Not the end of the road

Neerja Chowdhury

Senior Political Commentator

Every election in India brings new insights into the ground-level shifts that are taking place, both in society and in people’s thinking. So also is the case with the just-concluded elections to five Assemblies—West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and the UT of Puducherry.

While a study of the poll fineprint will tell us more in the days to come, there are certain broad messages coming through.

First, a credible leader, who has a ground connect and puts up a spirited fight, can take on and defeat a Modi-led campaign at the state level with all the might it represents. Mamata Banerjee has demonstrated this in no uncertain terms in West Bengal, increasing her tally to 213 from 211 in 2016 and her vote share.

Mamata has always been a fighter. Taking on the Left even while she was inside the Congress in the early nineties, breaking away from the party in 1999, she went on to oust an entrenched Left in 2011, and took the place of the Indian National Congress in her state. Today, the Congress is totally wiped out in West Bengal. She did this without having a political mentor or belonging to a political family. This time she surpassed her earlier performance, taking on the might of the BJP, turning every adversity into an advantage. She took the huge risk of taking the battle into the enemy territory when she decided to contest from Nandigram against her trusted lieutenant-turned-foe, Suvendu Adhikari. Though she lost to him by less than 2,000 votes, she won the larger battle by enthusing her cadre with that decision.

The presence of a credible face has also worked in Tamil Nadu, with MK Stalin leading the charge. In Kerala, the victory has as much to do with the emergence of Pinarayi Vijayan as a leader who people could trust as the government’s handling of the Covid challenge. It is not as if Kerala did not have a huge number of cases, but people saw a government that led from the front and put systems into place. The CPM, which believes in a collective leadership, is grappling with this new reality of the Pinarayi Vijayan phenomenon. But it may be possible for the individual and the collective to coexist.

Arvind Kejriwal, too, had stopped the Modi juggernaut in 2015, and again in 2020. So had Nitish Kumar in 2015 when he was not with the BJP.

Two, Election 2021 has shown, yet once again, that women are emerging as a vote bank. They have ensured Mamata’s victory, just as their votes had prevented Nitish Kumar from going under in the 2020 elections. In the past, women had not voted as a bloc, except during the Ayodhya movement in UP, and earlier in Andhra Pradesh, also in the nineties, supporting prohibition. This is now changing and parties will have to take note of the growing political consciousness among women.

Three, there are important lessons for the BJP. The party over-reached in West Bengal. With the PM addressing around 20 meetings and Amit Shah and union ministers camping there for weeks, and Mamata as the target of the onslaught—all of this went to create sympathy for her. She turned it to her advantage, campaigning in a wheelchair after her injury, and speaking about the threat to Bengali culture from ‘outsiders’.

The BJP also erred by not taking into account the diversity of India. It mounted a campaign in Bengal, as it might have done in heartland India, with cries of ‘Jai Shri Ram’, which Mamata countered by invoking Durga. Certainly, its tried-and-tested plank of Hindu-Muslim polarisation worked, as in Nandigram, where Mamata lost by less than 2,000 votes, but up to a point. The party may have to go back to the drawing board, not just about ‘where’ it could have done better, but the more fundamental ‘how’ it could have reached more people.

Four, Election 2021 points to interesting possibilities for the future. It is clear that the battle against the BJP will have to be led by the regional parties, given the Congress’ poor health, which has once again been highlighted by the five elections. It lost everywhere, except in Tamil Nadu, where it won 16 seats, hanging onto the coattails of the DMK.

The Mamata formula — a credible leader, plus a counter offensive — applies also to the Congress. A sharp Twitter onslaught is not a substitute for a comprehensive strategy. Or, indeed, for the leadership impasse that continues to bedevil the Congress.

The Opposition’s strategy may have to be the very antithesis of the one being pursued by the BJP — of Hindu nationalism, a strong leader, a uniformity of approach and concentration of power. The Opposition’s politics and approach may have to become more federated, of supporting each other, while evolving a national narrative. The threat to India’s democracy and its institutions, like the Election Commission, which Mamata is focusing on, could become part of that narrative, but it has to be articulated in a way that Indians in far-flung villages also identify with it.

The battle in Bengal — and in other states — has focused on issues of sub-nationalism (like Bengali culture coming under threat). In the past, caste alignments (Mandal) managed to counter community consolidation by the BJP (mandir).

Can regional aspirations be dovetailed into a national narrative and become a potent mix? Can 2024 become an aggregate of state elections? It is early days yet. And we are not living in normal times. At the end of the day, it will depend on how the CMs, individually and unitedly, tackle the second wave of Covid which is raging and claiming thousands of lives. There are already disturbing warnings of a possible third wave in July which may affect children more. How will they press for a comprehensive vaccine policy that is needed so badly?

The new — or old — incumbents in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Puducherry have their tasks cut out for them.

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