Panchayat polls fought on palmtops

Tarun Pan runs a small tea shop at Jagatballavpur block in West Bengal’s Howrah district, around 30 km from Kolkata.

He spends 6-7 hours a day in his shop and, in between handing out hot cuppas to customers, he constantly checks the WhatsApp feed on his smart phone.

The 33-year-old says he has become an ardent supporter of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for nine months now and never misses any of its political events locally or even in the capital Kolkata.

“I have been selling tea for some years now and had no connection whatsoever with politics until my friend added me to a WhatsApp group of BJP supporters. I started getting regular updates about the party’s activities in Bengal. I also came to know that the present Trinamool [TMC or Trinamool Congress] regime is indulging in misdeeds, and is not doing anything for the State’s development. I decided to support the BJP and become a soldier of change in Bengal,” he says.

The BJP’s social media unit in Jagatballavpur is under the care of Mrinmoy Koley, a mobile shop owner. “Jai Shree Ram, Save Bengal, Amra BJP Premi (We are BJP lovers)...” Koley rattles off the names of the many WhatsApp groups that are active in Bengal to propagate the ideology and activities of the BJP both at the State and national levels.

“We are targeting the young voters as we feel that their family members will follow their voting preference. We keep a close watch on the messages posted on Facebook and WhatsApp, and promptly caution or remove the members who are found uploading messages that go against the party line. There are both official and unofficial groups, the latter run by party supporters,” he says.

State BJP chief Dilip Ghosh says the party sees social media as an important tool to connect to rural voters, particularly the younger generation, ahead of the village-level panchayat polls next year. “We have formed around 50 WhatsApp groups, each having at least 50 members, in every assembly segment. We have over 11.5 lakh followers on Facebook. We are planning to form 50 WhatsApp groups in every block,” he says, adding, “We not only share the day-to-day activities of the party but also expose the corrupt practices of the State government and [information on the] attack on our supporters by rivals.”

The importance of rural polls for the major parties in Bengal cannot be overstated — after all, it was the victory at these local contests in 2008 that greatly bolstered the TMC’s hopes of unseating the State’s then long-ruling Left front government. From holding on to 15 of the 17 districts or zilla parishads (ZP) in the 2003 rural polls, the Left’s tally slipped to 13 in 2008.

Soon after wresting power in the 2011 State assembly polls, the TMC went on to sweep the three-tier rural polls, winning 13 ZP seats, 214 panchayat samitis and 1,783 gram panchayats in 2013. By 2016, it moved to capture all 17 ZPs, thanks to mass defections from the Left and Congress parties. With three Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) in West Bengal, the BJP however is yet to open its tally at the ZP level.

The TMC, too, well understands the might of social media in influencing results at the panchayat polls, but the party insists it is banking more on its government’s performance. “We are taking social media seriously, as it has a wider reach in rural areas. (But) We are optimistic of good performance as people are able to see and touch the development works undertaken by the government, especially in villages,” says Sovandeb Chatterjee, senior State minister, who was the party’s first elected MLA in 1998.

The marginalised Left, which has until now relied on the traditional modes of door-to-door campaigning and street rallies, is slowly warming up to social media.

“The voice of dissent has been gagged by the Trinamool government. We are making use of WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter to reach out to voters, and expose the corrupt and illegal practices of the government, which has stopped several welfare projects introduced by the Left regime. The party is actively preparing for the panchayat polls and hundreds of youths are connecting with us every day on social platforms,” says Md Salim, a CPI(M) Member of Parliament from Raiganj, who handles the party’s social media.

Meanwhile, a section of Left leaders insisted, on condition of anonymity, that the party would continue to rely on the traditional forms of campaigning despite the advent of social media. The battle lines may be old, but it will be interesting to see how the new media will swing the fortunes of the traditional political rivals in West Bengal.

Gurvinder Singhis a freelance journalist based in Kolkata

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