Explained: Why Panchayats Polls Are So Fiercely Fought In Bengal

Politics has been a blood sport in Bengal ever since the mid-1960s — when the communists started posing a challenge to the Congress hegemony over power in the state. 

Violence was the preferred tool for the communists to loosen the grip of the Congress on power in Bengal. 

After the communists came to power in the state in 1977, they institutionalised violence to maintain their stranglehold on power by snuffing out all opposition. 

The Trinamool, which swept to power in 2011, has not only kept the left legacy of political violence alive, but even intensified it. 

This violence remains under the radar most of the time. Intimidation of opposition workers, supporters and functionaries, attacks on them, driving them and their families out of their homes, divesting them of their properties, and even the occasional rape and murder, are all considered par for the course in Bengal. 

It is only during elections — before and after the polls — that the violence peaks and makes it to the pages of newspapers and TV screens. 

Political violence is at its most intense during panchayat polls in Bengal. The intensity of violence in the run-up to and immediately after panchayat elections in Bengal is much higher than that during the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. 

This has been the case ever since the Left Front introduced the three-tier panchayati raj system in the state in the late 1970s. 

That’s because the first two tiers of the three-tier panchayat structure hold the key to political power in rural and semi-urban Bengal. 

Rural and semi-urban Bengal is steeped in poverty and most rural families survive at subsistence levels. Agriculture, the mainstay of Bengal’s rural economy, does not yield much income primarily because land holdings are very small. 

There are few industries and unemployment is acute. Most able-bodied young men and women migrate to other states in search of semi-skilled and unskilled jobs. The meagre remittances from them are barely sufficient to feed their folks.

That makes a large mass of people in the rural and semi-urban areas of the state dependent on the elected representatives of gram panchayats and panchayat samitis for favours that can marginally ease their dismal living conditions. 

It is gram panchayat and panchayat samiti members whose recommendations are crucial to getting names included in the BPL list for getting free rations, or in the list of beneficiaries for houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), or even for getting job cards that will entitle them for work under the MGNREGA. 

The panchayat functionaries also extend other favours like licences for petty trades like setting up a tea stall or a food kiosk, or operating a rickshaw. Their nod is required for every step that the rural folks take. 

The recommendations of these panchayat functionaries are required for availing various government welfare schemes like pension for widows, grants for women or scholarships for students etc. 

“The panchayat representatives are, thus, very important people and are actually much more powerful for the rural folks than even MLAs and MPs. People have to deal with the panchayat functionaries on a daily basis. That’s why the panchayat representatives wield enormous influence over the rural masses,” said Barun Chandra Majumdar, a professor of political science at Calcutta University.

The panchayat functionaries, in return for extending favours, demand absolute loyalty of the rural masses. It must be mentioned here that in Bengal, even recommending a very poor person’s name for inclusion in the BPL (below poverty line) list is considered to be granting a ‘favour’. 

Since they wield such a lot of influence on the lives of the people in rural and semi-rural Bengal, panchayat functionaries are very powerful entities. They dictate the voting preferences of the rural masses.

“The diktats of panchayat functionaries on who to vote for is obeyed without question by a large majority of the rural and semi-urban population in Bengal,” said Majumdar. 

Bengal’s rural political economy, as renowned political scientist Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya says, is marked by “small peasant economy and a dense partisan network” that makes it distinctly different from the rest of the country. 

Rural Bengal’s unique ‘party society’ — a term coined by Bhattacharyya — where grassroots politicians belonging to the ruling party wield enormous power not only over public life of society, but also the personal lives of the masses, is what places excessive powers on the hands of panchayat functionaries.

Bhattacharyya, who teaches at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), wrote many years ago: “In party-society, the overriding goal is to protect the constituency of a party’s support base and expand it periodically from election to election, which is ineluctable for the renewal of a party’s influence. So elections are central to party-society”. 

Hence, winning elections, especially panchayat polls, is crucial for the ruling party in Bengal to enable it to retain its stranglehold on power. 

The ruling party has always been unwilling to allow free and fair panchayat elections out of fear that Opposition parties may gain a foothold in its rural bastions. 

“Since panchayat functionaries dictate the voting preferences of the rural masses in Assembly and parliamentary polls, it is imperative for the ruling party to control all, or at least the maximum number of, gram panchayats and panchayat samitis in order to retain power at the state level and also to ensure a sizable presence in the Lok Sabha,” said Majumdar. 

Since there is so much at stake in panchayat elections, the poll process gets marked by intense violence and rigging. 

The stakes are even higher for the Trinamool Congress this year. It has to ensure a landslide win in the polls later this week because that is what holds the key to a good performance in the Lok Sabha polls next year. 

Next year’s parliamentary elections are crucial for Mamata Banerjee. A very good show will bolster her chances of emerging as a powerful figure in the anti-BJP camp. 

Hence, she is leaving no stone unturned in ensuring a landslide win in the ensuing panchayat polls. As per Bengal’s notorious political culture, threats, intimidation, attacks and murder of Opposition candidates, functionaries, workers and supporters are major tools for achieving this objective. 

And that is why polls, especially panchayat polls, are marked by such a lot of bloodshed in Bengal.