Keeping the pressure up

It seems West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's campaign slogan, "maa, mati, manush (mother, earth, people)", which became popular during the 2009 general elections and the 2011 state Assembly polls, has become a favourite leverage of the Bharatiya Janata Party to put pressure on her government at any given opportunity. After Home Minister Rajnath Singh said that maa, mati and manush were not safe in that state, Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani this week quipped, "Neither did it (Trinamool Congress) respect maa, nor did it make the mati productive and nor did it manage to save its manush".