I/II. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160522/jsp/opinion/story_86886.jsp#.V0FNiPl965e
Colours of celebration - The re-election of the party with a face The Thin Edge- Ruchir Joshi So here we are. The so-called intellectuals, the political soothsayers, the Bengal-pundits, the result-predictors, all with massive egg on face, drowning in the after-wave of shock and awe, ambushed and destroyed by a massive barrage of sidewinder missiles from the voting public of West Bengal. This much may be quite true; the rest of the narrative is fascinating. Even as the 'out of touch', 'irrelevant', 'English-speaking' 'prisoners of book-learning' are being dunked in derision, there are enough numbers of other intellectuals (also erudite in many books in the English language) who are celebrating this 'victory of the bare-bodied and the bare-bellied', this triumphant taandav dance of the Bengali subaltern. This upper-caste, upper-crust Mahisasur that has just been slaughtered by the Goddess of the Underprivileged is apparently made up of a lot of diverse elements: CPI(M)-Congress, plus BJP, plus rich industrialists, plus non-party Marxists, plus anyone who reads foreign books, plus anyone who reads any books at all. On the victorious side -- apparently - are the unlettered, sun-darkened toiling masses (unfortunately garnished by a sprinkling of a few unavoidable lumpen young men on motorbikes, but otherwise pure and brave), who have provided the emphatic mandate for the continuation of this rough and raw but heroically radical politics, and provided it, furthermore while playing their cards close to their chests, stealthily, under the radar of most predictions and exit polls conducted by the babu-classes. Right. Let's try putting this story together again, and from a couple of different angles. In the 2011 elections, many of us who were desperate to see the back of the Left Front found there was massive purchase between desire and prediction, between what we thought should happen and what actually did happen. This time, equally desperate to see the back of this Trinamul Congress government, perhaps many of us let our desire cloud our judgment, perhaps too many of us thought the larger voting public was clearly bound to see things as we saw them, that is, how dangerous and disastrous the Mamata Banerjee regime was for the state. Those of us who thought this might be a close contest, that Banerjee would win, but with a massively reduced majority were wrong, and spectacularly so. What we got wrong was the following: 1. The difference between a party with a 'face', that is, the TMC, and the faceless non-alliance that was the jote, and how crucial that is in today's electoral politics. The fact that the CPI(M), having utterly failed to develop younger leaders, was still trotting out the same old names, the same old decrepit octogenarians - the 'anti-faces', if you will - and how that might have reminded people too sharply of the all too recently ended 34-year period. What people also didn't correctly gauge was the huge faith people still retain in the figure of Mamata Banerjee, no matter who she surrounds herself with. 2. So bad was the basic delivery of basic amenities during the last days of the Left Front that just hitting the minimum marks with things like cheap rice, electricity or keeping the city streets clean could feel like a huge difference. It didn't matter that the rice was being paid for by the Centre, at least local middlemen weren't skimming it off; it didn't matter that many of the free bicycles had the tyre tubes and chains missing, in fact skimmed off by other middlemen, the symbolic value of a cycle was huge; it didn't matter that the increased electrification of villages could only happen because there was spare electricity due to the absence of industry, people got lights and fans; it didn't matter that the much trumpeted roads and highways were also paid for by the Centre, at least the one efficient minister in the government saw to it that they were built properly. 3. The widespread corruption in Bengal clearly didn't matter to the voter. 'If people are in power, they will take money and make money' seems to have been the shrugged response. 4. All the various circulatory calculations of vote-shifting and vote-cutting: how much did the BJP vote cut into the jote's share, why was the tripping over each other not sorted out by the jote in Murshidabad, why didn't the Congress vote transfer to the communists across the state, and so on and so forth. And, so here we are again. We have a thumpingly clear result at the end of a startlingly debate-less election. The TMC's simple strategy was to keep harping on about ' unnayan' without substantiating anything. Their response to the allegations of corruption was equally simple, some would say crude: "the people will answer on 19th May." On the other side, as a senior CPI(M) leader also agreed, the Left and the jote did not bring to the table any kind of vision for Bengal, detailed or otherwise. Their planks were equally rough-hewn: we will chase down the widespread corruption; we will restore law and order; and we will bring industry back to the state. West Bengal is on the verge of a slide into major ecological disaster from which will stem social upheavals we cannot even begin to imagine. None of the political parties has discussed this at all in the last five years. The joke about the CPI(M) leaders goes that they all grew up with posters of Soviet industrial progress which showed a lot of smoke coming out of factory chimneys; therefore, they were restless unless they saw a lot of actual smoke around Bengal's factories. The problem is that Mamata Banerjee grew up seeing those same posters. As she begins her second term there seems to be no awareness on the government's part that Purulia, Bankura and Midnapur are smack in the heat-spiked drought-prone zone, that in south Bengal climate change related problems such as sea-level rise and extreme weather events are mounting, that north Bengal has its own set of problems including melting glaciers and flash floods; finally there seems to be no urgency in anyone wanting to tackle urban pollution, whether it's the air, the water, or extreme noise pollution. There seems to be no awareness that once these problems start to hit harder and harder they will set off a series of mass human movements, leading to a massive breakdown of law and order that will make today's situation look like a picnic. Even as she says 'Bengal is hungry for industry,' the chief minister seems to have no understanding of what kind of industry may be desirable and how it is to be invited into the state. Forget about the radical out-of-box thinking that's desperately required, she and her ministers (as they were, previously) don't even seem to understand that, at the moment, it is actually a boon that industrialization is at such a low point in the state. Instead, we see a deeply unhappy looking person, answering questions petulantly and in standard formulaic ways at the moment of what is supposed to be her greatest triumph. We see a leader giving a victory speech that consists almost entirely of a litany of complaints against people she thinks have wronged her, the main message being 'You tried to attack me, you failed, I won!' Then there is the sheer absurdity of a statement such as, "There is no corruption in Bengal! Bengal is a corruption-free state!" Then there are the simpering thank-yous to various media groups, their owners, their journalists and anchors. A few minutes later the gratitude evaporates, when one of the favoured anchors persists in asking about the accusations of corruption. "Don't you think you have your answer today?" The victorious leader snaps. The anchor doesn't say what he perhaps should have: "Well no, Madam, even if you'd won all 294 seats that is not an answer. Your huge victory does not in any way provide proof that your ministers and cadre are free of corruption." At the end of the day, to some of us at least, it matters not a jot whether the aesthetics of the victorious party are subaltern or street or non-elite or non-Westernized. It doesn't matter whether the party cadre does its victory dancing to Rabindrasangeet or Bappi Lahiri, or both simultaneously. Many of us will shed no undue tears should this result actually mean the final decimation of the CPI(M) as a force in West Bengal - the good elements of the party should reinvent themselves and the defunct and doctrinaire should hurry into sanyas as quickly as possible - history is busy already with other things. No, what matters is that Mamata Banerjee can pay all the lip-service she likes to herself being a L.I.P, a Least Important Person, but in action she remains a one-person party. What matters is all the early signs indicate that, over the last five years, Banerjee seems to have learned very little that is of positive use to the people. ***What does matter is that we in Bengal will continue to be at the mercy of a capricious, megalomaniacal personality who may derive from these election results nothing but self-justification and imaginary vindication for all her arrogance and mistakes. If this is true then what matters is not the green abir being flung around a couple of days ago, but the small packets of celebratory orange abir that certain people might - out of public sight - continue to smear each other within the coming years.*** [Emphasis added.] II. http://scroll.in/article/808558/how-trinamool-won-its-massive-mandate-15-charts-explain-the-west-bengal-result ASSEMBLY ELECTION RESULTS How Trinamool won its massive mandate: 15 charts explain the West Bengal result And why there are more reasons for the Left to worry about for their future in West Bengal than the Congress. 2 hours ago Updated 2 hours ago Gilles Verniers Behind Mamata Banerjee’s decisive and impressive victory in the 2016 West Bengal assembly elections is the second highest vote share registered in the state by Trinamool Congress – 44.9%, against 49.1% for the Congress in 1972. Banerjee will rule for a second term with the second largest majority of seats ever obtained by a single party or coalition – 71.77%, against 77.14% for the Congress in 1972. Following charts and graphs contextualise this performance, confirming the comprehensive and massive character of the Trinamool’s victory and explain why there are more reasons for the Left to worry about for their future in West Bengal than the Congress. Steady turnout Voter participation is traditionally high in West Bengal. The average turnout has regularly been above 70% since the early 1980s and above 80% since the mid-1990s. Compared to 2011, the turnout in Bengal has decreased by 1%, at a state average of 83.4%. Sixteen seats registered a turnout above 90%. Snipped -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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