The fact that patronage from Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress’s tallest leader and Bengal’s chief minister, had allowed the party’s foul-mouthed former Birbhum chief, Anubrata Mondal, to get away — repeatedly — with his distasteful comments reveals, yet again, that something is rotten in the political culture in the state of Bengal. Mr Mondal is known to have insulted not only Opposition leaders and police officers but also luminaries. Yet, Ms Banerjee treated him with kid gloves, even going to the extent of explaining his indiscretions by citing ludicrous health conditions. Mr Mondal’s indispensability as an organisational asset may have been the reason for the chief minister’s indulgence. Now — for once? — the Birbhum police has filed criminal charges against this crude leader after the latter allegedly abused a police officer and issued threats of sexual assault against his family. This kind of egregious behaviour against a servant of the State is unacceptable. The TMC, aware of the deleterious impact of such an event on the administrative and the public arenas, instructed Mr Mondal to issue an apology. The disgruntlement in the police rank and file a year before a crucial assembly election may have forced Bengal’s ruling party to take corrective action.

But it is unlikely that such an intervention is going to stop leaders like Mr Mondal as well as representatives of other parties from continuing to act in such a manner. This is because Bengal is not immune to the precipitous decline in the standards of political decorum in present-day India. Leaders, high and low, and across the political spectrum, are equally susceptible to this erosion. Ms Banerjee recently made an inappropriate remark against the prime minister: she did have the good sense to apologise. The state leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party, instead of accepting the apology, went on a retaliatory overdrive, making personal and equally intemperate comments against the chief minister. There is evidently not enough public resistance against such crassness; had this been the case, leaders like Mr Mondal would not have had a career in politics. This muck also discourages the courteous Indian from looking at politics as a viable career. The relevant irony cannot be missed. Democracy has struck deep roots since the inception of the republic. But the deepening of democracy has not been accompanied by the expanding arc of civility in the field of politics.