Dial M for Mamata: BJP's dreams wake up to reality in Bengal's municipal polls

In Bengal’s season of nor’westers it was clear which way the storm was blowing as the municipal polls ended. Even before the results were announced, the BJP and the CPM called for a bandh on April 30 to protest “ murder of democracy ” during the municipal polls. Translation: They knew that Trinamool was about to trounce them. And that is exactly what happened - to a T. The BJP won 85 wards across the state to Trinamool’s 1.425. But more humiliating its boast about becoming Bengal’s chief opposition party had to eat some humble rosogolla. The Left Front won 285 wards and took control of the important Siliguri Municipal Corporation. Even the threadbare and well-poached Congress managed 186. The BJP had to resort to some creative spin to save face. “We have come second in about 50 wards in the CMC (Calcutta Municipal Corporation) area,” BJP state president Rahul Sinha told The Telegraph. “Clearly, we are ahead of the other Opposition parties.” [caption id=“attachment_2218472” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Mamata Banerjee. AFP.[/caption] But the newspaper points out that in fact the BJP was Number 2 in 38 wards while the Left was Number 2 in 65. The BJP got 15.37% of the vote share in Kolkata compared to Trinamool’s 50.66%. “Gas balloon goes phuuuush,” chortled Trinamool’s Derek O’Brien on Twitter. Never mind, says BJPs Siddhartha Nath Singh. Civic polls were rigged. The 2016 assembly polls will happen in the presence of central forces. That will be a different story. Yes and no. Reports of violence, intimidation and bombs and guns were well-documented during the polls. The opposition will exaggerate them, Trinamool will scoff at them. That’s par for the course. But Trinamool would probably have won anyway according to opinion polls. The BJP’s problem was that buoyed by its vote share increase during the Lok Sabha elections and boosted by its bypoll victory for the Basirhat Dakshin Assembly seat, the party went along with the narrative that the municipal elections were a dress rehearsal for the 2016 Assembly elections. But there’s many a slip between boast and ballot. Amit Shah, for example, came to Kolkata in December and told Mamata “Your government’s ulti geenti (reverse count) starts now.” He vowed to come back to Bengal every month to pump up the party as it heads to the Assembly elections. But nothing of the sort happened. He did not campaign in the civic polls. Whether it had anything to do with Modi government needing the help of opposition parties to get bills through the Rajya Sabha is anyone’s guess. What the municipal elections indisputably showed was that the BJP, as the new kid on the block, is still struggling to build on-the-ground networks that even a bruised and battered CPM has. During the Lok Sabha elections as soon as the campaign moved outside Kolkata it had to rely on RSS shakhas rather than its own membership. And in a municipal election the local connection becomes all-important. The BJP with its posters festooned with the faces of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah were trying to cash an out-station cheque. That led to some embarrassing moments during the municipal campaign. The BJP was very chuffed about wooing actor Roopa Ganguly into its fold especially since Mamata Banerjee has pretty much vacuumed the rest of Tollywood, from current action hero Dev to yester-year glycerine queen Sandhya Roy, into her party. Ganguly, best known to the rest of India as Mahabharata’s Draupadi, is smart, articulate, energetic and some saw her as BJP’s potential mayoral candidate. But the saffron party ended up red-faced when it turned out that Ganguly could not even contest the polls. She was not enrolled as a voter in the Kolkata municipality at all. Her voter registration was in South 24-Parganas where her parents live. She still campaigned and put up a fight but to no avail. All sides would be foolhardy to read too much into the municipal poll results. Assembly polls are a different beast. The issues are different. The scrutiny is different. The bandobast more rigorous. But one thing Mamata Banerjee made clear – she’s never a pushover. At the Amit Shah rally Siddhartha Nath Singh had scoffed that Mamata’s Maa Maati Manush had turned into a Mamata-Madan-Mukul and the Saradha scam would ensure they’d be trampled underfoot by Modi-Modi-Modi. But with Madan Mitra still in custody and Mukul Roy sidelined, Mamata Banerjee proved that when it comes to Dial M for Mass-Appeal, Mamata is the only M Trinamool needs. Mamata is not called Didi for nothing. And municipal elections especially are about the neighbourhood Didi and Dadas. Nothing says Bengal municipal elections like candidates going by their neighbourhood nicknames – Babai, Deba-da, Shibu-da, Goba-da, Kajal-da, Potang. And the election placards and banners put up by equally nickname-festooned supporters like Raju, Chhotu, Robi-da, Poltu-Big, Poltu-Small and Tarzan! No one has done a statistical analysis but I’d wager if we count candidates who campaigned by their nicknames, Trinamool would come out on top. What’s in a nickname? Sometimes quite a bit especially if you are running to be councilor it seems. It’s a quaint commentary on the Bengali propensity to saddle their children with peculiar nicknames that burden them for the rest of their lives. But it also shows the power of the local touch (and the local tough) in a municipal election. The BJP’s own Subrata Ghosh from Ward 87 in South Kolkata will vouch for it. He went door to door, tea shop to tea shop, not as Subrata Ghosh but local boy Shibu-da. “I am Shibu from just the next street,” he said at every door. Shibu-da won Ward 87 for the BJP, narrowly defeating a powerful politically-connected Trinamool councilor by 328 votes. For the BJP it was a face-saver in the nick(name) of time.