Representative image of a retro television set with antenna

This election is a landmark event not just because of the possibility of a long-overdue change but also because the parties may have understood the difference between mass and polity, writes Sayandeb Chowdhury

Tomorrow, Bengal steps into a landmark election. It’s a livewire event — complete with high-voltage, intensive campaigning, television debates, repartees in the media and of course gauche, garrulous throwaways. For reasons historical and emotional, this election is being watched by political experts, commentators, the media and even the general public across the world. The way in which the elections have panned out — the battle over words and meaning, the war over land, over promises not kept and slippery promises made for immediate gains, over the role of the civil society and its managers, who have now openly and unequivocally taken sides — this is indeed an election like none other in the state.

The question is: Will the longest-running, democratically-elected Communist government anywhere in the world, finally give in to a noisy coalition of a hastily orchestrated but chest-thumping opposition led by the irrepressible Mamata Banerjee?

CPI(M) is thirty-four years in power, which makes one-third of a century. That inevitably entails, in any democracy, an almost natural will to vulgarise the riches of power, which the CPI(M) has by now conveniently mastered. That also means that the CPI(M) has infused itself into the consciousness of the public, into institutions and organisations, into the yin and yang of everyday life in Bengal. This ensures that if the Party loses, it does not just sit pretty in the opposition in the regular norm of Parliamentary democracy, but actually attains dénouement.

May 13 hence may not just be the end of a Party rule. It will surely be the end of an era.

This is in fact, the first time since they came to power in 1977, the incumbent left Front is actually having to ‘fight’ an election. Because in the six elections that the Front has apparently fought since, anti-incumbency was a mere distraction, affecting maybe a seat here, a constituency there, but the mandate as a whole, even if not landslide vote share, was in their favour. The permutations are many but suffice here to mention that thirty-four years on the seat of power made the Party statusquoist, irreverent and ultimately antediluvian. And that is when TMC stormed back in with the same slogans that had once brought Front to power, taking the battle to where it all started three decades ago — to land and land use issues. The much emaciated TMC got all the traction that it needed in the days following the Singur and Nandigram agitation. It gained in confidence and weight as the state neared the days of polling, with a skilful concoction of issue-based agit-prop that found ready acceptance amongst the Red-wary demography.

Maybe it is because of this or maybe because Trinamool Congress is turning out to be a new-media savvy, wily and obstreperous force, the CPI(M) has also gone for new and unchartered ways of campaigning; campaigning that may or may not give it dividends, but surely marks a new approach to mass mobilisation in the state.

“Elections in Bengal have always been about the mass, about managing to mobilise thousands with a promise of little more than loud rhetoric. The erstwhile rallies of CPI(M), were about filling up large grounds with people, nee numbers. March of numbers meant approval and CPI(M) knew it all along”, concurs a political observer.

Mamata was inspired by it too. All her mass mobilisation processes were pages out of CPI(M)’s past as much as it was about bringing forced issues into the open, issues trivial and local but potentially incendiary if soaked in the right amount of drama and display. “Throughout her rise in the ’90s, Mamata believed in the numbers game as wholeheartedly as the incumbent force she wanted to dislodge. Well into the cyber era, hence, polls in Bengal were about loud microphones, rallies, rhetorical bravado and mass tokenism. Not anymore”, opines a communication consultant, who has been a keen observer of politics in Bengal.

She changed tactics late into this decade after a series of repeated failures to stick to coalitions. And after 2006, when her approval ratings were at an all-time low, and after her stints in Delhi, she became more and more aware about the possibilities of new, personalised technologies. So now, in 2011, when she is fighting the elections of a lifetime, she is sparing no way to reach out to different demographies through regular and well-considered TV spots, radio ads, jingles, posters, smses and most importantly, online campaigns. 

CPI(M), interestingly is not lying much behind. Both parties have realised that the world has moved beyond mass mobilisation and now rotates not around person-to-person contacts but also cyber contacts, social media and online interaction. Trinamool has launched the website aitmc.org, which includes details of its agenda, programmes and leaders. “There are nearly 100,000 visitors to our official party website regularly,” Abhishek Banerjee, head of cyber cell, Trinamool Congress has told news agencies recently. That’s actually a huge number. “We receive 600 to 700 mails per day. The response to our website and the number of visitors are magnificent,” Derek O’Brien, who oversees its TMC’s PR activities, added.

Not just the website, the TMC poll manifesto is a smartly produced, slick report on the state of affairs which resembles a corporate brochure, complete with pie charts, diagrams, tables etc to elucidate Front’s performance or the lack thereof in the three and half decades it has been in power and how TMC hopes to change that.

Local newspapers quoted political experts wondering if it was the best such document for elections anywhere in India in recent times, in content as in intent. “The onus is not on reaching out, but reaching out meaningfully”, says an insider. The CPI(M) was caught short on this one getting out with another shoddy and uninspiring little book it calls its manifesto. But in other spheres, it is quickly realising the virtues of sassy content and personal communication.

Banerjee’s popularity in the meantime has also reached the virtual world, with Facebook flooded with responses posted on fan pages dedicated to her. It has several Mamata Banerjee fan pages. She has also roped in Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Hotmail cofounder Sabeer Bhatia to prepare a vision document to connect technologically with GenNext voters and reach out to people not just during the polls and after, when and if they come to power. “We are doubtlessly coming to power but we are coming to power not just on the back of CPI(M)’s huge list of failures but also backed by a changing and aspirational new generation who will be the backbone of our support and who find CPI(M) a throwback to a past they want to forget”, says a TMC leader.

What is interesting is that much of the new technology concerns the computer which the Communists had once disdainfully called a ‘capitalist passion designed to rob the masses of labor-intensive jobs’. Now they are embracing it wholeheartedly, knowing that not doing so is akin to opting for obscurity. The push has come as usual from Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who has launched buddhdebbhattacharjee.net to provide a unique opportunity to interact with him. These are just a few instances of the ways in which communication is being used in the polls for transformational gains.

But new media and social media is not just the only new thing in this elections. Roadshows and campus campaigning have become relevant and both CPI(M) and TMC are leaving no stones unturned to reach out to specific demographics and listening to their specific demands instead of whitewashing large chunks of the population with complaints and aspirations which are not their own. If anything, this is one thing that may end up deciding the fate of the parties on May 13. “Those who take better cognizance of individuals and groups will win the day for their parties. No less, no more”, says a political scientist. Though the results of these polls, are for many, foretold in favour of the TMC, yet it’s best to wait till May 13 before we rush to a conclusion.

But one’s thing is for sure. Both parties have promised to listen to the young polity and unless they are on a suicide mission, they must continue to do so, be it in government or outside. That’s the only way to go in democracy 2.0. This also means that in this campaign we may have just seen the seeds of a new Bengal where communication is the key with which one must open the lock of aspiration. And not ideology.