Popular Insurance Urban development minister and TMC leader Firhad Hakim hands over a Swastha Sathi card to a beneficiary in Calcutta Photograph by Sandipan Chatterjee outlookindia.com 2020-12-30T10:38:31+05:30
It’s a term, now old-fashioned and once reserved for the best of despots, that psephologist Biswanath Chakraborty uses to describe Mamata Banerjee’s rule: a ‘benevolent dictatorship’. Benevolent, because of her social welfare schemes, and dictatorial, because of her great reluctance to allow any space to the Opposition or critics. The Trinamool Congress supremo has repeatedly proclaimed that her government’s schemes cover a person “from birth to death”. Opponents denounce her “politics of dole”.