The summer of 2014 will be remembered as the time when politics showed definitive signs of change — the Left’s loss became the Bharatiya Janata Party’s gain. The moving pendulum of the voter’s choice in West Bengal is moving so fast in the opposite direction that the Trinamul is now somewhere in the middle as the BJP emerges at other end. Absorbed in a 20-year long war of supremacy, the Left and the Trinamul failed to register that a new politics was emerging in West Bengal; the Modi wave had acquired a life of its own.
The direct transfusion of support from the Left to the Right is the dizzying rise of BJP’s vote share to 17 per cent and the equally precipitous fall in the combined Left’s popularity to just under 30 per cent.
The Trinamul vote share has shown an odd fluctuation, higher than it was in the 2009 Lok Sabha and 2011 West Bengal Assembly, but lower than the 2013 panchayat elections. This time, the BJP has replaced the Trinamul as the most attractive alternative and the continuing haemor-rhage of the Left is no longer good news for the ruling party in West Bengal.
More interestingly, the Communist Party of India Marxist’s appeal has plunged to just about 21 per cent, while the BJP’s has risen by an almost identical value.
When an infuriated Didi asked, “Who is this Haridas Pal?” in reference to Narendra Modi, voters evidently decided to declare that the BJP is not John Doe in West Bengal.
The switch in political preference underlines the existential crisis in the state. Contributing to the sense of unease and insecurity are two principal concerns — the perception of threat of being submerged by a rising minority tide, and a paralysing policy conflict over the content and direction of the state’s economic future. The BJP on both counts is an alternative that can undo the past and unveil a future.
Forty one per cent of urban voters in the age cohort of 18 to 25 chose Mr Modi over Ms Banerjee. Anxiety over a bleak future seems to have powered the full throated approval that Mr Modi’s last campaign speech in West Bengal evoked, when he deployed his favourite technique of asking questions and getting the audience to endorse his answer. Youth with aspirations and a desperate need for lucrative jobs responded positively to Mr Modi’s message that he could transform West Bengal in exchange for support. His scathing appraisal of the Left and the Trinamul on building a future for the state had outraged Didi, who resorted to name calling: communal conflict mongering, murder-ous nobody who should be roped like a criminal and paraded as an example.
By reminding her audiences across West Bengal that Mr Modi was the Chief Minister when Gujarat erupted in the worst majoritarian com-munal violence in 2002, Ms Banerjee probably expected that it would provoke revulsion in a state marked by its hitherto assertive secu-larism. What she pro-bably did not fathom is the deep roots of anti-Muslim sentiment in West Bengal, where fleeing waves of people from across the border sought refuge only to find that the quality of their lives remained brutally poor.
It is an open and unspoken truth in this part of the country that irrespective of Left ideological loyalty, the comrades with roots in erstwhile East Pakistan and Bangladesh are hostile to the Muslim minority, believing that the steady stream of infiltration has contri-buted to the shrinking of opportunities for the majority community. Because the hostility has been non-violent and the long period of bipolar politics of West Bengal after 1947 till 2011 combined to keep it that way, it was easy to forget, as Ms Banerjee did, that there is a resentment stoked by her blatant wooing of the Muslim clergy with handouts and sops.
As an alternative to Left secularism and minority appeasement by Ms Banerjee, the BJP, led by Mr Modi, offers a solution to the problem of indus-trialisation in West Bengal.
The anti-industry label that has attached itself to the CPM-led Left Front and to the Trinamul has resulted in evaporating opportunity for the under 25s and a depressing decline of hope for the under 40s. The “Ma, Mati, Manush” slogan, in combination with the absolutist position on banning land acquisition by government for industry, has had a seriously negative impact. In West Bengal, the pain of Singur is seen as the gain of Gujarat.
The failure to evict Tata Motors from Singur, restore the land to the farmers who did not sell out, the death of the steel project in Shalboni, the throttling of growth in the IT sector by rejecting the policy of special economic zone and what it all means seems to have hit home for younger voters, who have heard about Vibrant Gujarat and the Gujarat model of development.
Without the baggage of the destructive “Ma, Mati, Manush” campaign, without the baggage of opposing investment because it means promoting capitalism and neo-imperialism, the BJP in West Bengal is an alternative that has a proven track record in governing Gujarat and other states. It is an untested option that can cut through the immensely entangled politics of an ideologically moribund Left and a righteous and impractical Trinamul which cannot find its way out of the maze into which it walked when it defended the indefensible in Singur.
The BJP in contrast to the Left and the Trinamul and the hazy memories of the Congress in the 1970s has not nurtured a “Harmad Vahini” or a “Bhairav Vahini,” that is organised gangs for violence, extortion and intimidation that openly threaten to bomb the police, maim the Opposition and burn the disloyal. It is clean. It is an alternative to the past, because it belongs to the future.
If Mr Modi can find a way of infusing investment into West Bengal, ensuring that the Saradha scam is uncovered and the criminally guilty are identified and charged, then the gratitude of the beneficiaries could be transformed into trust. The only difficulty is that the current BJP leadership in West Bengal has not been groomed to handle the opportunity and challenge that the voter has created. As of now, West Bengal’s BJP leaders are overwhelmed by the sudden change of fortune.
The writer is a senior journalist in Kolkata
