THERE is hardly a single complete pucca house in the remote and impoverished tribal village of Mirsa in the forested Ausgram block of Bardhaman district. Some are missing roofs and some walls, and with the monsoon having set in, the living conditions of the villagers—most of whom are landless agricultural labourers—are miserable.

The villagers told Frontline that they could not complete building their houses in spite of receiving money under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY, the Central government’s housing scheme for those below the poverty line) because of the hefty “cut money” they had to pay to local Trinamool Congress leaders.

“Cut money” is the term for money taken as bribe or forcibly extorted by Trinamool members for implementing basic government-funded welfare projects and services in the State.

Mangali Bauri, standing outside her semi-complete house, recalled the day she went to the bank after being told that her first instalment of money from the PMAY had arrived. The local self-styled leaders of the ruling Trinamool, who had given her this news, were waiting outside the bank when she came out with the money. They took the money from her hands without a word, counted out Rs.10,000 for themselves, and returned the rest. “When I asked why they were taking it, they simply answered that it belonged to them,” said Mangali Bauri.

It was the same case with Subal Bauri. The goons waited for him outside the bank and took Rs.10,000 from the first instalment he received. “They said they would attack my house if I did not give them the money. They warned me that if I did not pay up, I would not get the rest of the money,” said Subal. Some 73 residents had to part with at least Rs.10,000 from the money each received under the PMAY while 40 had to pay between Rs.12,000 and Rs.20,000 for the funds yet to be delivered to them for house building. In one case, a resident ended up paying Rs.50,000. Their houses have remained in an unfinished state for several years now. With an average monthly income of Rs.2,000-3,000, they simply do not have the means to complete their houses after giving away a chunk of the funds to the local leaders.

Widespread looting

Government schemes and projects are not the only “cut money” sources for local Trinamool leaders. Even personal transactions are not spared. Last year, Naru Bauri needed money for his daughter’s wedding for which he cut a tree to sell to a local timber merchant for a promised sum of Rs.46,000. When local Trinamool leaders got wind of it, they wasted no time in taking a sizeable slice for themselves.

“The Trinamool people went straight to the person to whom I had sold the tree and took Rs.16,000 from the total amount from him before I could even see the money. As a result I could not meet all the estimated expenses for the wedding, so my daughter still remains unmarried,” Naru told Frontline. Many of the villagers are also forced to pay “fines” if they are found to not support the Trinamool. Subhash Bauri had to fork out Rs.50,000 as punishment for supporting the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Some 14 village residents had to pay between Rs.15,000 and Rs.50,000 as a “fine” for supporting other political parties. “They told me to pay up or leave the village for good. I had to sell my cattle, even the few ornaments that belonged to my wife so that I could continue to stay in my village,” said Subhash.

The situation is the same in the neighbouring tribal villages of Goaldanga, Ramchandrapur and Bannabagram. Even after Chief Minster Mamata Banerjee ordered that the “cut money” taken by her party members across the State be returned, local leaders of Ausgram have refused to give in to the demands of the villagers. “When we ask them to return our money, they say where is the proof that they took it,” said Biswanath Bauri, another local resident. Incidentally, the local “leaders” are not all elected representatives; many of them are just local musclemen.

Protests and police crackdown

Out of desperation, the people of Mirsa and the surrounding villages began to agitate like the other victims in the rest of the State. However, the protests were being dealt with with a heavy hand by the local leaders and the police, the villagers said. “On July 19, we asked the police to protect us from being attacked by the Trinamool goons, the very same day armed miscreants came and beat us up and damaged our houses. The women of the region also staged a demonstration in front of the police,” said Kansa Barui, a resident of Mirsa.

Public outrage against “cut money”, which had been subdued mainly out of fear, began to spread like wildfire following the 2019 Lok Sabha election, which destroyed the Trinamool’s reputation of being invincible. The emergence of a new political alternative in the form of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the apparent beginning of the Trinamool’s decline resulted in the protests snowballing at an alarming speed.

The simmering discontent exploded into widespread protests when Mamata Banerjee herself acknowledged the existence of the “cut money” system and ordered those who had taken money to return it. “I will not tolerate thieves in my party,” she said, as if suddenly awakening to a long-established practice.

The Trinamool MP from the Birbhum Lok Sabha seat, Shatabdi Roy, had herself said that the practice “should have been stopped earlier” and expressed doubts about the practicality of returning “cut money” as it was a “chain” system. From housing schemes to 100 days of mandated work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), from toilet projects to even relief schemes for widows and the elderly, nothing was spared by the “cut money” racketeers of the ruling party, villagers from different parts of the State said.

Kalyani Maal of Chatra village in Suri block of Birbhum district claimed that she was not even paid her rightful dues for the work she had done under the MGNREGA. “I was supposed to be paid Rs.1,800, but local Trinamool leaders paid me just a few hundred rupees. When I protested, they asked me to take it or leave it,” she said. The residents of Chatra, the majority of whom belong to the Scheduled Castes, said that local Trinamool bosses seized the MGNREGA money that came into their bank accounts and disbursed the funds according to their whims.

Around 50 kilometres from Mirsa in the Muslim-majority village of Serorai, the situation is different. Here it is the Trinamool that is cowed down in the face of public anger. The lone Trinamool flag fluttering in the main village field has merely become a symbol of the power it wielded until very recently in the region. Gathered around it were a group of angry villagers planning another protest against the ruling party’s corruption and “cut money” racket.

“Trinamool leaders here have lost the support of the people. Many of them had to flee the village but later they came back with police protection,” said Mohammad Sheikh, one of the leaders of the agitation. The protest is not just about taking “cut money” for various projects, including food for work schemes; the villagers have also risen up against the ruling party’s whimsical disbursal of work and funds. They claimed that while those who were in dire need of housing were being denied funds, local Trinamool leaders and their family members, many of whom were not even eligible, had got several instalments.

Sukumar Shah’s mud house has a pronounced crack running down an entire side. The house is supported by bamboo poles. A heavy storm is all that is required to bring it crashing down. Yet, he finds humour in his predicament. “If I don’t qualify for the housing scheme, then who does? But there are those with double-storeyed houses who are getting funds,” he said with an ironical laugh even as he posed with mock pride in front of his decrepit dwelling.

The villagers claimed that since 2014 they had not been given more than a total of 15 days of work. “Yet the local panchayat [controlled by the Trinamool] claims that there have been many days of work. The panchayat members and leaders have all appropriated the money,” said Sk. Anarul Islam. Village residents alleged that local Trinamool leaders had also taken money for constructing toilets under the State government’s Mission Nirmal Bangla scheme, which, they were assured, would be free of cost. “When we began to protest about this, the police came and rounded us up at night and put us in prison,” said Mushtaq Samanulla.

In most of the villages in the region, what stands out amidst the squalor and poverty is the opulence of local Trinamool leaders. Villagers claim that these leaders, who had also lived like them in mud houses under tin roofs, had become rich in a short span of three years, building big houses and driving swanky cars. With the outbreak of the agitation against “cut money”, many of the houses and propertes of Trinamool leaders have been the target of public anger. Some of the houses now stand abandoned with their windows smashed, the owners having fled the area for their own safety.

Many people in political circles are of the opinion that the idea of returning the “cut money” may have been the brainchild of the political strategist Prashant Kishore, who has been employed by the Trinamool after the Lok Sabha results were declared. However, the move seems to be backfiring against the party. It has opened up the gates of mass protest and public outrage, which is leading to the collapse of Trinamool’s rural base.

It is widely perceived that the ruling party’s local rural leadership is being kept in place using police protection.

Grouse against police

“The reins of the police still lie with the State government, and that is why the Trinamool leaders and panchayat members are still in the village. Many of them had already fled in fear but have been brought back under police protection,” said a resident of Galsi block in Bardhaman district. This grouse against the police is rampant in many places in rural south Bengal. Villagers said that their protests and agitations were being thwarted by the police and that many who had been forced to part with their money were also being detained for disrupting the peace. As a result, in quite a few regions, the mass anger is directed not only at the Trinamool but also at the police administration.

Further, in several cases it has been seen that the police force itself has been unable to protect Trinamool leaders from public rage. In one such recent incident, a deputy pradhan’s car was torched by an angry mob in Bardhaman district, even though the Trinamool leader had police protection.

Political colour

It was not long before the uprising took on a political colour, with the BJP taking advantage of the situation and positioning itself to fill the political vacuum created by the ruling party’s dwindling hold in various parts of rural Bengal. Even Ministers and senior Trinamool functionaries are being forced to face demonstrations, at times orchestrated by the BJP, in their own strongholds.

On April 18, Rabindra Nath Ghosh, Minister in charge of North Bengal Development and the Trinamool’s strongman of Cooch Behar, was heckled in his own district allegedly by BJP workers while travelling to address a rally. The BJP, however, denied any involvement and claimed that it was a spontaneous reaction of the local people. The agitations against “cut money” have resulted in widespread violence.

However, there have been several cases of local Trinamool leaders actually returning some of the money they had taken.

With the situation getting out of hand, clearly giving the BJP an edge over the ruling party, Mamata Banerjee was forced to change tack. At the Martyr’s Day rally on July 21, she did an about-turn on her own order of returning the “cut money”: “How dare they [the BJP] ask us to return the cut money? They should return the black money and the cut money from the Ujjwala scheme...” she said, trying to turn the tables on the BJP on the issue of corruption. She even threatened to start a counter-agitation of her own against the BJP.

A significant fallout of the “cut money” uprisings is that with the Trinamool on the back foot, other political parties which were subdued for long, often owing to violence, are beginning to find their voice again. “People are now getting back their courage and learning to speak out against the Trinamool. Prior to the cut money protests, people would shy away from even speaking to us lest they be marked as anti-Trinamool. Now we can at least approach them,” said Dilwar Hussein, a local CPI(M) leader from Bhashapur village in Golsi block in Bardhaman district.

The present situation is particularly thorny for Mamata Banerjee since the “cut money” system has become institutionalised, especially under the Trinamool government, according to political observers.

“Taking cut money has become the norm. It has been seen that money rather than any ideology is the main driving force, and it is for this reason that the ruling party has constantly been trying to establish an opposition-free situation in the State, as was evident in the last civic and panchayat polls,” said Biswanath Chakraborty, a well-known social scientist and professor of political science at Rabindra Bharati University.

He also said that gram sabha and gram sansad meetings to apprise people of the goings-on at the panchayat level hardly take place anymore, and thus there is no accountability to the rural voters. “The absence of these two auditing practices is one of the reasons why there has been rampant corruption and the spread of the cut money system,” said Chakraborty.

Interestingly, during the tenure of the CPI(M)-led Left Front, the West Bengal Panchayat (Amendment) Act, 2003, was passed to ensure that an opposition member was mandatorily included in every panchayat committee. This was aimed at putting in place a system of checks and balances and also to ensure opposition participation at the panchayat level.

According to Chakraborty, the ruling party’s desperate and violent efforts to establish an opposition-free scenario may also be seen as a part of the overall design to perpetuate the “cut money” system without any kind of hindrance.

The strategy appears to have finally backfired, and the “cut money” scandal has done tremendous damage to Mamata Banerjee’s reputation and credibility.