Agenda. Red herring

West Bengal finished its last phase of polling on Thursday, and the wait is on for the results on May 19. If opinion/exit polls are right, Mamata Banerjee will be back in power once again, perhaps with a smaller majority. What will be remarkable is that her Trinamool Congress will manage to retain power on its own — since former ally Congress has tied up with the Left against her.

Even in its heyday, Jyoti Basu’s Communist Party of India (Marxist) won in coalition with a bunch of smaller Leftist parties like the Communist Party of India, Forward Bloc and Revolutionary Socialist Party. If the victory happens, the cult of Mamata Banerjee can lay claim to finally sizing up to the cult of her original bete noire , Jyoti Basu. The communist patriarch’s 23 years in power may still be beyond her: but Basu’s administrative record was so shallow, particularly in his last three terms, that Banerjee can surpass him in effectiveness with a stellar second term.

She is now showing the political acumen and canniness that was once associated with Jyoti Basu. Around the Lok Sabha polls a couple of years ago, many analysts thought that Banerjee had overdone the “Muslim appeasement” act, turning off many Hindu voters. This had galvanised the weak local BJP unit, and Kolkata had seen BJP rallies of unprecedented scale and aggression, headlined by Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. The feeling was that Banerjee was playing with fire, by allowing communal polarisation of the electorate and giving the BJP a toehold in the state.

But in 2016, BJP’s slight rise in vote share only seems to have sealed the election for Banerjee, by effectively splitting the anti-Trinamool vote. Historically, whenever Bengal has had a bipolar contest, a small vote swing either way resulted in a big seat swing, like in the 2011 Assembly elections. This time though, even if there is a swing away from the incumbent Trinamool Congress, the swing vote will get divided between the Congress-Left alliance and BJP, thereby easing Banerjee’s way to power.

In hindsight, Banerjee’s very overt Muslim pandering seems like a clever, calculated tactic to divide the opposition votes: let’s call it a red herring in deference for the Bengali love of fish and communism. The red herring bamboozled the Left, Congress and BJP at one go, while consolidating Muslim votes in Trinamool’s favour.

Beyond that masterstroke, the Banerjee government’s performance has been lacklustre, but better than the CPI(M)’s last government: that seemed to be the majority refrain when I visited my home state in March. The polls suggest that mood will be reflected in the ballot boxes.

The BJP may do better in Assam, but the voter from neighbouring Bengal is much more resistant to their Hindutva cocktail. Roping in actress Rupa Ganguly to be the face of their campaign showed desperation, that they did not have serious leadership talent in-house. It also showed a complete lack of understanding of what Bengalis expect from their leaders: mostly seasoned bhadraloks , apart from Banerjee, who also had to earn her chops over two decades starting with student politics.

With the exception of perhaps Saurav Ganguly, no celebrity in Bengal has the kind of mass following needed to be the leader of a party. This is very different from our southern states where popular actors move into political careers and carry their fan base with them. Bengalis, in contrast, prefer their politicians unglamorous but experienced. The BJP still cannot feel the pulse of a state where socialism is still a way of life, where Hindu vegetarianism is unheard of, and where north Indians are called “Hindustanis”, as if Bengalis are not.

For the Congress and Left too this will be a setback. The alliance lacked effective leadership right from the beginning, with Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s campaign seeming too aloof and sulky. The alliance never offered any ideological alternative to the Trinamool Congress: Banerjee had effectively hijacked their socialist agenda in Nandigram-Singur, and the Left is still nursing its wounds from that.

For Bengal’s future, it will be important what lesson Banerjee draws from the election results. If there is a small vote swing away from her, will she take it as a sign that the electorate wants faster change from her government? Or will she consider the victory as an unequivocal support for her party, which has hardly changed the socialist status quo in the state?

If Banerjee draws the first lesson, she will look to create more jobs in the state by easing business conditions, particularly land and labour restrictions. She would look to rein in rogue members of her party whose “donation” demands push corporations to the brink. She would look to stop the brain-drain through policies that herald opportunity.

More likely, though, she will draw the second lesson.

S ambuddha Mitra Mustafi is the editor of The Political Indian; @some_buddha

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