The BJP has reasons to be upbeat in Bengal

BJP’s star campaigner Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an election rally in Kolkata on March 7, 2021.

Assembly Elections 2021: West Bengal 

By Dr. Suvrokamal Dutta*

Why I see a strong tsunami kind of a wave in favour of Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal is because I see the people of the state want a pariborton (change).

I can see Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, referred to as didi, is totally cornered now, and probably it is the last few days of her rule in the state and once the voting takes place I’m sure that will be voting for real poriborton.

Younger generation in Bengal, today are very very aspirational. They want a good job. They want good security. They want a good lifestyle. They want a proper, fashionable, healthy lifestyle. But people are not getting jobs. On all the government jobs, there is a cap. There is no recruitment at the Public Service Commission. It is only through contract and people who pay money, they are the one who are getting accommodated to government departments.

Also read: Durga, Ram and the West Bengal elections

So these things do not augur well for Mamata. The youth are angry. They seem least obsessed with the apparent simplicity of Mamata – her saree-clad and downtrodden image. Many now say it is a hogwash.

The present one is the most heated and the most controversial, election in West Bengal. In fact, it’s not as heated in any other state like Kerala, Tamil Nadu,  Puducherry, or Assam.

The Bengal election is maximum sensitive and highly controversial and it’s highly polarized. Lots of  people are being killed in poll-related violence. As it is, on the date of the announcement of the polls also there was a lot of violence in different parts of West Bengal. And before that also, the last 10 years have seen a lot of political murder and a lot of people being massacred, people being killed and a lot of people have got severe injuries. And all of this is purportedly happening because of the ruling dispensation in Bengal, the Trinamool Congress. Ironically, it had actually come to power with a hope and aspiration for the people of Bengal.

The right wing is now drawing analogy between the TMC rule and the 34 years of “misrule” of the Left Front in Bengal, to make their point across the electorates that like the Communists, the TMC too “devastated” the society as well as the economy and the normal life of any Bengali or any person in Bengal as such. It accuses the Communists and TMC alike of destroying the social fabric of the state. 

It is true that the people desperately wanted a change and then they saw a light of hope in Mamta Banerjee, and uprooted the Left Front. Nandigram and Singur were just the matchstick which had ignited the fire, and the Left Front got wiped away by the anger of the people of Bengal and Mamta Banerjee came to power with the thumping majority in 2011.

The first five years of Mamata Banerjee was still little better because at least she was doing some amount of concrete work at the ground level. Some of the projects and some of the initiatives which had been taken up by Mamata then was actually helping the people, the downtrodden and the poorer section of the society.

But when she returned to power for the second time, that was when the whole misrule actually crept in and the Left Front members and goons, they all transformed into Trinamool Congress and the same kind of loot, barbarity, murder, arson, abduction, molestation, sexual harassment and rapes of women, restarted in Bengal and everyone in the state started feeling being insecured.

Right from the top to the bottom in government departments as well as in government offices, people today have to pay money which is known as ‘cut money’. It is in common knowledge that it is required to be paid if someone wants to establish any kind of small business or even wants to take loans for even buying  auto rickshaw or a car or a taxi, or a house. One has to pay this cut money even when applying for housing loan, or constructing the house, or expanding the house, or buying a new property, or even taking a rented property. This cut money or ‘tolabaji’ amount has to be paid ostensibly to the henchmen, and to the goons of the Trinamool Congress in their locality.

At the same time right from the beginning, from 2011 onwards, Mamata Banerjee, got indulged in rampant minority appeasement. She became the patron of the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, and the Rohingyas from Bangladesh. Because of her minority appeasement policy, she created all kinds of obstacles in the celebrations of the main festivals that gave the state a distinct cultural identify and were highly respected in Bengali society- whether the Durga puja, the Saraswati puja, or Kali puja. Like in the case of Durga puja when the immersion ceremony of goddess Durga was clashing with Muharram, in 2016 and again in 2017, she actually tried to ban the immersion ceremony of goddess Durga because it was clashing with the tazia procession. And as a result of it, people became extremely annoyed. It was then that the Calcutta High Court had to step in to actually reprimand the TMC government saying that it was time for the Bengal government to stop this appeasement policy and that it was the responsibility of the state government to allow both the tazia as well as the immersion ceremony of goddess Durga to be taken out simultaneously. And twice the Calcutta High Court had to come and reprimand the West Bengal government.

Then again she tried to put in a kind of a bar on the celebrations of Saraswati puja and Kali puja, several traditional pandals which were organizing Saraswati puja and Kali puja at the community level, and several schools which were organizing Saraswati puja. They were forced not to celebrate  Saraswati Puja as such and several schools were not given permission to celebrate Saraswati puja.  In the same way many of the community pandals they were not allowed to celebrate Kali puja as such, where Kali puja was going on for decades.

The kind of ‘hatred’ that Mamata has publicly displayed for Lord Ram and for the Jai Shri Ram slogan, and the kind of ‘hatred’ which she had shown in the past to Hanuman Jayanti by banning its celebrations in the state and then the different Ram Leela processions in Bengal, this has only helped in the consolidation of the Hindu votes against her. There are instances now when people just say “Jai Shri Ram” to irritate her.

The Hindus appear also disenchanted with her decision to allocate funds to the Muslim community, to appease the community, under various state government schemes.

The maulvis and the madarsas were given government stipends with a substantial monthly salary. All the illegal madarsas also, which were earlier not recognized, were accorded recognition by the TMC government and the number of madarsas increased like anything in Bengal. In contrast, the pundits of the temples in Bengal never got any kind of government assistance as such, and when there was a huge hue and cry, then only she offered a small amount of 1000 rupees to pundits of a few temples.

The Rohingyas who came illegally from across the border from Bangladesh were all given aadhar card, voter id card, pan card ,were given employment job as well as property in Bengal. And when this whole issue came up in a big way about the illegal immigration of the Rohingyas and  when the Central Government tried to push back the influx of Rohingyas from Bangladesh into Bengal, Mamata went on record to say that not a single Rohingya will be allowed to leave West Bengal, and if the government of India tried to throw the Rohingyas out from West Bengal, it will have to do it at the cost of her life.

What more? There are allegations levelled at her and being raked up by the BJP this election of cows being smuggled from West Bengal to Bangladesh by the Trinamool Congress workers for slaughterhouses in Bangladesh.

The BJP obviously is trying to rake up these issues and trying to captalise on them. The party believes that all such things have not been taken very nicely by the Hindu population in West Bengal and have actually helped in the consolidation of the Hindu votes that will benefit the saffron brigade at the hustings.

Besides, there have been reports of large scale corruption whether in the utilisation of the Centre’s financial assistance package to the state after cyclone Amphan, or whether it was in the disbursement of food which was provided by the Centre during the time of Covid-19 lockdown.

So much so that the Calcutta High Court had to pass a verdict that the money of the Amphan loan assistance should be audited by the auditor general. However, the TMC government got the HC order stayed from the Supreme Court. This too has not gone down well with the people and is expected to help the BJP in elections.

The Centre had provided rice, pulses cooking oil but everything that was given for the poor of the state were taken away, allegedly by the leaders and by the community dadas of Trinamool Congress, and were sold in black market. In every nook and corner of Bengal, people started talking about this and started using words like tirpal chor, cut money, tolabaj and all this became the talk of the town.

A major issue that confronts Mamata is of nepotism. The way she has pushed her nephew and shielded him is again the talk of the town. Her detractors and political opponents allege that all bad things concerning her government – cut money, tolabaji, corruption, barbarism, murder and theft – are linked to her nephew. They all say that Mamta has given a free hand to her nephew to get indulged into all types of “nefarious activities”.

All such factors are apparently contributing to the  upsurge of the BJP. This upsurge had actually started before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections itself when out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from the State, the BJP had won 18 seats and another Opposition party in the state, the Congress had won two seats. 

So, in a way, the 20 seats were taken by the opposition and the rest 22 went to the Trinamool Congress and its downfall started from there. As of now, the way things are going this coming assembly polls, there will be little surprise if this election marks the end of Mamata’s regime in Bengal.

*The writer is a well-known right-wing thinker and analyst. Views published are personal.