Anger in the wake of Aila

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: What looks like the emergence of an opposition force and of healthy political competition in Bengal, finally, has helped shape the mode of popular expression that the CM saw in Dhamakhali last week.

Too much political competition may not be a good thing, since it leads to reckless populism at the expense of long-term benefits to the population at large. The recent controversy over land acquisition is a case in point—where for all the faults of the government, the Opposition did not exactly cover itself with glory. But this is less of a concern for disaster relief.

However, even the role of the media has changed in subtle ways. The communication revolution and globalisation of media have, for example, created subtle forms of peer pressure across regions and countries. For example, for swing voters in the US, it was more Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath than the Iraq war that dealt a fatal blow to his administration’s image. The surprisingly responsive way the Chinese government handled the aftermath of the earthquake in Sichuan last year had a lot to do with its hand being forced by media flashing those images all across the world. Starvation deaths in remote villages in the western districts of West Bengal in the late seventies received some attention in the regional press, but were not subject to the kind of media frenzy that met the 2005 hunger deaths in Amlashol. Like in sports, once you get to see national and international teams in action, that pressures regional and national teams to perform.

Competition too has various subtle aspects and is not restricted merely to political competition among parties. For example, where performance counts, parties will be under pressure to select candidates who will deliver more for their constituents over those whose chief qualification is loyalty to the leadership. Also, NGOs and voluntary organisations have become really active in rural Bengal and many of them, over time, have earned the trust of local people. Even local governments have had to come to terms with them. In times of natural calamities like Aila, workers of these organisations often play active roles and this too imposes a competitive pressure on government officials and local politicians.