Men, machine and the streethawk

They call it the underground chamber'' but it is actually a mezzanine floor in Ajit Panja's home in central Calcutta. There, seven no-n...

They call it the 8220;underground chamber8221; but it is actually a mezzanine floor in Ajit Panja8217;s home in central Calcutta. There, seven no-nonsense men sit at seven tables, busily sifting through papers, taking notes and speaking in low, almost hushed tones. Each of them is in charge of one of the seven Assembly segments that constitute the Calcutta North-east parliamentary constituency. Their inputs are fed to a computer in another part of the room where these are analysed, problem areas identified and strategies worked out. Maps, drawings and other material cover the walls. In overall charge of the operation is a banking professional from Mumbai who comes down for two months every time Panja fights an election.

It8217;s a rather strange sight for the election office of a politician who has been a Congressman all his life, having left the party to join Mamata Banerjee8217;s Trinamool Congress less than two years ago. No chaos, noise or crowds of hangers-on here that one usually sees in Congress offices. Theprecision, the discipline and the business-like atmosphere reminds one of the CPIM headquarters on Alimuddin Street in another part of central Calcutta.

Sitting in his airconditioned chamber upstairs, Panja laughs, 8220;No, no, it8217;s not like the CPIM8217;s election machinery. For me, it8217;s not a machinery but missionary work.8221; He explains that the seven tables for the seven Assembly segments are there all the year around for monitoring social work. It8217;s only during election time that the work changes.

His social work includes setting up and patronising numerous clubs of unemployed young men, offering help to patients, distributing books among poor students and generally playing the good samaritan. 8220;No, I don8217;t give TV sets to the clubs. First, it8217;s expensive. Secondly, that would restrict the boys to the club room. I8217;d give them a football, maybe, when they want to have a knockout tournament in their para locality.8221; Or when there is a festival, he distributes among the children sundry items for smallentertainment. With the Viswakarma Puja falling during campaign time, his campaign kit includes two kites, with the Trinamool poll symbol 8212; a whistle 8212; painted on them. 8220;On puja day our workers would distribute the kites to 5,000 kids from 80 distribution points. The sky would be full of our symbol for many more people to see it. The whistle? Well, on the polling day, the boys would blow the whistle at seven in the morning to call the voters to the booths. And they8217;d blow the whistle in the event of trouble,8221; he says.

Less than two weeks before polling day when his Marxist and Congress rivals are sweating it out, Panja looks relaxed, confident of his sixth consecutive win. He has already traversed, he claims, all the 1,084 streets, lanes and bylanes on his home turf. His accomplishment as an actor in the role of Ramakrishna Paramhans in a play produced by Calcutta High Court Bar Association has added to his stature. His publicity kit has clippings from newspaper reports of the event in addition to allthat he has claimed to have done for his constituency, first as a minister in the state government for two terms and then as a Union minister for 10 long years.

If no other candidate in West Bengal matches Panja8217;s hi-tech campaign machinery, few also can compare with his visibility factor. Expensive banners, festoons and graffiti. 8220;It8217;s not true. I am certainly not the highest spending candidate. CPM spends more but because of their poor planning, they can8217;t get the kind of publicity that I get,8221; he argues.

The CPIM has this time fielded its Rajya Sabha member, Mohammed Selim, against him. 8220;It8217;s the first time that I have seen the CPIM playing the communal card,8221; he complains. His constituency has nearly 24 per cent non-Bengali voters, 16 per cent of whom are Muslims. In 1998, he defeated his CPIM rival and Mayor of Calcutta Prashanta Chatterjee by over 65,000 votes.

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Though Selim, in a bid to match Panja8217;s campaign, recently launched a website on himself, it may be a case of too little, toolate. As for Congress candidate Tapas Roy, he may end up polling much less than the 94,000 votes that Panja8217;s Congress rival of last year, Sadhan Pandey, got. To Panja8217;s joy, Pandey has since then jumped onto the Trinamool bandwagon.