After Assam, Will The Lotus Bloom In North East And Bengal?

There was never any doubt that the BJP and its allies—the Asom Gana Parsihad (AGP) and the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF)—would form the government in Assam. The doubts, if any, existed in the minds of the so-called ‘secular’ political pundits and a section of media persons. And the Congress, completely divorced from ground realities, was living in a fool’s paradise by assuming that it would return to power for the fourth time in the state.

Ultimately, the scale of victory of the BJP and its allies, as was rightly predicted by BJP’s master strategist Himanta Biswa Sarma, who has to be credited with scripting his party’s spectacular victory, left the Congress shell-shocked.

And the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), which was harbouring fond dreams of becoming the kingmaker in the event of a fractured verdict and a hung Assembly that it was so erroneously forecasting, fell flat on its face.

But as important and significant as the BJP victory in Assam is, it is West Bengal that the party should set its sights firmly on now.

The BJP had sacrificed its interests in that state in order to keep Mamata Banerjee happy and ensure her support in the Rajya Sabha. After bagging an impressive 16.8% of the votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP simply failed to maintain the momentum and strengthen the party organisation in the state.

It abandoned its goal of inducting 30 lakh members in the state by 2016. It toned down its campaign against Mamata Banerjee’s misdeeds and misgovernance and the involvement of her party in the Saradha scam. Not only that, central leaders of the party and Union ministers cosied up to her even as she kept up her tirade against the BJP.

The BJP went soft on Mamata, though it kept up a pretence of opposing her, ostensibly in exchange for her support in the Rajya Sabha where the party lacked numbers to get crucial bills passed.

But that dependence on Mamata will change before 2016 is over when the BJP picks up more seats in the Upper House. Also, with the Congress suffering such humiliating defeats in Assam and Kerala, and also in Tamil Nadu where it was the junior partner in the alliance led by the DMK, the party is not expected to keep up its trenchant and unprincipled opposition to the BJP.

The Congress, with the ground slipping from below its feet, will hardly be in a moral position to oppose the NDA government’s legislations. A caveat here: this is assuming that the Congress has some sense of remorse and shame left and realises that it just does not have the mandate of the people of India to keep on blindly opposing the policies of the Modi government.

The BJP ought to realise now that it has a lot of potential in West Bengal. It got a respectable vote share in the assembly polls even though it was widely perceived as having sold out to Mamata Banerjee. It was not perceived as a credible player in the polls and was, in popular perception, not serious in mounting any opposition to the Trinamool. That is why the people of Bengal had no choice but to vote for the unprincipled and opportunistic Left-Congress alliance.

That there is still a deep, residual anger against the Left (primarily the CPM) in the state is evident from the fact that its seat tally went down by more than 50% as compared to its performance in the 2011 polls. The Congress did gain, but just marginally. Had the BJP built itself up in West Bengal organisationally and kept up its campaign against the Trinamool, there is no doubt that it could have emerged as the principal opposition party in West Bengal in these elections and given Mamata a run for her (Saradha) money.

Large sections of the electorate of Bengal who were disillusioned with Mamata Banerjee and her misrule didn’t vote at all, or voted for Independents. And many were forced by Trinamool goons to vote for that party. Had the BJP presented itself as an alternative and had it been strong organisationally in Bengal, it could have resisted the Trinamool’s strongarm tactics and got people to vote for it.

The Congress and the Left are discredited forces in Bengal. The CPM will find it impossible to stand up on its feet after the drubbing it received this time. Also, it will be riven by dissent over its ill-advised tie-up with the Congress (the rumblings of discontent and anger over this tie-up are already being heard).

There is, thus, a vacuum, and the BJP is the only party with the potential to fill the political void. But it has to do a lot before it can go anywhere near the electoral pole position in Bengal. First, it has to build up the party organisation. The Central leaders of the party should not hold back the state unit from going all-out against Mamata. There is a lot to criticize Mamata for, but unfortunately, the BJP has failed to go for Mamata’s jugular.

It is understandable that Union ministers have to keep a working relationship with state governments in a federal setup. But there is no justification in Union ministers bending over backwards to please Mamata and keep her in good humour as they have been doing.

The BJP was given a decisive mandate by the people of India in 2014, and it ought to be conscious of that fact. The Trinamool, a state player, does not have that mandate, nor does it appeal go beyond the confines of Bengal, and it should not be allowed by the BJP to punch above its weight.

The BJP central leadership has to step in and empower the party’s Bengal unit to launch an all-out campaign against the Trinamool. Mamata, who lacks elementary skills in governance, is bound to commit more mistakes in her second term. Her party leaders will continue to indulge in corruption. There will be a lot of misgovernance, and the abysmal law and order situation is not going to improve. Atrocities against people by Trinamool goons will increase.

The BJP should capitalise on all these and win the people’s trust and confidence and, by 2021, emerge as the principal opposition to the Trinamool in West Bengal. There is a fair chance of it coming to power in the state if it does all these.

As for Assam, the BJP-led alliance has to deliver on its promises and provide clean and efficient governance and redress the urgent problems of the state like unemployment, floods, lack of physical infrastructure, healthcare and educational facilities.

Also, it has to solve the monumental problem posed by the presence of tens of lakhs of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in Assam on a priority basis by ensuring their speedy detection and getting the Union government to arrive at a repatriation treaty with Bangladesh to deport them to that country. And now that the BJP has come to power in Assam, it should concentrate on gaining popularity in the other states of the region.

The North East, despite some of the states being Christian-majority ones, holds a lot of prospect for the BJP. Hidden in the deluge of results of the polls in the five states (including Puducherry) was the news of the outcome in the bypolls in the Tura Lok Sabha seat in Meghalaya. Conrad Sangma, the youngest son of nine-time parliamentarian and former Lok Sabha Speaker Purno Agitok Sangma, won the seat by a landslide and inflicted an ignominious defeat on Congress candidate Dikkanchi Shira who is the wife of Meghalaya’s Congress chief minister Mukul Sangma.

Conrad was supported by the BJP. Meghalaya, which goes to the polls in March 2018, can be easily taken by the BJP if the party starts working there straight away. Manipur, which goes to the polls in March next year, is also ripe for a BJP government. Nagaland’s ruling Democratic Alliance of Nagaland (DAN) is a constituent of the NDA (Nagaland CM T.R. Zeliang campaigned for Conrad Sangma in Tura at the BJP’s behest), while Arunachal Pradesh already has a BJP government.

The task before the BJP now is to consolidate itself in the North East and play an enabling role in Modi’s ‘Act East’ policy that will lift North East India out of the morass of poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment that successive Congress regimes in the seven states of the region had pulled it into. Its task in Bengal is cut out for it. The BJP has to act now, and act fast and decisively.