Mamata Banerjee: From Bengal Tigress to Indian Tigress

Mamata Banerjee has today finally promoted herself from ‘Bengal Tigress’ to ‘Indian Tigress’. She has not only stalled the horse of Narendra Modi’s ‘ashwamedh yagna’, she has decimated the conceited saffron brigade.

Till yesterday, the question was whether the rise of the BJP in Bengal in 2019 would be followed up by a strong undercurrent in the assembly election making the saffron party a close runner-up, or would it turn into a strong wave to catapult it to power. Today, as the result shows, the BJP is down from its success level of 2019, and has finally managed to become a distant runner-up.

Mamata Banerjee has not only won, she has proved to be the most able leader from the entire opposition camp. She has now become the natural claimant for leading the opposition in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. No other leader from the opposition camp has ever achieved this sort of success in face of the entire might of the Modi brigade. The BJP has lost many state elections after 2014, but even Narendra Modi has not faced such failure in such a high profile prestige fight.

Mamata Banerjee played the Bangali swabhiman (pride of the Bengalis) card, and it has paid off. She has proved her mettle by continuously shifting the focus of her campaign, particularly since she understood her instinctive decision to contest from Nandigram was a risky decision. She has succeeded to outwit the entire national leadership of the BJP, and this is just a legendary success.

But what brought her this sort of success. There are, perhaps, quite a few factors. BJP’s success or failure depended on the incidence of Hindu polarisation and anti-TMC polarisation. If the indexes of both ran high, the BJP was to go beyond 160 out of 292 constituencies for which polls were held (with two being countermanded due to candidates’ death due to covid-19). If both were low, the possibility was it would have ended at about 120. What is surprising is that not only the indexes have been proved low, but some other factors also crept in. A primary assessment points at a few factors.

First, it was thought that a rejuvenated Left-Congress-ISF Morcha would play an important role in this election. But this Morcha has been decimated. The Muslims have en bloc voted for the TMC. That is a solid bloc of 30 per cent vote. It appears a section of the Left-Congress Hindu voters too have voted for the TMC to stall the BJP.

Secondly, the BJP has paid price for the central government’s abysmal failure in dealing with the covid situation, the Sitalkuchi firing, non-implementation of CAA, and wrong candidate selection (particularly allowing the tainted leaders to join the party and contest election).

Thirdly, the BJP failed to counter the TMC’s campaign of marking it as an ‘anti-Bengali’ party. The central leadership did not project a leader as the Chief Ministerial face, and did not give prominence to the Bengali leaders like Dilip Ghosh who carried the party single-handedly for last several years. The central leadership took over the campaign, thereby giving credence to the TMC campaign that Bengal would be subjugated to Delhi’s rule if BJP came to power.

The results have also proved that the BJP cannot sustain the success of Lok Sabha election in the assembly elections.

In 2019, the BJP tasted in Bengal an unusual 120 per cent jump in its vote-share compared to 2014 (it got 40.64 per cent votes while TMC secured 43.69). But two years ago, BJP’s organisational presence was limited to two-third constituencies of Bengal. In south-eastern Bengal, where the rest one-third seats are located, no one expected BJP to rise in a big way, and the wave was totally absent there. In other words, two years ago the BJP was able to put the TMC to test in about 28 constituencies out of 42, and won 18. If it could have logically extended it to entire Bengal where it now has organisational presence, it could have succeeded to cross the half-way mark. But, it has failed to retain the success rate of 2019 in the assembly election.

It seems that every calculation of the Modi brigade has gone haywire. On the other hand, Didi has played her cards, like ever, perfectly. It has made her the uncrowned numero uno of the opposition camp.