Come to West Bengal to see how roles have been rejigged. Here, Mamata Banerjee, once the face of “poriborton”, is the long-playing and entrenched establishment. The ruler with a designated successor, she shares election posters with a fresh-faced nephew, or “bhaipo” as he is known here, Abhishek Banerjee. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, campaigning to retain his dominance elsewhere after two terms at the Centre, is casting himself in the role of challenger, who is trying to capture the space for change Mamata was once credited with. If the BJP pitch in states like neighbouring Bihar is “there is no alternative (to Modi)”, here it is saying the alternative is Modi. That the BJP drive needs to recast itself in West Bengal, is illustrated by the fact that “schemes” here mean Mamata, not Modi. “Lakshmir Bhandar”, a cash transfer to women is the undisputed centrepiece. Under this scheme, all women of age 25-60, if they apply, get Rs 1200 a month if they are SC/ST and Rs 1000 if they are from the General category. TMC’s opponents also have to promise that they will not discontinue it. At the CPM office in Ranaghat, stacked with stained steel almirahs and bundles of election material, the pamphlet for the party’s candidate, Alakesh Das, starts like this: “Lokkhi Bhandar and all schemes will not be shut down. The funds for these schemes will be increased”. In village Fulia Belgharia in the same constituency, the BJP’s sitting MP, Jagannath Sarkar, tells The Indian Express: “This time ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is khullam khulla (in the open)…We will also give Lokkhi Bhandar, and we will give more money under it”. But if schemes for women mean Mamata, in many places fear also carries the name of TMC. In chai shop addas in West Bengal, many more voters refuse to talk openly about the election than in the other states The Indian Express travelled to for this series. The results of panchayat elections, inevitably marred by violence, including the last one in 2023, are frequently cited as a barometer of political trends — but they also suggest a cramping politicisation of public spaces. In West Bengal, the national Opposition front, INDIA, has been interrupted — Congress has joined hands with the Left, while the TMC has opted out of the “jot” or alliance to go it alone in the state’s 42 seats. In the CPM office at Ranaghat, Central Committee member and CPM secretary Sumit Biswas says: “Trinamool and BJP feed off each other, they are trying to establish a religious binary”. That binary has already been established by the results of the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 Assembly polls — Congress got only 2 MPs and the CPM zero in 2019, neither could open its account in the Assembly. The TMC trolls the BJP as “bohiragato” or outsider, but Modi’s party got more than a foot in the Bengal door in 2019 — its Lok Sabha tally shot up from two to 18. In the Assembly polls in 2021, it may have finished well short of its hyped target, but it registered a spike from three to 77 seats. Arvind Menon, all-India general secretary and Tamil Nadu in-charge, camping in Bengal for the 3rd, 5th and 7th phases, says: “This is a badlav (change) election. Our vote here is going up daily”. In the Malda-Murshidabad belt, Congress and Trinamool accuse each other of dividing the vote, read “Muslim vote”, and both allege the other has a secret pact with the BJP. Their war of accusations does not find a strong echo outside this belt for two reasons — elsewhere, the minority concentration is smaller and Congress a diminishing presence, not seen to hold up its end of the electoral field. In Murshidabad, after a long day of campaigning, Congress veteran of many battles, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury says that in this election, it is clear that “the CM (Mamata) is hell-bent on defeating me, BJP is the beneficiary”. Shahnawaz Ali Raihan, TMC candidate, says “Here, Adhir and others in the Congress are the BJP’s B-team”. Even in this traditional Congress bastion of north Bengal — it is from here that the party won both its two Lok Sabha seats — a BJP knock was heard in 2019. It won a seat by a margin of over 84,000 votes and lost another one narrowly, by a margin of about 8,000. In Malda south, Congress candidate Isha Khan Choudhury, whose uncle Ghani Khan Choudhury held the seat for long decades, and whose father is the sitting MP, says: “We lost all our MLAs here in the 2021 Assembly election because of CAA-NRC. The minorities panicked, the BJP and TMC capitalised on it… Now people feel they cried wolf.” But he also acknowledges the new reality: “The BJP remains a big factor, since 2014, it has crept into Malda, and elections here are undershadowed by polarisation still”. In West Bengal, among anti-BJP forces, Congress and Left are seen to be fighting to remain in the game, not to win — Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury himself describes the election as “a battle for survival” for his party, which, he says, is focusing only on seven constituencies. The Left is battling rampant perceptions of being a party of the past — there are 18 new faces in its list of 30 this time, but there is little visible evidence that its attempted makeover is working on the Bengal street. And the main Opposition player, the TMC, even as it fights for every inch — see the war of narratives and videos that has broken out, from allegations of molestation in Raj Bhawan to Sandeshkhali — also bears the brunt of local anti-incumbency. Women voters on the road The Indian Express traveled counted out the Mamata government's schemes. Apart from the most talked about Lokkhi Bhandar, a host of cash transfers and subsidies, from birth to school to marriage and old age. But among both men and women, the TMC also has to battle perceptions of failure on the jobs front and unchecked corruption — for any work to be done, they say, you need to pay a TMC functionary. Even among women who express gratitude to Didi, you sense Modi’s appeal as the leader who made the Ram Mandir. In a state that, along with Punjab, bore the brunt of Partition, and still lives with its scars, support also comes the BJP’s way on the back of myths of Muslim “population growth” and “infiltration” and a BJP campaign that labels Mamata as “pro-Muslim” — she is routinely referred to as “begum” by LoP Suvendu Adhikari. In the campus of the University of Gourbanga in Malda town, Dona Kundu, who is doing a PhD in Mathematics, says: “I don't like some things about the BJP, it seems like a controlling parent to me. But I may vote for it or press NOTA because the whole education department has been implicated in the (teacher recruitment) scam under the TMC. So many deserving candidates also lost their jobs. In 2-3 years’ time I too will be in the job market, there is so much uncertainty. I don't even know who the Congress candidate is, Left has no influence, I am left only with the BJP”. A group of women who work in the university administration, who ask not to be named, say that even though they benefit from the Mamata government’s schemes, they will vote Modi because: “If someone says Jai Shri Ram, why is Didi unhappy?” And “What if the Muslim population increases…?” In Begunbari village in Murshidabad district, migration is the big issue, apart from water — a water tank looms over the skyline, but even though its construction began in Left rule, it does not function, the ground water is laced with arsenic and villagers buy water from private vendors for their daily needs. They say that there is not a home here from where young men have not migrated to other states and countries. In the neighbouring village of Hijuli, Nazir Husain, 34, counts out a long list of cities and countries he has worked in: “Philippines, Bangalore, Mumbai, Visakhapatnam, Chennai, Surat, Nagpur, Akola, Bhubaneswar, Jamshedpur, Meerut…” The Congress may gain from voter discontent against the TMC in minority-dominated pockets like Begunbari, but elsewhere, the BJP seems better placed to reap the benefit of anti-incumbency. In Krishnanagar, Sumanta Sarkar, who drives a “Toto” or an e-rickshaw, says: “Among my fellow drivers here, there is one with a first class in BSc… I am 8th-fail, I have no prospects, but if a new party becomes powerful here, maybe others will have a shot at better things”. In Malda town, Ashutosh Kundu, a research scholar, says: “There is a road and train connectivity problem where I live. I like the agenda of making India developed by 2047 put forward by the BJP”. In Dhulia panchayat in Krishnanagar, Kunal Mukherjee, a shop owner, says: “You cannot bribe me with cash transfers… You have to run the desh (country), not just my bari (home). TMC is steeped in corruption, Congress has no astitva (existence) in Bengal. We tried the CPM for 30 plus years and now we have to look for it with a telescope (“durbeen”). Only the BJP is new”. But for all its successes in positioning itself as the new and the challenger in Bengal, ironically the BJP’s core CAA promise, much hyped in an earlier election, the rules for which were recently notified, may be having an unintended effect on its proclaimed beneficiary. The Matuas, the large SC community that came from Bangladesh to Bengal, are baulking at first declaring themselves non-citizens, and then putting together documents to apply for citizenship. At Thakurnagar, in Bongaon, at the main temple of the community, questions about CAA are met with a sullen silence. In her home, a stone's throw from the temple premises, Mamata Thakur, Rajya Sabha MP from the TMC, who presides over the All India Matua Mahasangha, says: “No one has applied here for citizenship. If I fill the form, I will forego government facilities. The law says we need to supply documents… We don't have them, because of floods, death and other things. Is this because we are SCs? Is this any way to give citizenship?” An Express Series - Mumbai to Murshidabad: The Indian Express retraces the route from where Rahul Gandhi’s second ‘yatra’ ended, takes detours to listen to people - on where the Opposition and ruling party are headed. Read Part 3 and Part 4 here.
