People's Democracy

FORMER film artiste and now Trinamul Congress candidate in Jadavpore constituency, Madhabi Mukherjee has apparently been quick to be afflicted with the foot-in-the-mouth disease that tends to become a fundamental symptom of every leader, worker and supporter of the Trinamul Congress.

CPI(M) candidate for Bowbazar seat, Ajit Pandey, was interviewing Ms Mukherjee for a TV programme when the topic of discussion soon drifted to rapid improvement of the rural economic scene during the 24 years of the Left Front in West Bengal.

During the interview, Mukherjee, who was getting the worse of the exchange, was asked to comment on the reasons why the village-folk, especially village women-folk, do not bother any longer to flock to the metropolis in search of humble jobs of domestic help even in the dry season.

A fuming Mukherjee showed her true colours when she shrilled that there was no truth at all to the general claim that jobs were being created in the rural belt in sufficient numbers so as to discourage the villagers from trekking to the city to earn their keep. She also said the women-folk of villages, who "are basically lazy and pleasure-loving," now prefer to "have a night out" in the city and earn enough to last them a month.

When an astounded Pandey whispered whether Mukherjee was aware that the programme was being taped for transmission later in the evening, she blurted out that she would repeat what she had said and would not repent the "fact."

When the programme was aired, a chorus of protest lashed out at Mukherjee for her disgusting comment on the women who worked hard to earn their livelihood in the villages. A Left Front statement condemned Mukherjee’s shocking pronouncement on the working women in general and the village women in particular, and said that what Mukherjee chose to blurt out was an insult to humanity.

An AIDWA rally held at Jadavpore condemned Mukherjee’s reprehensible mind-set and asked her to tender a public apology to the working women of West Bengal for having said what she had said in the television programme.

Veteran leaders of the women’s movement like Kanak Mukherjee, Vidya Munshi and Bela Dutta Gupta, littérateur Mahasweta Devi, educationist Sukumari Bhattacharyya, mass singer Geeta Chaudhuri, film directors Satarupa Sanyal and Anindita Sarbadhikari, and theatre person Chandra Ghosh Dastidar strongly denounced the statement made by Ms Madhabi Mukherjee. (INN)