North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, February 2: The village of Sandeshkhali in the great Sunderbans delta has since January been in ferment: raids by a controversial central agency, violence, accusations by women of sexual exploitation by local members of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and a political faceoff between the TMC and India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

On 5 January 2024, officials of the Enforcement Directorate (ED)—frequently criticised for being partisan, an accusation borne out by data—were attacked violently by supporters of a Trinamool leader named Shahjahan Sheikh, when they tried to raid his house at Sandeshkhali to investigate an alleged ration scam. 

The mob of over 1,000, mostly women, injured three ED officials, set their vehicles ablaze and allegedly looted their personal belongings such as laptops, mobiles and wallets. Media covering the incident were also attacked (the same day, a second ED team was also attacked during the arrest of another TMC leader, Shankar Adhya, in North 24 Parganas’s Bongaon).  

Sandeshkhali has since been in ferment, with allegations surfacing of systematic sexual exploitation of women by Sheikh, who fled the area, and other Trinamool leaders. Women with broomsticks and kitchen utensils protested on the streets and properties of Trinamool leaders were set afire, about a month after many locals attacked the ED.

The West Bengal police have called the allegations of sexual exploitation “wilful misinformation”. The state governor, also accused of being partisan, visited the area, and BJP workers clashed with police on 14 February. 

These attacks on the ED coincide with its investigations, along with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), into alleged corruption among high-profile TMC politicians. Despite similar actions by the agencies in other opposition-ruled states, such attacks during a raid have not been seen elsewhere.

Political violence in West Bengal is common, and these attacks are rooted in the state’s socio-political fabric, as many have observed (here, here and here). 

But locals from Sandeshkhalli, many of whom were ordinary folk allied with the TMC, who stood against the ED were not just defending their leader, but possibly safeguarding their livelihoods, according to Prof Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya of Jawaharlal Nehru University’s (JNU) Centre for Political Studies.

In a 2023 article in the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), Bhattacharyya called this system “franchisee politics” evolved under chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

In an interview with Article 14, Bhattacharyya, who has studied and written about West Bengal politics for more than two decades, called the state a “party society” and said he believed that due to the absence of a strong ideology and cultural capital to maintain a tight grip over her party, Banerjee had allowed local entrepreneurs to use her and TMC’s brand to run “businesses involving non-corporate informal capital”. 

“You know, Trinamool’s structure is such that unless you allow that to happen, the party cannot exist,” said Bhattacharyya, who did his PhD from the University of Cambridge in the UK on agrarian reforms and the politics of the Left in West Bengal. 

“These entrepreneurs use brand Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool’s image to carry out their businesses while sharing the profit with the party,” said Bhattacharyya,

In exchange, these “enterprising personalities”, who employ a large number of people and control the local informal economy, have become local leaders of the TMC. For example, TMC’s Sheikh, a member of the local zilla parishad, a local self-government body, reportedly owns 17 cars, land worth Rs 4 crore, jewellery worth more than Rs 2 crore and a house worth over Rs 1.5 crore. 

Sheikh’s businesses include aquaculture, brick kilns and shops in local markets. 

Addhya reportedly has accumulated wealth of over Rs 200 crore from multiple unlawful businesses, according to the ED, which accused him of being directly responsible for laundering over Rs 20,000 crore, half of which came from the alleged ration distribution scandal. The TMC leader reportedly siphoned off the money through foreign currency trading and exchange in the border areas of West Bengal.

The primary suspect, Jyotipriya Mallick, a minister in Banerjee’s cabinet, is also a local leader from the North 24 Parganas district.

The TMC was India’s second-richest party after the BJP by income in the financial year 2021-22, according to its audit report submitted to the Election Commission of India. The party’s income rose 600% in a year, from Rs 74.41 crore in 2020-21 to Rs 545.75 crore in 2021-22.

With the Supreme Court banning electoral bonds on 15 February 2024, the Trinamool’s finances are likely to be hit, increasing financial pressures on the party. Nearly 98% of the party’s income came from electoral bonds in 2022-23, according to the audit report. The party has been the highest earner from electoral bonds after the BJP. 

Central agencies have arrested several other local TMC leaders (here, here and here) from across the state on similar charges of running illicit trades. 

Bhattacharyya, who has periodically taught in several institutions in India and abroad, apart from JNU, discussed the transformation of these local entrepreneurs into not just political leaders but the main force behind the current government in West Bengal. He discussed how their ascent to authority could potentially plunge TMC into turmoil. 

“These local leaders are getting richer and the difference, the social and economic difference, between them and common people is going to increase over the years and that will create a crisis in Trinamool,” he said.

Excerpts from the interview:

Please define what is ‘franchisee politics’ of Mamata Banerjee’s TMC.

I call TMC’s model of politics as franchisee politics because similar to the franchisee system, where one can use a brand for their own benefit, local TMC leaders use Mamata Banerjee’s image to run their businesses. Suppose you are an entrepreneur and you have developed a brand and want other people to use your brand by giving them a licence in exchange of a licence fee. And with that licence, those other people can sell their products because the brand has recognition and sellability. This is what we call the franchisee model. 

In my (EPW) article, I referred to the TMC’s franchisee politics as a system where the party lacks a firm organisational structure, like the Left or BJP. Mamata Banerjee is the only universally accepted leader in the TMC. All other leaders must have some degree of allegiance to her to hold any commanding position. After TMC came to power, it saw a huge influx of members, particularly from Left parties. These members, along with old party workers, began to wield their influence and have their own game of power. As they became local leaders at the panchayat and municipal level they accumulated power, assets and wealth. 

By looking at the Election Commission data of Trinamool candidates, you can see in ample number of cases that the declared wealth has grown enormously over the last decade. And if you look into the profession of these Trinamool leaders in many cases, if not most, they show business as their profession…

But Trinamool Congress's cumulative wealth as a party has also grown. It is one of the wealthiest parties in the country currently.

That is true. Now, when you see these people’s (local TMC leaders) increasing wealth, and you go at the ground level and talk to common people, you realise that these leaders have multiple businesses, many of them linked to the government. 

For example, the tender-distribution process, the kind of outsourcing that the government does, the contractual kind of transaction that the government gets into, all these local leaders are beneficiaries in some way or other from both the market and government resources. A part of it is legal and a large part of it is illegal. Illegal favoured contracts and favoured tender distribution and all these things. Promising jobs against money and so on. These things do go on at the ground level. 

Now when you see that happening on the local level, how does it affect the party? Is the top leadership of the party unaware of such things happening? Of course, they are aware. But you know, Trinamool’s structure is such that unless you allow that to happen, the party cannot exist. Therefore, at the local levels, you have these enterprising individuals who are also the leaders of the party, who are making a lot of money in the process and the top leadership of the party also knows that these people are getting richer. But at the same time, they actually allow that to happen because otherwise the party doesn't exist. So these entrepreneurs use brand Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool’s image to carry out their businesses while sharing the profit with the party. This is franchisee politics.  

But hasn’t this system of political economy existed since the Left Front era?

You see until 2003-2004, these local entrepreneurs were not in the position of leadership. They were in the position of organising the party in certain ways, such as supplying people, supplying materials, supplying money and so on, but not building the local leadership. The local leadership was still with the committed whole-timers of the party or school teachers who actually supplemented the whole timers. That's a basic difference. In Trinamool, you have a complete collaboration of capital and political power in the form of this crony capitalism of the non-corporate kind. 

You have said that the franchisee politics of Mamata Banerjee needs support from local people to carry out transactions. Can you tell me what you mean by “transaction” here and why it needs public support?

Now, these people (local TMC leaders) don't get richer by depriving everybody else. Because they don't just need wealth, they also need to have power. And political power and material wealth, they reinforce each other. So, to expand their political power, they have to have a large segment of the population depending on them. Common people also benefit from the wealth their leaders make in various forms such as odd jobs and payment against certain sub-contracts and so on. There’s a whole network of monetary transactions that you find simultaneously with the expansion of the political network these people operate within. That’s a huge nexus. This happens in the informal economy.

What Trinamool leaders have produced is crony capitalism of a non-corporate variety. Political theorist Partha Chatterjee powerfully made a distinction between corporate and non-corporate capital in the political fields showing the capacity of the latter to create a strong sense of shared interests akin to communities. Such non-corporate capital finds expression in investments in the relatively small-scale informal sector involving myriad manufacturing and services. So, given the number of people dependent on the informal economy for their livelihood in West Bengal, as much as Trinamool leaders need local people, local people also need these leaders and their wealth.

Aside from employment, allegiance to the party during elections against certain benefits is also transactional. People have a vague sense that Didi (Mamata Banerjee) is pro-poor and pro-farmer. Yet, their support for the TMC is not in response to any ideological message of social or political transformation, such as Hindutva and socialism, that parties like the BJP or the CPI(M) offer. People aren’t captivated by any alternative vision from Trinamool.

People need comfort and security, which the government provides. Support is conditional on what the party offers immediately, creating a transactional relationship. In contrast, BJP’s power in north India, backed by its Hindutva ideology, convinces even poor and socially marginal people to vote for them in exchange of a symbolic empowerment, real or false. This is ideological, not transactional. 

So, what you are saying is that people’s support for the TMC is transactional because they know that keeping Banerjee in power will keep her administration’s welfare politics running.

[Keeping her in power will keep] welfare politics running and also local leaders [will be able to provide] jobs and security in the informal sector.

You have also written about conflict in TMC’s system of franchisee politics. If Banerjee and the party have so much support from people, how does conflict occur, and does it play any role in enabling franchisee politics further? The top leadership might view this conflict among local leaders as competition between them, where if one fails to do the job others would be there to replace them. 

See, conflict is good for the top leadership to the extent [that it is] manageable. If it goes beyond that, it turns violent. But Mamata Banerjee tries very efficiently to manage this conflict. She holds regular meetings, scolds local leaders and replaces them openly. She changes the district committees regularly to prevent any local leader from challenging her authority. This also becomes a demonstration of her power and adds to her charisma, helping her keep complete control over the party. It’s not just her ability but the fact that she can do it. The public believes that she can replace any corrupt local leader, if [she is] informed. You will remember that in 2016 when the Narada scam broke out, she said that she wouldn't have nominated leaders who were seen taking bribes. She then said, ‘Consider I am the candidate in all seats and vote for me.’ 

Conflict at this level is encouraged because Mamata Banerjee benefits from it by appearing to manage it and reinforcing her authority. But at the ground level, this conflict is about life and death because if you have an illegal domain of the economy that has the support of the local police administration and the state then you tend to monopolise power in the local area, and any kind of monopolistic power would like to exclude other challenges coming from within that locality. And this is all informal and there is no formal guarantee that a particular relationship of power would prevail. It is not like CPI(M), which had a district committee and hierarchy, and some people were designated in certain positions. In Trinamool, positions change almost every day according to what one is offering. 

You have said that the top TMC leadership “manages rivalries at two levels of business and of institutional power in politics”. You have called the TMC an “entrepreneurial party” and its politics as “franchisee politics”. How then are business and power politics different from each other in the eyes of the TMC’s top leadership? 

See, there are two levels. One is political power, which also has two different channels, the power to mobilise people in support of certain causes and then political power that operates through institutions like the panchayat [and municipalities]. Eventually, everybody wants to reach the top leadership to get some support to run the local party with some confidence and blessings from the top leaders.  

The informal-business level is more local and oriented towards material give-and-take, which yields profit for a few and provides livelihoods to many. For instance, many Trinamool leaders run illegal operations like brick kilns, sand mining, and timber trade and also benefit from government tenders and contracts. Until the later years of the Left Front era, owners of these businesses never became political leaders. There was some degree of control – getting weaker towards the end – of the party apparatchik over these people.

I wrote in my article how Trinamool leaders fight among themselves to keep control of illegal coal mining. That’s why we see so much fighting in the Durgapur-Asansol coal mining belt. More Trinamool people are attacked by Trinamool workers, than by other party workers. This is all about holding onto the local business. Here business and politics come in close proximity to each other, and that is how this cronyism has shaped up. 

You have written that local TMC leaders are not as educated and culturally rich, as Left leaders used to be. The ruling party leaders now are “local government contractors, petty realtors, moneylenders, ration shop dealers, business persons selling inputs such as fertilisers and seeds, truck and bus owners, tractor rentiers, suppliers of construction materials, timber merchants, plywood manufacturers, rice mill owners, money traders, grocery owners, etc” from backward castes with “financial clout and the spirit of enterprise”. This is the reason you have also cited for lack of cultural capital in TMC’s governance. But you have also written how Banerjee reached out to religious and caste leaders and people from arts, literature, theatre and films. Why did these personalities fail to maintain any influence on the grassroots politics of the state in parallel with TMC’s entrepreneurial leaders?

No, I wrote that TMC leaders care less about formal education and do not have the cultural capital that the Left leaders usually had. The CPI (M) regime was very different in the sense that it was run by the bhadralok (gentlemen) leadership, which had hegemony over the rest of Bengal. School teachers (or any educated local leaders of the party) became critical in the power structure because they were accepted as local moral leaders. Local nagarik (citizen) and party committees were run based on certain bhadralok protocols and conventions, many of which were conservative and constrictive. They were of course not always so bhadra (polite) but to appear as bhadralok was the intention because CPI (M) claimed to be a reformist and enlightened kind of party. Such an attitudinal projection was sharply in contrast with the ruling party that preceded the CPI(M), the Congress of the 1970s, especially the Youth Congress during the Emergency. It was considered a party of goons and ruffians. So, the Left offered itself as the alternative to maintain social peace by operating predictable institutional norms. It made intensive intellectual investments in carrying out reforms, particularly in the rural economy and administration.

Through local teachers and activists, the Left claimed a higher understanding of societal good and what is desirable for people.  They promoted Marxism as a scientific truth, emphasising theoretical purity, intellectualism, and a disciplined, hierarchical structure enriched with ideology and high culture. 

This is not the case with Banerjee. She keeps a very close and personal relationship with certain kinds of popular figures in the cultural fields, such as film and TV actors, artists and singers… she also maintains good relations with sections in academia. Some were already close to her due to their anti-Left Front past, while others shifted allegiance to her when she came to power. Unlike the Left’s institutional approach, where personal relationships could not but be mediated by the party, Mamata protects her interests in these matters with much more freedom and spontaneity.

These people who Mamata keeps in touch with are professionals, not partisans, with little interest in Trinamool party or its local leadership. Unlike the Left era when committed Left-leaning intellectuals regularly held classes and meetings in the local areas with local party workers, and held positions in local committees of the party, Mamata’s is a completely personalised relationship with little to no involvement of the party as such.

She does not rely on the intelligentsia or the hyped ‘culture’ of Bengal but maintains close contact with them due to their indirect impact on the electorate. Mamata Banerjee came to power only after the bulk of Bengal’s intelligentsia withdrew their support from the Left Front after Nandigram and Singur and called “poriborton chai (we want change)”. This had a general impact on the electorate at large, given the status that the intelligentsia enjoyed in the state. But if you ask me whether these people have the same kind of influence or the same kind of control over the local leadership of Trinamool? The answer is no. 

Mamata knows by having them by her side, and often patronising them, she can have a good deal of presence in Bengal’s popular culture. No wonder some of the most celebrated cine stars are also MPs and MLAs from her party. She gets routinely felicitated for her own artistic creations - her poems and essays - which helps in casting a spell of her creative abilities among the uninitiated.

You have written extensively about TMC’s community outreach. But it seems that the party’s outreach is failing as the BJP gains ground. You have written yourself about the limits of TMC, a ‘catch-all party’, in community outreach. But isn’t the BJP also a catch-all party? So, what is the difference between the two in this context? You have also said that both have peculiar similarities in their ‘economic governmentality’ and they both believe in ‘economic expansionism and political absolutism’. Please explain how the BJP’s grassroots politics is different from that of the TMC in West Bengal.

I will explain the latter part of this question first. Trinamool’s economic and political agendas are to continue its cronyism in the informal sector as I said earlier. BJP’s cronyism, meanwhile, is at the monopolistic corporate capital level. BJP ensures that its preferred corporations receive prime bidding opportunities when public assets like docks, airports, coal mines, airways, or transport infrastructure are privatised. On the other hand, Trinamool ensures party franchisee owners control local resources or manage contracts for government jobs and public expenditure. Trinamool’s operation in the informal economy makes its corruption more visible, unlike BJP’s at the top. But both parties pursue power, necessitating unrestricted growth, even if it involves suppressing opposition or poaching members from other parties. 

About community outreach, you see, Mamata [Banerjee] did not have a well-organised party when she came to power. So, she reached out to Muslim, Matua, Rajbongshi leaders, knowing these people have a lot of clout in their communities and they could benefit her electorally. 

For instance, in Darjeeling, she divided the Gorkhaland movement, gaining support from one faction. She allied with leaders of identity movements across the state. Unlike the Left Front era, where community leaders were kept from power, Banerjee embraced them as she couldn’t have incorporated their communities into her party without their intermediation. 

But Trinamool’s limitation is evident in this context, as the BJP is gaining ground. Despite being a catch-all party like the Trinamool, BJP’s success, as Snigdhendu Bhattacharya’s work has shown, lies in its long duly process of groundwork. Unlike other parties, BJP has cultural and social activists of several organisations, including the RSS, working at the grassroots for decades to incorporate support of various sections of the population, be it the Tribals, be it the Dalits and so on... In Bengal, when it comes to organising people on cultural and social lines at the grassroots, BJP could have an edge because of its organisational activity.  But then we have also seen in 2021 that BJP has its limitations in West Bengal. 

So, with the BJP’s limitations in West Bengal, is TMC’s franchisee politics likely to continue in the same form?

Trinamool faces a moral problem, as people are getting disenchanted with local leaders. So, after Mamata, what? Abhishek Banerjee (her nephew) as yet doesn't have the kind of influence Mamata has. People at large still have faith in Mamata, but not in the local leadership. It happened with the Left as well as the Left’s local leaders lost their moral authority over the years. In the Left's final decade, its local leadership became more self-interested and less inclined to protect the interests of the community. Similar things would be happening in Trinamool as well. Imagine, we both live in a village and you have actually built a large house or replaced your cycle with first a motorbike and then an SUV because you are a Trinamool leader, and my prospects remained unchanged while both of us were in the same condition before the party came to power. Of course, it creates jealousy, it creates all kinds of moral dilemmas and Trinamool will pay a price for it. 

So, the TMC’s entrepreneurial leaders who practise franchisee politics are coming to realise that they don’t need the support of common people to carry out their transactions anymore?

No, they need people, but people will find it morally difficult to support Trinamool’s local leadership in the future. People now support them because people need some degree of governmental and personal protection. But at the same time, this support would be diminished because these local leaders are getting richer and the difference, the social and economic difference, between them and common people is going to increase over the years and that would create a crisis in Trinamool unless the party arrests this trend.

But is this really going to happen? What we saw during the failed attempt to raid Shahjahan Sheikh’s house is that common people, including women with their children, came to attack ED and central paramilitary forces, so their leader could not be arrested. Do you see that crisis in Trinamool happening any time soon?

No, it may not happen anytime soon, and it may not happen across the state at the same time. But in the particular case of Shahjahan Sheikh, the incident happened in a Muslim-dominated area. There is a kind of opposition to the central agencies because they are perceived as run by the BJP. So, that also reinforced the kind of reaction that we saw. But this would not be the same everywhere, and things are also likely to change among Muslims. Central agencies raided so many places across the state, [but] they have not faced any such attacks on any other day. 

(Niladry Sarkar is an independent journalist from West Bengal.)

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