance and banking sectors. These two hurdles alone will serve as a set back to the Congress-led UPA government���s plans on infrastructure development.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh might have sought to neutralise some of this opposition by making Ms Banerjee a member of the important Cabinet committee on economic affairs and the one on political affairs. However, the sop has in no way helped things by the look of it. Hassle-free economic government could elude the Congress-led UPA government yet again.