Why Mamata Banerjee’s win is inconsequential outside Bengal!

 

The way Indian woke icons- Pritish Nandy, Shobhaa De, Saba Naqvi and their clones on social media, have been gloating over Mamata Banerjee’s win, only confirms the proverb’s popularity among the contemporary Indian liberals. Mamata’s win has apparently allowed them the succor of schadenfreude!

 

Anyway, first things first, let me give credit to Mamata Banerjee where it is due. She was up against a very aggressive opponent and if she still won with such vast majority, the BJP needs to introspect. Having said that, the BJP’s rise from 3 to 76 seats, is no less commendable. Seldom in a state has a political party, assumed power without being the principal opposition party. About the only rare example that I can think of now, is the 2017 Tripura elections, where we defeated the ruling Left and made Congress redundant in the state. But unlike Tripura, Bengal is a huge state and hence the challenges were manifold. In hindsight, perhaps the party’s inability to project a credible local face as Mamata’s alternative, proved detrimental.

 

 

However, as the state’s main opposition party, the BJP will only get better from here. The voice of 77 legislators exposing the TMC’s legacy of violence and corruption, can’t go unheard. With the Congress and Left meanwhile having ceased to exist in Bengal, it will be a two party contest in the state from here.

 

 

The first thing that the TMC cadres did after winning, was to unleash terror and mayhem upon the BJP strongholds in the state, especially in the rural areas. There are umpteen videos floating around, which show BJP offices in Nandigram and other places being ransacked. At least 12 BJP workers have been killed since Sunday. And while the likes of Derek O Brien and Mahua Mitra can shamelessly dismiss this violence as fake news, the magnitude of destruction was personally accessed by BJP president J P Nadda. There are thousands of BJP supporting families who have had to flee from Bengal into Assam, a fact corroborated by Assam leader Himanta Biswa.

 

 

This macabre violence is in extension of the nearly 150 BJP activists and karyakartas killed in the state in the last three years. Do the Indian wokes want to install a PM, whose party will unleash untold mayhem across the country upon opponents? These visuals of plunder remind one of the brutality of ancient nomadic invaders who celebrated their conquests by inflicting suffering upon the captured. No Indian leader in a democracy has ever supported such violence to celebrate a win. In fact, it is now increasingly clear that ‘khela hobe’ was never Mamata Banerjee’s war cry for the elections. It was a veiled call for TMC cadres to unleash stone age barbarism upon its opponents. This has never been Bengal’s culture and this will never be allowed to be India’s culture. And this is what makes Mamata Banerjee and her outfit, temperamentally unfit for any responsible role at the national level.

 

 

Secondly, in the last two decades or so, the Indian voters have evolved and very often, have voted differently in the state and national elections. This was largely after India’s disastrous experience with selg aggrandizing regional parties between 1996-98, which saw HD Dewegowda and IK Gujral, two of the unlikeliest candidates become PM. The tug of war between alliance partners was such that both were unable to continue as PM beyond a few months. A good chunk of those creating the narrative for a larger role for Mamata Banerjee are the power brokers in media and politics, who have become obsolete in the last 7 years. These are the same power brokers who indulgently provide cover fire to the Aghadi government in Maharashtra, which was formed by subverting the mandate and which wielded its ‘vassooli’ powers through Sachin Waze, now famous for planting explosives outside the Ambani home. These power brokers will ironically never acknowledge a well meaning responsible opposition CM like Naveen Patnaik who rises up to meet his national responsibility, solely focusing himself on ensuring that maximum oxygen is supplied from his state, across the country. For these power brokers, federalism implies a right to federal anarchy. India will never vote for this anarchy at the national level- the reason why the likes of AAP get a zero in Lok Sabha.

 

 

Finally, these elections have once again underlined the Congress party’s existential crisis. If the party today has to ally with an AUDF in Assam, ISF in Bengal and IUML in Kerala, it might as well opt for dissolution. The party, not unexpectedly, looks unfazed by the election results and is instead basking in the success of the ‘enemy of its enemy’.

 

 

These are no doubt one of the toughest phases in the country’s history, with Covid inflicted misery unfolding all around. The government and the party need to fight back. An absolute transformation of the health sector in the next three years, needs to be our priority. In as uphill as it may sound, we can turn things around. With the Congress no longer even remotely a national force and with self serving regional parties salivating at the prospect of greater opportunities for corruption and vasooli, the people of this country know well who to trust at the national level.

 

 

 

(Tuhin Sinha is an acclaimed writer and spokesperson of BJP) 

.

.