WAKE UP CALL FOR THE LEFT

The mood in Kolkata was different after the results of the 15th Lok Sabha elections were declared.

The usual scene before every election, whether municipality or Lok Sabha is a confident bunch of left supporters making light of the opposition aspirations of toppling the government that has stood the test of time for 32 years (the Left Front government in West Bengal will complete their 34th year in office when they face the next assembly elections in 2011). The opposition supporters on the other hand would inevitably point fingers at the ‘left electoral malpractices’ which include rigging, false voting, booth jamming, pre-poll terror and violence to press the panic button among voters. Left supporters would brush aside all the allegations by saying that it was a people's mandate.

The 15th Lok Sabha results though saw different and previously unseen reactions from both camps. A left drubbing was predicted in these elections by all and sundry because of Singur, Nandigram, the mysterious death of a young graphic designer Rizwanur Rehman in Kolkata and the administration’s apparent involvement in it. The minority vote bank they said was slipping out of the left grip. Leftists never took these apprehensions seriously and banked on their strong organisational structure to sail over these elections. Also, they said that the people of West Bengal would never vote for a whimsical opposition leader, Mamata Banerjee.

On May 15, a day before the counting at about 11 pm a friend who’s also a Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI, a left organisation) worker had a few ‘inside’ information for me. The Left tally, he said could never go below 30 (West Bengal has 42 Lok Sabha constituencies). He also named a few neck and neck seats (Jadavpur, North Kolkata, Uluberia, Contai, Murshidabad etc) and expressed his belief that the left candidates were certain to win in those seats. There was no reason not to believe him for someone who has witnessed these ‘left predictions’ come true in several elections. The optimism that the opposition had shown in West Bengal before previous elections were always found to be misplaced and lacking of solid reasoning after the results were announced.

The most startling revelation from my friend though was yet to come. He seemed quietly confident of the fact that even though Mamata would win from her South Kolkata seat, her margin was certain to come down as compared to the last Lok Sabha elections in 2004. Significantly, while Mamata had a winning margin of close to 200,000 in 1999, she suffered almost a 50 per cent loss in her margin in ’04.

On May 16, as the counting started, the left complacency took a serious jolt as opposition candidates were leading in traditional left bastions after the first few rounds of counting. Staunch left supporters though were certain of a recovery in the latter half of the day. Supporters even took out a colourful procession in anticipation of a left victory in Dum Dum constituency. In the neighbouring constituency of Barrackpore, Tarit Topdar, the CPM candidate was busy chalking out plans for his victory celebrations. But as the day progressed, it became quite clear that the results were reversed in West Bengal this time round. Both Topdar and Amitava Nundy, the CPM candidate from Dum Dum were defeated by Trinamool Congress (TMC) candidates.

Almost all the neck and neck seats including North Kolkata, Jadavpur, Uluberia, Murshidabad, Contai, Serampore, Krishnagar, Bongaon, Mathurapur, Joynagar were won by the opposition. Left candidates were defeated in constituencies known as left strongholds such as Basirhat, Birbhum, Howrah, Hooghly, Tamluk in addition to Dum Dum and Barrackpore. Left stalwarts were humbled by newcomers in Lok Sabha elections in many seats. Mamata not only won but more than doubled her margin from the last elections by taking it past the 200,000 mark. The Left tally was 15 as against 30 predicted by my friend.

What happened in 2009 that the usually spot-on left predictions were proved to be wrong? True, there was a fear of the anti-incumbency factor but that fear was there all through the last 32 years. True, that in and around Kolkata, the capital there was not even a single constituency which was under the left control after the results were declared. But equally true is the fact that the left brigade never really banked on the urban votes to win elections after elections. In fact, barring 2004, voters of Kolkata always voted against the ruling Left Front government in the last 32 years. The topmost reason is obviously the peasants' and workers’ party losing the confidence of the peasants and the down-trodden people post Singur and Nandigram. The haste with which the state government went about land acquisition for industries in the state did not go down well with the rural voters, who largely depend on agriculture and land for livelihood. Secondly, Muslims in the state seemed to come to believe that the CPM was not their friend anymore. In addition to the apparent involvement of some of the top ranked police officers of the state, including the then Commissioner of Police, Kolkata in the Rizwanur Rehman murder case, the Sachar Commission report too vindicated this stand of both Bengali and Urdu speaking Muslims of West Bengal.

As the countrywide results reflected, public mood favouring Manmohan Singh and the UPA government over LK Advani and NDA must have also accounted for the left debacle in West Bengal (the leftists had a fall out with the UPA government over the Indo-US civil nuclear deal). But what must have hurt them the most was the arrogance of their leaders and workers. What definitely did not go down well with the voters of West Bengal was the administrative apathy to take the state forward even after 32 years in power by its ministers and leaders. What more, the left leaders have been most adamant to admit their mistakes which more often than not were blunders.

Come 2011 and critics predict that the year would mark an end to a historic chapter in parliamentary democracy worldwide. Holder of the Guiness record for the longest standing elected government in the world, the CPM-led Third Front would have to pass the mantle on to the opposition after 34 years of uninterrupted ruling in West Bengal. An analysis of the results of the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections shows that the Left Front was defeated in 190 of the 294 assembly constituencies in West Bengal, whereas they had won 235 of those in the last assembly elections in 2006.

It will surely not be wise to write off the Left Front on the basis of one Lok Sabha elections but one thing is for sure. The public mood is not in its favour and serious damage control needs to be done to consolidate its position in the state. The problem is that time is running out. Surely, the 2011 assembly elections in West Bengal is going to pose the toughest challenge before the ‘Bhadrolok Party’ of Bengal.