Fade out. Free wallpaper by Dipanjano.

There’s little to choose between the Trinamool and the Left in West Bengal

Bengal started to vote on Monday and will do so for a month and a half. This is the first time in recent memory that a party other than the CPM, as part of a ruling Left Front, is the incumbent party. This is also the first time in recent history that the Congress and the Left parties, after having long been rivals, have cobbled together a front against the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC). Third, this is the first election that is witnessing a substantial increase in the number of young candidates from all sides, and a major part of the turf war is being played out in the new-found argot of social media. Finally, the polls have been marked by a major financial scam, public outcry over the wreckage of a flyover and a sticky sting operation, all targeted at the ruling TMC.

Mamata Banerjee, the belligerent, megalomaniac leader of the TMC, is not known for either her subtleties or her insights. She does not run any outdated politburo to advise her, she encourages no dissent or adverse opinion, remains ensconced in a small group of men who offer her ritualistic and uninhibited sycophancy. She has similarly come to expect absolute and ingratiating gobbledygook from the bureaucracy and administration. Her government seems to have expedited evident corruption fed by the noisy bluster of performance, reduced the police to a puppet play, decimated liberal institutions, and bankrupted the economy. But importantly, none of these charges is different from a list that would have defined the CPM five years ago.

Notwithstanding the hyperventilation that accompanies the TMC’s grandstanding about change (poriborton), what was in fact unleashed in 2011 was a mirror image of the CPM’s governing logic, at least of the last 10 years of its 34-year rule. The CPM was no less paternalistic, nepotistic, and corrupt. It was no less a believer in the violent makeover of liberal institutions. Electoral violence and rigging are similarly a Left legacy — the TMC merely adding a degree of unrepentant triumphalism to this illegitimate show of power. The CPI(M) was no more attentive to questions of caste and poverty, pollution and ecology, heritage and urban planning, public health and education. If at all, the TMC has actually exhibited some will to boost public spending. As for the economy, the state has a miraculous capacity of surviving on little or zero investment for years. So much for the continuities.

As far as the shifts are concerned, there are a few. The last five years have seen an astonishing rise in social media activism and in the participation of the youth in mobilising public opinion. Both these trends will adversely affect the incumbent. And here, the TMC’s brash disregard for opinion other than its own, something that the apparatchiks of the CPM carried out in secrecy, is likely to play a part in its erosion of support. The second shift is the substantive rise of the BJP in pockets which have traditionally frolicked with rightist sentiments, either in Kolkata or in the industrial belts of the state.

It is in the last bit that the long-term consequence of this election might be felt. If the TMC returns to power, both the Left and the Congress will have to look into their differences or go back to their individual constituencies. The seat understanding is anyway a matter of electoral opportunism. So, what if the TMC loses? It is difficult to say what kind of government West Bengal will gain but it can be safely prophesied that the loss will dismember the TMC. Most of its cadres and leaders have come together to exploit the spoils of power. Losing will see them disband. Such a decline of the TMC is going to be traction for the presently bloodless BJP. The BJP is a party which can play havoc with the tightrope ethnic and religious sentiments in a border state like West Bengal and it will do every mischief in its arsenal to gain a foothold in the void left by the decimation of the TMC.

The West Bengal electorate will do well to consider this possibility when they go out to vote. West Bengal, chequered as its history is with bloodletting, may still survive the economic drought for five more years but can it survive the RSS?