The Saradha scam has badly damaged her reputation, but the West Bengal Chief Minister is in no mood to give up the fight

Mamata banerjee leads a Trinamool Congress rally. Picture by Debajyoti Chakraborty

From being feted as a one woman demolition squad who tore down the CPI(M) citadel in West Bengal, to a harried Chief Minister with corruption charges knocking on her door after claiming her closest aides, Mamata Banerjee's fall from grace is remarkable by all standards. The CBI investigation into the Saradha chit fund scam has raised unnerving questions not only about the morals of Banerjee and her circle but about deeper issues. Like her Trinamool Congress, supposedly a party of the poor, having thrived on the meagre savings of the same poor who had believed their money would be safe with firms having close links with Banerjee, their 'Didi'. It is an act of 'betrayal' that must recoil on her electorally.

Saradha is neither the first scam of its kind nor Banerjee the first politician to get linked to Ponzi rackets. However, from the information made public until now, it seems that a clutch of her close and powerful associates in TMC allegedly had the liberty to plunder its funds like in a bank stickup. And they allegedly knew their leader would look the other way all along the hold-up, and so would the police.

Much of the 'loot' is said to have been spent for wasteful and silly things, such as picking out-of-work journalists and paying them the salary of MNC executives to bring out a slew of poorly produced newspapers and magazines that few read and a television channel hardly anyone watched. The idea, it seems, was to make them all keep praising Banerjee, thus keeping her happy, meanwhile rifling the cash boxes in most disingenuous ways. It wasn't always fun and games. Things went to a dangerous extent when Banerjee's 'media advisers' apparently pressured Saradha to buy at an inexplicably huge price a pro-Islamist Bengali paper called Kalom, owned by a former state chief of SIMI. However, the sale was only notional as the owner continued to edit it. In addition, he was made a Rajya Sabha member. Disturbingly, his name cropped up for his alleged close connection with the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh.

Banerjee, with her slum background, is boorish with normal people who have the courage to stand up and ask questions. But she is very protective about her army of 'corrupt' supporters. However ticklish the Saradha probe gets, Banerjee, a Youth Congress politician of the Seventies with its trademark reckless bent, is not the type to easily give in. After the victorious 2011 election, she demanded of the Manmohan Singh government an outright loan amnesty that rules do not permit. The Centre refused. In retaliation, she severed ties with the UPA and tried her best to pull down the central government. And now, with the CBI tightening the screws, she is taking the battle to the ruling BJP, saying it is acting out of "political vendetta". Typical of her, she has taken this campaign to a farcical extent, making her ministers and party colleagues march down Kolkata streets with posters saying "we are all thieves" and wearing black masks in Parliament.

But, behind the cloak of a slum fighter, she must be carrying deep lines of worry on her face. They began appearing since Mukul Roy, the TMC's "all India" general secretary and her closest ally in all behind-the-scenes operations, was summoned by the CBI. Apart from being ally, Roy is also the man who knew too much. While begging the CBI for time, Roy has been shuttling between Kolkata and Delhi on his leader's orders. They approached big-ticket Supreme Court lawyers to take their party's brief of the CBI being misused against them by the Centre. But the case is so ill-founded that nobody wants to touch it. After three years of pretending to be more left than the CPI(M), and bragging about a land law amendment that leaves no room for large projects in the state, Banerjee has now retracted the amendment. And having crossed out a reformist amendment of the previous CPI(M) government to allow organised retailers to buy agricultural products directly from farmers, she has now stepped back and is even willing to allow a Krishak Bhandar for a public-private marketplace to facilitate such direct sale. It's her way of telling voters that she too cares for growth.

Behind her white sari and cheap flip-flops, Banerjee is a cold-blooded politician who is thinking of life after the Saradha scam besmirching too many of her colleagues. Mid-term polls is an option as the TMC's two rivals, the BJP and the Left Front, are hobbled by different kinds of problems. The Left is no longer united nor is the CPI(M), its main pillar, firmly grounded any longer. To young voters, it has slipped into history. The BJP is, of course, anxious to look like the coming force. But it is unlikely to repeat the trick the TMC played by posing as version 2.0 of the CPI(M), thus sucking in the entire masses of youths, students, workers, jobless, peasants, etc, whose loyalty the Left had assiduously earned through decades of struggle, sweat and sacrifice. Muslims constitute nearly a third of the state's population and they are decidedly even more in the lower deciles that are indeed more vigorous participants in the electoral process. Muslims are traditionally averse to the BJP. Over time, it may become acceptable to larger sections of voters. Or the CPI(M) can strike a balance between market and Marx.

But all that is too iffy. The electoral odds are still in favour of the TMC if polls are held this year. But it may not remain so in 2016 when elections are due.

Sumit Mitra is a former INDIA TODAY journalist based in Kolkata.

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