The Day After: Now comes the hard part – of governing well

The joy of victory sure tastes sweet, but it’s only a fleeting emotion. For the big winners yesterday – and particularly for Mamata Banerjee and Jayalalithaa – the challenge is to deliver on their electoral promise and offer good governance.

That, as we called it , is the winner’s curse .

In their first media interactions, both Mamata and Jayalalithaa have indicated that they’re aware of the enormous burden of responsibility.

Asked what her government’s priorities would be, Mamata said :

“Our priority is good governance. Now we have to deliver. It is a difficult task since the CPI (M) left behind a mess. Our priority is development of all sections…”

She faces other challenges as well. As another commentator noted :

“Mamata will now have to…grapple with the dilemma of industrialising Bengal without alienating the land holding peasantry."

Over  in Chennai, yesterday’s other big winnerJayalalithaa highlighted the challenges facing her .

“Our priority is to rebuild. Over the past five years, Tamil Nadu has been totally ruined. Time and again this has happened. It is not an easy task to rebuild an entire State.”

Recalling that she had restored the fiscal health and economy of Tamil Nadu twice before (during 1991-96, and in 2001-06), she however added that the challenges this time were far more severe.

“Today, the challenge has been magnified, multiplied a thousand times, a ten thousand times. It is a difficult task and an onerous task but we have taken it up as a challenge.”

It’s not just  the winners, even yesterday’s losers have much to reflect on.

For instance, in Tamil Nadu, the outgoing geriatric Chief Minister will – as one of our bloggers noted yesterday - increasingly face calls for him to retire from politics and leave the field for a younger generation. Even his style of politics is dated.

“His fighting spirit hasn’t faded a bit, but his illness prevents him from taking action. He also doesn’t seem to understand the modern aspirations of the newest generations. His political plans don’t cater to their needs such as higher education, job creation, infrastructure or economic reforms. His old-style politics—marked by oratorical flourish and an economic policy revolving exclusively around freebies—cannot capture their imagination.”

For the Left Front in West Bengal, too, it is a moment of reckoning. As political commentator Mahesh Rangarajan observed:

“The Left parties have lost their most firm base of support in all of India. When the Front came to power, Jimmy Carter was president of the US and the Shah of Iran was in power in Teheran. West Bengal was the bastion as the Communist Party of India (Marxist) emerged over the last two decades as a major critic of economic reform. Ironically, its embrace of private capital, specifically land acquisition for industry, proved its Achilles Heel."