Six factors which will decide the 2021 West Bengal contest - Hindustan Times
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Six factors which will decide the 2021 West Bengal contest

ByRoshan Kishore and Abhishek Jha, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Mar 25, 2021 02:36 PM IST

West Bengal is expected to be a bipolar contest between the TMC and the BJP. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, these two parties cornered 83.5% of the total votes polled and 97% of the total 294 assembly constituencies, if results are disaggregated at that level

Thirty out of the 294 assembly constituencies (ACs) in West Bengal will go to polls on March 27. Polling in the remaining 264 ACs will be held over the next one month in seven phases with the last phase scheduled on April 29. West Bengal is expected to be a bipolar contest between the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, these two parties cornered 83.5% of the total votes polled and 97% of the total 294 ACs, if results are disaggregated at an AC level. Predicting electoral outcomes is always a hazardous endeavour. Whatever the outcome of the 2021 West Bengal contest, it is likely to be shaped by six factors.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee addresses an election rally, at Bankura on Wednesday, March 24. (ANI)
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee addresses an election rally, at Bankura on Wednesday, March 24. (ANI)

Mamata Banerjee’s popularity

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If there is one person who has defined the politics of West Bengal in the last two-and-half decades, it is Mamata Banerjee. She walked out of the Congress in 1998, terming it a B-team of the state’s then ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI (M). It was the TMC which gave a foothold to the BJP in the state by forming an alliance with it in Lok Sabha elections from 1998 to 2004. Banerjee’s and the TMC’s fortunes fluctuated significantly initially. The 2004 and 2006 national and state elections were the worst for the TMC, when it could win just 9.5% and 10.2% of the ACs. However, Banerjee got her chance when the CPI (M)-led Left Front (LF) government’s plans to acquire land for establishing private industry in Singur and Nandigram triggered massive protests. She seized the moment and her popularity soared on the back of the Singur-Nandigrm agitation. This culminated in the TMC securing a massive victory in the 2011 assembly election. The party followed up with an equally impressive victory in 2016.

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However, things went south for the TMC in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, when it did not just lose a large number of seats to the BJP, but also faced a huge dent in Banerjee’s popularity. Only 30% of the respondents wanted to see Banerjee as the next chief minister – if state elections were held then – in the CSDS-Lokniti National Election Study conducted in West Bengal in 2019. This is the lowest popularity level for Banerjee since the 2011 elections. To be sure, Banerjee was still far ahead of anyone else on this count.

Most commentators and experts, including the TMC’s political strategist Prashant Kishor are banking on the fact that Banerjee’s popularity has not been affected even though they acknowledge that there is local discontent as the state prepares to go to polls again.

Findings from the 2016 CSDS-Lokniti survey confirm that Banerjee’s popularity might have protected the TMC against local discontent. More voters saw the TMC government that had then ruled the state for five years as either corrupt or very corrupt when compared to the LF government was in 2011, yet the party improved its performance. It remains to be seen whether Banerjee’s popularity will provide a Teflon coating to the TMC’s prospects in 2021 as well.

The Amphan impact

Parts of West Bengal suffered the wrath of one of the worst natural disasters to hit India when super cyclone Amphan struck the state in May 2020. There was large scale loss of property because of the impact and even the state capital had to wait for days for power supply to be restored. Amphan affected South 24 Parganas, North 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, East Midnapore and Kolkata. They account for 125 ACs in the state. South 24 Parganas was the worst affected as the cyclone hit there. There have been widespread allegations of corruption by the TMC rank and file in distributing Amphan relief in the state. So much so, that Amphan durniti (Bengali word for corruption) has entered the political lexicon after the cyclone. If the voters, especially the poor, are indeed angry about the TMC cadre usurping the relief funds which were meant for them, it might be an important source of tailwinds to the anti-incumbency sentiment against the TMC. That Amphan affected the districts that resisted a BJP wave even in 2019 makes things particularly tricky for the TMC.

Left front versus ‘Prevent BJP at all costs’ Left

The BJP’s rise in West Bengal is primarily on account of a large-scale shift of erstwhile left voters to it. The CPI (M)-led LF, which contested 41 out of the 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state in 2019 had 7.5% of votes, a massive decline of 35.8 percentage points over 10 years. While the LF on its own has become electorally irrelevant — it was not even a runner-up in any Lok Sabha constituency in 2019 — its voters could still play a role in shaping the 2021 outcome. An HT analysis of the 2019 results by ACs shows that LF candidates acted as a spoiler in 114 ACs. Candidates are defined as a spoiler if their votes are greater than the victory margin. Of these, the TMC won 69, while the BJP won 44.

The 2021 elections are likely to see two kinds of behaviour among the left leaning voters in the state. The LF has formed an alliance with the Congress and the Indian Secular Front (ISF) and is attacking both the TMC and the BJP. However, a section of the left leaning voice, especially in the civil society and parties such as the Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist Liberation or CPI (ML) are tacitly underlining the importance of consolidating behind the TMC in order to prevent the BJP from capturing power. This was evident when Mamata Banerjee named and thanked the CPI (ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya while announcing her candidates on March 5. To be sure, there is also the possibility of the LF’s Hindu voters deserting it to support the BJP because of the former’s alliance with the ISF, a party formed by a Muslim cleric. Whether the LF’s existing voters gravitate towards the TMC in order to prevent the BJP or move further to the BJP as a backlash against the ISF alliance could play a big role in the elections.

To be sure, there is also a third possibility. Because the BJP has fielded a lot of candidates who were in the TMC until recently, and the left voter base shifted to the BJP because the latter provided a stronger resistance to the TMC intimidation on the ground, a section of the left vote which has gone to the BJP could desert it as well.

TMC’s Bengali versus Non-Bengali polarisation tactic

A common theme running across the TMC’s campaign is the insider-outsider binary, which portrays the TMC as a political force which is rooted in West Bengal and the BJP as a party of non-Bengalis. Mamata Banerjee herself has been leading the charge on this count by referring to the BJP as a party of Gujaratis — a direct reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah. While the TMC is hoping to achieve a Bengali consolidation with this strategy, it could also backfire in certain pockets of the state. Of the 19 districts in West Bengal at the time of the 2011 census, non-Bengali speakers account for at least 30% of the population in four. This includes the state capital Kolkata and other crucial districts such as Darjiling, Jalpaiguri and Uttar Dinajpur. It remains to be seen whether the Bengali consolidation will lead to a counter-polarisation behind the BJP.

BJP’s state election disadvantage

According to the 2019 election results, the BJP-TMC vote share gap was just three percentage points. However, it is also a fact that the BJP, since 2014, has underperformed in most state elections when compared to its performance in that particular state in a national election. Its vote share dropped by 6.7 percentage points in West Bengal between the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and 2016 assembly elections. West Bengal is not an outlier on this count and the BJP’s assembly election vote share has been lower than its Lok Sabha election vote share in every election it has contested on its own since 2014. If this trend were to continue in West Bengal, the TMC might find it easier to retain power than is currently believed.

The organisational muscle advantage of the TMC

This is perhaps the most difficult to quantify, yet a very important determinant of the contest. West Bengal is known for very high levels of political violence and intimidation. This is exactly why the state has always had one of the longest polling durations in the country. While the CPI (M)-led LF has also faced allegations of using muscle power to scuttle free and fair polls, the TMC seems to have taken it to a different level altogether. This was brought to the fore when the TMC won an unprecedented 34% of the gram panchayats without any contest in 2018. Many commentators believe that the strong-arm tactics deployed in 2018 actually provided a big fillip to the BJP in 2019, when it was seen as a party leading a democratic resistance against the TMC. The 2016 CSDS Lokniti report on the West Bengal elections offers some interesting insights on the question of rigging. While only a small share of respondents admitted to having seen such practices themselves, a larger share reported having heard about it and an even larger share chose not to comment, which might or might not have been driven by a fear of retribution.

While the allegations about rigging and intimidation are difficult to establish or refute, it is also true that the BJP still does not have a formidable organisational presence in the state. This is best explained by the fact that a large number of its candidates have been members or even office-bearers or elected representatives of other political parties until recently.

To be sure, organisational muscle or lack of it in West Bengal has not been able to prevent political change when the opposition has enjoyed popular support. When the TMC first marched ahead of the CPI (M) in the 2008 panchayat elections — the first state-wide poll after the Singur-Nandigram events — the former was no match for the latter in terms of organisation. The CPI (M) itself, when it first captured power in 1977, was a political party under siege. The 1972 state elections were believed to be heavily rigged and Jyoti Basu, who became the LF government’s first chief minister in 1977, has described how the CPI (M) and its allies withdrew their counting agents and subsequently decided to boycott the assembly proceedings as well. Even in 1977, the CPI (M) was willing to offer 52% of the 294 ACs to the Janata Party, but the latter turned down the offer and offered only 90 seats to the CPI (M), following which the CPI (M) decided to contest without the Janata Party and went on to form a government which lasted for 34 years.

Whether or not the BJP is riding a popular, albeit silent wave of anti-incumbency, which is what some field reports seem to be suggesting, will only be known on May 2 when the results are declared.

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