Chandan Mitra | The Pioneer, 1st May 2011
Nothing has changed in West Bengal in three decades, but the suburban and rural Bengali seems as contented as ever. Maybe that's why Mamata Banerjee is poised to win.
I have campaigned in elections before but never as extensively as I am currently doing in West Bengal. People ask me what’s the point of spending so much time and energy in an election in which the BJP has little at stake. Arguably, we aren’t fighting to wrest Writers’ Building from the Left; that’s Ms Mamata Banerjee’s calling. But over the last six months or so, since the young and energetic Rahul Sinha was vested with the reins of the State party and Mr Nitin Gadkari appointed me Prabhari or central observer, it seems we have succeeded in making the BJP matter in the State. It is not widely known that the BJP’s predecessor, the Jana Sangh, was founded by Syama Prasad Mookerjee here in Bengal. On its own, however, the BJP won only a by-election to the Assembly some years ago. This time, the poll is sharply polarised with the stormy petrel (forgive the cliché!) of Bengal politics having mounted a feisty blitzkrieg to dislodge the CPI(M)-led Left Front from power after an incredible 34 years.
The BJP may be a bit player but it seems to have alarmed the two Behemoths to a significant extent. While the universal ‘Didi’, doesn’t let a single meeting pass without fervently appealing to people not to vote for the BJP, the CPI(M), despite chuckling at the thought of saffron forces cutting into her anti-Left vote, is doing everything to prevent it from reaching out to the electorate by placing obstacles in the way of holding public meetings. Particularly since the Cooch Behar to Kolkata Naba Jagaran Rathyatra the BJP undertook in the first fortnight of February, the party’s popularity graph seems to have surged remarkably despite the sharp polarisation.
Yatras and elections are powerful instruments for a political party to spread its organisational tentacles and the BJP seems to have effectively used these to disseminate its message. I was impressed by the sincerity of the rank-and-file, their conviction that something big is about to happen, and the responsiveness of the crowds that attend BJP rallies. Maybe most of them won’t vote for it in the end, but at least they are listening; so when the BJP returns next time it would be talking to people who are partially convinced.
Two weeks of intensive campaigning (I have another week to go) enabled me to observe many facets of my home State, which I abandoned with finality way back in 1987 when I joined The Times of India in Delhi after quitting The Statesman, Calcutta. I migrated originally in 1972 for my college education but my second, three-year stint in Calcutta in the mid-1980s left me so disgusted with the state of affairs (12 hours-a-day power cuts, telephones that were decoration pieces, traffic that was in total disarray and hope dying with every passing day) that I left determined never to return. Things are marginally better now on those counts but I still find the middle class Bengali frightfully unambitious, content to wallow in self-pity without doing anything about it. So I went about looking for reasons for this collective ennui.
Three days of flying around the State in a helicopter offered some clues. It’s difficult to find a State as verdant as Bengal; no wonder Dwijendra Lal Roy penned “Dhana-dhanye pushpey bhara…” successor to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's “Sujalam, suphalam malayaj shitalam, shashya-shyamalam mataram”. On a flight to Sandeshkhali in the Sunderbans, crisscrossed by mighty distributaries of Ganga, co-passenger Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda gazed at the vast expanse of water and commented: “Itna pani hai, eersha hoti hai (There’s so much water, I feel jealous)”.
Devastated by Cyclone Aila, on the islands in the Sunderbans the harried residents eke out a miserable existence since the fertile soil has turned saline and unproductive. Climate change is wreaking havoc here but the people haven’t woken up to it and merely blame official indifference for their misfortune. But it is the stoic acceptance of whatever fate has ordained that amazed me. The ill-fed, ill-clad men and women — skins glistening in the harsh sun, moisture forcing droplets of sweat to drape their bodies — haven’t forgotten how to smile.
As my Xylo traversed narrow by-lanes of interior villages of my home district of Hooghly I recognised the same contentment on people’s faces. Flocks of goats and mother hens chaperoning their brood crowded the road, slowing my car to walking speed. Old women emerged from their dishevelled thatched huts, annoyed at tranquillity being broken by a big vehicle, to shepherd their chickens, ducks and goats back into their pens. But almost every hut had a party flag uncertainly fluttering; in the backwaters of Hooghly it was mostly the CPI(M)’s hammer-sickle-star, but the towns were awash with Trinamool’s two flowers and the occasional BJP lotus.
Bengal lives, breathes and dreams politics. My travel coordinator Mr Swapan Pal, Hooghly district BJP general secretary, insisted I sip a cuppa of “atulaniya (matchless)” tea at Bannerjee Cabin, a street corner restaurant in my hometown. I had visited the town centre many times in my childhood, watched movies at Kairi and Rupali Talkies, but never noticed the inscription on the silver-gray clock tower, which I discovered had been erected to commemorate King Edward VII in 1911, the very year Lord Curzon announced the shifting of the Capital from Calcutta to Delhi.
Past 10 pm, Banerjee Cabin was bustling with argumentative muffosil Bengalis, animatedly debating the news of the day and its impact on voters, namely, Mr Anil Basu, CPI(M)’s former MP from neighbouring Arambagh, using expletives against Didi. Life goes on as usual in suburban Bengal; nobody has even heard of Anbumani Ramadoss and the ban on smoking in public places. The tea house is smoke-filled, although Charminar has been replaced by more refined brands. Instead of the usual order of “ek cup cha ar ekta false”, meaning one tea and an empty cup for it to be shared, tea shops now serve in Liliputian plastic containers; I was lucky to get a decent-sized kullad!
Tea and cigarettes are integral to Bengal’s culture and I found nothing had changed. Whenever I reached a meeting venue, somebody came around with an aluminium kettle and a sheaf of miniature plastic cups even on the dais. Ms Sushma Swaraj asked me if this was customary, for in north India it’s bad manners to sip anything except water on the rostrum. I said here it was perfectly fine and nobody would mind even if somebody smoked!
All said and done, Bengal is a happy place. Much as migrant Bengalis like me feel frustrated, disgruntled and dejected, I found rural and suburban Bengal contented. That may well be the reason why the CPI(M) could uninterruptedly reign for more than three decades. For all their ideological disputes and theoretical commitment to Revolution, the Bengali resists change. Maybe they have now realised they are getting left behind. But my guess is that Ms Banerjee promises status quo, which is why she’ll win. Mr Budhadeb Bhattacharjee wanted change, which is why he may lose even his membership of the State Assembly! This is not a value judgement though.
Nothing has changed in West Bengal in three decades, but the suburban and rural Bengali seems as contented as ever. Maybe that's why Mamata Banerjee is poised to win.
I have campaigned in elections before but never as extensively as I am currently doing in West Bengal. People ask me what’s the point of spending so much time and energy in an election in which the BJP has little at stake. Arguably, we aren’t fighting to wrest Writers’ Building from the Left; that’s Ms Mamata Banerjee’s calling. But over the last six months or so, since the young and energetic Rahul Sinha was vested with the reins of the State party and Mr Nitin Gadkari appointed me Prabhari or central observer, it seems we have succeeded in making the BJP matter in the State. It is not widely known that the BJP’s predecessor, the Jana Sangh, was founded by Syama Prasad Mookerjee here in Bengal. On its own, however, the BJP won only a by-election to the Assembly some years ago. This time, the poll is sharply polarised with the stormy petrel (forgive the cliché!) of Bengal politics having mounted a feisty blitzkrieg to dislodge the CPI(M)-led Left Front from power after an incredible 34 years.
The BJP may be a bit player but it seems to have alarmed the two Behemoths to a significant extent. While the universal ‘Didi’, doesn’t let a single meeting pass without fervently appealing to people not to vote for the BJP, the CPI(M), despite chuckling at the thought of saffron forces cutting into her anti-Left vote, is doing everything to prevent it from reaching out to the electorate by placing obstacles in the way of holding public meetings. Particularly since the Cooch Behar to Kolkata Naba Jagaran Rathyatra the BJP undertook in the first fortnight of February, the party’s popularity graph seems to have surged remarkably despite the sharp polarisation.
Yatras and elections are powerful instruments for a political party to spread its organisational tentacles and the BJP seems to have effectively used these to disseminate its message. I was impressed by the sincerity of the rank-and-file, their conviction that something big is about to happen, and the responsiveness of the crowds that attend BJP rallies. Maybe most of them won’t vote for it in the end, but at least they are listening; so when the BJP returns next time it would be talking to people who are partially convinced.
Two weeks of intensive campaigning (I have another week to go) enabled me to observe many facets of my home State, which I abandoned with finality way back in 1987 when I joined The Times of India in Delhi after quitting The Statesman, Calcutta. I migrated originally in 1972 for my college education but my second, three-year stint in Calcutta in the mid-1980s left me so disgusted with the state of affairs (12 hours-a-day power cuts, telephones that were decoration pieces, traffic that was in total disarray and hope dying with every passing day) that I left determined never to return. Things are marginally better now on those counts but I still find the middle class Bengali frightfully unambitious, content to wallow in self-pity without doing anything about it. So I went about looking for reasons for this collective ennui.
Three days of flying around the State in a helicopter offered some clues. It’s difficult to find a State as verdant as Bengal; no wonder Dwijendra Lal Roy penned “Dhana-dhanye pushpey bhara…” successor to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's “Sujalam, suphalam malayaj shitalam, shashya-shyamalam mataram”. On a flight to Sandeshkhali in the Sunderbans, crisscrossed by mighty distributaries of Ganga, co-passenger Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda gazed at the vast expanse of water and commented: “Itna pani hai, eersha hoti hai (There’s so much water, I feel jealous)”.
Devastated by Cyclone Aila, on the islands in the Sunderbans the harried residents eke out a miserable existence since the fertile soil has turned saline and unproductive. Climate change is wreaking havoc here but the people haven’t woken up to it and merely blame official indifference for their misfortune. But it is the stoic acceptance of whatever fate has ordained that amazed me. The ill-fed, ill-clad men and women — skins glistening in the harsh sun, moisture forcing droplets of sweat to drape their bodies — haven’t forgotten how to smile.
As my Xylo traversed narrow by-lanes of interior villages of my home district of Hooghly I recognised the same contentment on people’s faces. Flocks of goats and mother hens chaperoning their brood crowded the road, slowing my car to walking speed. Old women emerged from their dishevelled thatched huts, annoyed at tranquillity being broken by a big vehicle, to shepherd their chickens, ducks and goats back into their pens. But almost every hut had a party flag uncertainly fluttering; in the backwaters of Hooghly it was mostly the CPI(M)’s hammer-sickle-star, but the towns were awash with Trinamool’s two flowers and the occasional BJP lotus.
Bengal lives, breathes and dreams politics. My travel coordinator Mr Swapan Pal, Hooghly district BJP general secretary, insisted I sip a cuppa of “atulaniya (matchless)” tea at Bannerjee Cabin, a street corner restaurant in my hometown. I had visited the town centre many times in my childhood, watched movies at Kairi and Rupali Talkies, but never noticed the inscription on the silver-gray clock tower, which I discovered had been erected to commemorate King Edward VII in 1911, the very year Lord Curzon announced the shifting of the Capital from Calcutta to Delhi.
Past 10 pm, Banerjee Cabin was bustling with argumentative muffosil Bengalis, animatedly debating the news of the day and its impact on voters, namely, Mr Anil Basu, CPI(M)’s former MP from neighbouring Arambagh, using expletives against Didi. Life goes on as usual in suburban Bengal; nobody has even heard of Anbumani Ramadoss and the ban on smoking in public places. The tea house is smoke-filled, although Charminar has been replaced by more refined brands. Instead of the usual order of “ek cup cha ar ekta false”, meaning one tea and an empty cup for it to be shared, tea shops now serve in Liliputian plastic containers; I was lucky to get a decent-sized kullad!
Tea and cigarettes are integral to Bengal’s culture and I found nothing had changed. Whenever I reached a meeting venue, somebody came around with an aluminium kettle and a sheaf of miniature plastic cups even on the dais. Ms Sushma Swaraj asked me if this was customary, for in north India it’s bad manners to sip anything except water on the rostrum. I said here it was perfectly fine and nobody would mind even if somebody smoked!
All said and done, Bengal is a happy place. Much as migrant Bengalis like me feel frustrated, disgruntled and dejected, I found rural and suburban Bengal contented. That may well be the reason why the CPI(M) could uninterruptedly reign for more than three decades. For all their ideological disputes and theoretical commitment to Revolution, the Bengali resists change. Maybe they have now realised they are getting left behind. But my guess is that Ms Banerjee promises status quo, which is why she’ll win. Mr Budhadeb Bhattacharjee wanted change, which is why he may lose even his membership of the State Assembly! This is not a value judgement though.
No comments:
Post a Comment