‘Mamata Banerjee has the ability to become the Prime Minister’

Kolkata: Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Saturday said that Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has the ability to become the Prime Minister.

He further stated that the regional parties will play a crucial role in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections if the ruling BJP is to be defeated.

Speaking to a news agency, the 90-year-old economist said: “It is not that she does not have the ability to do it. She clearly has the ability. On the other hand, it’s yet not established that Mamata can pull the forces of public dismay against the BJP in an integrated way to make it possible for her to have the leadership to put an end to the fractionalisation in India.”

“I think a number of regional parties are clearly important. I think the DMK is an important party, the TMC is certainly important and the Samajwadi Party has some standing but whether that could be extended I do not know,” he said, adding: “I think it would be a mistake to take the dismissive view that there is no other party that can take the place of BJP since it has established itself as a party with a vision that is inclined in the direction of Hindus over the rest of the country.”

The Nobel laureate also accused BJP of ‘substantially reducing the vision of India’. “BJP has narrowed the understanding of India as just Hindu India and as a Hindi-speaking India in such a strong way that it would be sad if there is no alternative to the BJP in the country today,” Sen remarked.

“If the BJP looks strong and powerful, it has a good deal of weakness too. So, I think other political parties will be able to come to a debate if they really try. I do not know enough to be able to dismiss the anti-BJP parties together,” he said.

Sen expressed doubts about Congress’ ability to win the 2024 elections, which he believes has “weakened”. He, however, said that it is the only party to provide an all-India vision.

“The Congress seems to have weakened a lot and I do not know how much somebody can rely on Congress. On the other hand, Congress certainly provides an all-India vision which no other party can take over. Then again, there are divisions within the Congress,” he maintained.

Speaking about the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Sen said he believed the implementation of the CAA could reduce the role of minorities in the country, while encouraging majoritarian forces.

“As far as I can see, one of BJP’s purposes (by implementing CAA) is to reduce the role of minorities and make them less important and in a direct and indirect way, increase the role of the Hindu majoritarian forces in India and to that extent undermine the minorities,” the economist stated.

“It’s very unfortunate for a country like India which is meant to be a secular, egalitarian nation and it has also been used for particularly unfortunate discriminatory action like declaring minorities, whether from Bangladesh or West Bengal, as foreign rather than indigenous. This is pretty demeaning and I would regard that to be a bad move basically,” he added.

Asked whether the BJP-led central government has improved in its performance in these years, Sen replied in the negative.

“I do not think it has improved. I think what India needs is a recognition that every Indian has certain rights and they come from their membership of the nation. That was after all what Mahatma Gandhi tried to do,” he mentioned.