Deep rot at root of violence in West Bengal

Geneticists have never found any special streak of violence in Bengali genes. Then why has Bengal witnessed so much poll violence?

Fifty years ago, such incidents were widespread in North India where the upper castes used to stop Dalits and OBCs (other backward classes) from visiting the booths. Twenty-five years ago, violence was still rampant in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Kerala and Bengal.

But times have changed. Now, the savage behaviour of people, particularly in rural areas, is noticed only in Bengal. During the ongoing election season, even women candidates were attacked by men.

The question is: Why does it happen only in Bengal? The answer is simple. Unlike in other states, the elections in Bengal engulf the vested interests of a large number of people dependent on the ruling party for their livelihood, legal or illegal.

Read | Of poll-bound states, only Bengal saw violence: Adhir

Let’s see how wide and deep the rot is.

In Bengal, people not loyal to the ruling party won’t be enrolled in the rural job scheme Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or MGNREGA (hundred days’ work). And those who are active workers of the party may get half the wages (with the other half going to the party) even without toiling in the project.

Again, the benefits of government schemes are unlikely to reach those who are known to be supporters of Opposition parties. The money for housing will go to a core supporter who may have a good shelter, but not to those without a proper roof over their heads, if they are marked as ‘opponents’.

Forget government schemes. Those living in rural or semi-urban areas — a daily wage earner like a hawker or a vegetable vendor, a schoolteacher or a professor or an ordinary farmer — will face different troubles if they are supporters of the Opposition party.

They face harassment while trying to obtain necessary certificates from the panchayat or the MLA. If a disaster strikes, say a flood or a cyclone, relief materials are first distributed among party supporters (even if they are not impacted), and the remaining will go to passive supporters.

To run such a system of absolute control, the ruling party of the state (or, at times, the party that controls the district panchayat or the block panchayat) needs a network of cadres in every neighbourhood.

Read | 'Removing violence, corruption key to WB's revival'

How is it arranged? First, by distributing ‘favours’, and second, by employing ‘harmads’ (armed criminals).

In several states, jobs such as that of teachers, professors and government employees are sold for money. In Bengal, one cannot just buy a job by paying bribes.

Here, most of the jobs are distributed among active workers of the ruling party and their children. The rest of the cadres survive on money collected mostly illegally and often through coercion.

Across the state, there are lakhs of such ‘political parasites’ whose survival depends on the return of the ruling party to power. They often take the help of seasoned criminals to silence and terrorise Opposition supporters.

The situation is unlikely to change. The seeds of this system were sown during the days of Siddharta Shankar Roy, the last Congress chief minister (1972-1977) of Bengal.

Left Front rule

But it grew to a menacing proportion in the last 20 years of the Left Front’s 34-year (1977-2011) regime, which was then taken forward by the Trinamool Congress (TMC), ruling the state for the last 10 years.

The irony is that such a system cannot satisfy the majority of people, which results in some always revolting against it. When the number grows to a dangerous level, the ruling party’s well-oiled mechanism takes recourse to violence and terrorisation of people.

Such violence was noticed in the last 10 years of the Left Front government, and is being seen now in the last three years (from the time of panchayat elections of 2018, when the polls were reduced to a farce) of the present TMC regime.

When the disgruntled section veers around the Opposition, a section of the ‘cadres’, particularly hooligan elements, breaks ranks to join the Opposition party stronger in the region. But the process becomes intense when the index of voters’ polarisation towards a single Opposition force throughout the state goes up. And it becomes a do-or-die situation for both the main rivals. This type of vested interest does not exist in any other state, which is why they could get rid of political violence and killings.

The situation is unlikely to change if the BJP comes to power in Bengal. The party, too, will be happy to continue with the system, for the deep and wide rot is an easy recipe for clinging on to power.

(The writer is a Kolkata-based journalist and author of the recently published detective novel ‘Mirchi Memsaab’s House of Faith’)