Battleground Bengal: Modi’s Aggression A Little Too Late

After two long years of inexplicable softness on Mamata Banerjee and her party, the BJP has suddenly gone for the jugular and has launched an aggressive campaign against the Trinamool chief and her corrupt lieutenants. But it may be too late in the day for the party to translate this aggression into votes and seats.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was at his best on Thursday, tearing into Mamata Banerjee and highlighting the many exposes against Trinamool Congress leaders, at three election rallies in West Bengal. The response from the lakhs gathered to hear Modi was spontaneous and enthusiastic. This was quite like in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls when Modi’s fiery speeches taking on Mamata and her party for the Saradha scam struck an instant chord among the people. The Trinamool Congress government in the state was into its third year then and was facing grave charges of misrule and corruption. The Saradha scam had taken the sheen off Mamata’s so-called clean image and the time was just right for cashing in on the growing disenchantment against her.

At their first election rally in Kolkata in 2014, Modi and Rajnath Singh went soft on Mamata and the response from the large crowd gathered at the Brigade Parade grounds was lukewarm. BJP strategists then quickly changed track and Modi, from the next rally onwards, was all fire and brimstone against Mamata. The gains were immediate and visible: the crowds lapped up every word of his and applauded him. Ultimately, it paid rich dividends too: the BJP’s voteshare went up from 6% to nearly 17% and it won two seats in Bengal. It posted impressive performances in some constituencies, relegating the CPI(M) to the third position. The BJP candidate even scored a lead in Mamata’s own south Kolkata Assembly constituency.

But then, the gains of 2014 were frittered away. State and central BJP leaders who had displayed aggression against Mamata and her partymen went soft on her. The CBI probe in to the Saradha scam lost steam. Despite mounting corruption and misgovernance and a stark deterioration in the law and order situation in the state, little in the form of criticism emanated from BJP leaders.

Allegations of a tacit understanding between the BJP and the Trinamool started surfacing; rumours had it that the BJP, in return for Trinamool’s support for crucial legislation in the Rajya Sabha where the party (the BJP) lacked numbers, would go soft on Mamata and would also lean on the CBI to slacken the pace of the Saradha probe which, if pursued vigorously as was the case in the initial stages of the probe, could, many believe, have netted in more Trinamool leaders and even taken the sleuths to Mamata’s doorstep. But over the past two years, BJP leaders kept mostly mum on Mamata and discounting the perfunctory noises made for appearances’ sake, shied away from aggressively targeting her and her lieutenants over their many acts of omission and commission.

Only a handful of state BJP leaders like actor-turned-politician Roopa Ganguli and the lone party legislator in the Bengal Assembly Shamik Bhattacharya valiantly kept up the heat on Mamata. But without the backing of senior BJP central leaders, who studiously avoided any criticism of the Trinamool and its mercurial chief during their visits to Bengal, the voices of the likes of Ganguli and Bhattacharya could not enthuse party workers. BJP workers and activists in the state were soon disillusioned with the leadership for its failure to take on Mamata and Trinamool leaders when innumerable priceless opportunities to do so presented themselves.

The perception that the BJP had reached a covert understanding with the Trinamaool gained ground, and more so with Mamata, who had breathed fire against Modi in the 2014 polls (she even threatened to tie a rope around Modi’s waist and drag him to prison), refraining from criticising the BJP. Many cartoons and slogans highlighting this alleged understanding started appearing and evoked a good response. In the bargain, BJP workers in the state lost all hope and got disgruntled and confused. The gains of 2014 were thus mindlessly frittered away.

Realising this, perhaps, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reverted to the aggression mode in the three election rallies he addressed in the state on Thursday. The TMC stands for ‘terror, maut and corruption’, he said, and went on lampoon Mamata on the Saradha scam, the Narada expose, the flyover collapse and the many other acts of corruption, misdeeds and misgovernance by Mamata, her colleagues and her government. As in 2014, the response he received was heartening. But it is doubtful if the cheers for Modi will translate into votes for the party. That’s because while the crowds may be cheering at Modi’s broadsides against Mamata, the BJP has little organisational strength in Bengal to leverage this and convert it into votes. This aggression has come too late in the day, or is rather useless. The state unit of the party is moribund and its workers are a disillusioned lot. Infighting is rife in the party. And the BJP has only itself to blame for this.

Immediately after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, senior central leaders of the BJP made frequent visits to Bengal and kept up the heat on Mamata and the Trinamool. Party chief Amit Shah started focusing on strengthening the party organisation in the state and set an ambitious goal of inducting one crore members into the party by early 2016 was set. Party workers were kept enthused and a series of agitational programmes against the Trinamool were launched.

But just as things were about to take off for the BJP in Bengal, it appeared that the brakes were slammed and everything went into a limbo. This was too much for the ordinary BJP workers to comprehend and digest. It was as if they had been led up to a blind alley and been forsaken by their leaders. Those who voted for the BJP in 2014 also slowly realised that the party was not serious in bidding for power in the state. The BJP in Bengal became, in popular perception, a party that wasn’t serious about itself.

But this need not have been so. The ground was ripe for the BJP’s rise in Bengal. Disenchantment with the Trinamool had been mounting (and still is), the Left Front was yet to regain its credibility and emerge from the shadows of the resounding drubbing it received in the 2011 Assembly polls and the Congress was hardly a player to reckon with.

The Trinamool’s acts of corruption, arrogance and high-handedness had turned many, especially in urban and semi-urban areas, against the party. All that the BJP needed to do was keep up the aggression against the Trinamool, keep on exposing Mamata and her partymen, hold rallies and other agitational programmes to enforce the party’s credibility among the masses and rev up its membership drive. But it fell desperately short on all these fronts. The void that the BJP left has been filled up, quite undeservingly so, by the Left and the Congress who entered into an unprincipled alliance in order to save themselves from being consigned to the dustbin of history. This alliance, in public perception, now has more credibility than the BJP.

All, however, is not lost for the BJP. If it follows the aggressive path set by Modi and starts working on its organisational structure, it could inflict a setback to the Trinamool in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and, then, make a serious bid for power in 2021. But to achieve this goal, it has to set targets for itself and jettison its reluctance to keep the heat on Mamata after the elections are over.