It is never easy to do business in a place where politics is routinely reduced to extortion. The situation must be truly alarming if the chief minister of a state has to publicly ask the business community not to surrender to extortionists belonging to the ruling party. Few chief ministers would actually do so, but Mamata Banerjee has been known for her penchant for doing unconventional things. By publicly making the appeal, she has done two things that should be reassuring to the business community. First, she has shown that she does not want to skirt the issue. Even if the ugly reality of extortion involves politicians belonging to her own party, it has to be faced and dealt with. In a country where political leaders are known to condone their followers’ crimes, she has shown both courage and transparency. Second, by asking businessmen to refuse to pay even her own party leaders, she has risen above party politics and acted like an administrator. This approach to governance is new in a state where administration and party politics became one and the same thing under the long reign of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

However, the chief minister’s appeal is best seen as the statement of an objective. It will take much more than an honest intention to let the business community live and work without the fear of extortionists. Ms Banerjee cannot afford to dissociate herself from the actions of her party’s leaders and activists. If some lower-level leaders of the Trinamul Congress are harassing industrialists or threatening to shut down their units in case they do not pay protection money, she needs to not only identify the culprits but also punish them in accordance with the law. It is also not a question of protecting businessmen alone from such political activists. A government has a constitutional and moral obligation to offer a similar protection to all sections of society. The first thing that the people in a civilized society want is to be able to live without fear. If the people of Bengal gave her a massive mandate to rule the state in the last elections, it was primarily to ensure that they could live without the fear of the party. That mandate was certainly not for seeing the TMC replace the CPI(M) as the agent of fear. Ms Banerjee would do well to follow up her message to the business community with some exemplary action.