Beginning Of The End?

When Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee declared, whilejoyously distributing rasgollas to her aides, that this is the beginning of theCPI(M)'s end, the detailed results of the just-concluded panchayat polls in thestate were yet to reach the state headquarters and, thus, her remarks weredismissed casually as wishful thinking. Had the media and analysts had access tothe booth-wise tally of votes and the number of gram panchayats that the CPI(M)lost, this claim of Mamata would not have met with the customary disdain thather assertions and statements usually encounter. 

For, of the 3178 gram panchayats (GPs)—the lowest level of the three-tierpanchayat system—in Bengal, the CPI(M)-led Left Front could gain control ofonly 1562 panchayats. That is, the Left could win a majority of the seats injust 49.15% of the total gram panchayats (GPs) in Bengal, while the Congress andTrinamool won 1340 GPs (42.16 percent). Compare this to the last polls in 2003when the Left gained control of 2303 GPs. 

More significantly, the gulf between the number of GPs controlled by the Leftand the opposition parties (the Congress & Trinamool) was 1612 in 2003; thistime, the gap has narrowed down to 225. For the record, while the Congress had385 GPs under its belt the last time, it has 519 now and the figures for theTrinamool are 306 and 818 respectively. And if one were to take into account the276 GPs where the Left and opposition have won an equal number of seats, theLeft's edge of 225 GPs over the combined opposition could vanish. 

In fact, as the results show, if the Congress and theTrinamool fought the elections together, the Left would have bitten the dust inan overwhelming majority of the GPs. Booth-wise votes polled by candidatesbelonging to the Left, Trinamool and Congress reveal that in most seats wherethe Left candidate won, it was by a narrower margin than in the 2003 electionsand that the Left candidate benefited from the split in opposition votes. 

In all, the 17 districts where elections were held, the Left tally of GPsdecreased. Even in CPI(M) bastions like Burdwan, Birbhum, Bankura, Purulia,Hooghly and Howrah, the Left lost control of a huge number of GPs. Overall, theLeft garnered 49.8 percent of the votes cast. Given that the Left voters are acommitted lot and make it a point to exercise their franchise unlike Congress orTrinamool supporters, and given that the CPI(M) employed strong-arm tactics likeintimidating voters and rigging the polls, the Left's actual vote share would beeven less. 

Also, one needs to take into account the 600-odd GPs that the Left wonuncontested—here, opposition candidates were threatened and either preventedfrom filing their nomination papers or forced to withdraw from the fray. At thegrassroots level, thus, the CPI(M)-led Left Front has actually lost or, at best,emerged neck-and-neck with the combined opposition.

Reports coming in from rural Bengal indicate that in vast swathes, voterssilently defied the CPI(M)'s diktats and braved the party's threats to vote foropposition candidates. This happened especially at places where the oppositionput up a brave fight and inspired confidence in the voters that they wouldn't bedriven out of their homes or punished by a vengeful, defeated CPI(M). 

Against the Left's slide, look at the impressive gains made by the Congressand the Trinamool: the Congress bagged 519 GPs this time as compared to 385 thelast time (an improvement of nearly 35 percent), while the Trinamool score ofGPs went up from 306 to 818 (an improvement of a whopping 167 percent!). TheLeft's loss stood at 32 percent. 

At the second tier Panchayat Samiti (PS) level, too, theCPI(M) slid from its 2003 tally in all the districts, save for South Dinajpurand Murshidabad where it maintained its last election scores. The Left won 183PSs this time as compared to 285 in 2003 (a decline of 35%), while the Congressimproved its score from 28 to 45 (gain of nearly 61%) while the Trinamool saw adramatic turn in its political fortunes by increasing its tally from 9 to 79 (animprovement of more than 777%). In fact, the opposition parties won creditablyin many districts where it drew a blank in 2003. 

These micro-level results definitely take the sheen away from the Leftmanaging to retain control over Zila Parishads (ZPs), the highest tier in thepanchayat system, in 13 of the 17 districts. And at this level, too, the Left'stally of ZP seats came down from 619 in 2003 to 516 (a decline of nearly 17percent), while the Congress improved its performance by 46% and the Trinamool,once again, by a massive 707%! 

Here, too, in all the districts save for Murshidabad where its tally of seatswent up from 27 to 32 (amidst charges of massive and blatant rigging that waseven captured by lensmen of the print and electronic media) and Burdwan, whereits tally (63 seats) remained the same, the Left score came down in all thedistricts. 

A close analysis of the results reveals that had the Congress and Trinamoolfought the elections unitedly, the Left would have been easily trounced in mostof the districts. Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, South Dinajpur, Hooghly, WestMidnapore and Birbhum are, perhaps, the only districts where the Left would havewon a majority of the ZP seats in the face of a straight contest with a combinedopposition. The division in opposition votes is a major reason for the Leftgaining control of 13 of the 17 Zila Parishads. 

No wonder, then, that the Left, especially the CPI(M), isworried. CPI(M) leaders have gone on record saying that if this voting patternrepeats itself in the Lok Sabha polls a year from now, the Left would lose atleast ten seats to the opposition, bringing its tally down to 25, the lowest in30 years. The grim faces at the CPI(M) state committee meeting (on May 25 and26) provided an insight into the shock that the party has suffered from. 

The panchayat results have rattled the party apparatchik like no other eventshas in 30 years. This nervousness was apparent from the fact that party chiefPrakash Karat flew down to Kolkata to participate in the CPI(M) state committeemeeting, an event he would never ever have attended otherwise. It would be a bitsimplistic to blame the CPI(M)'s losses and the opposition, primarily theTrinamool's, gains on the ham-handed and high-handed land acquisition at Singurand Nandigram. 

As party leaders said in a rare moment of facing the truth, the landacquisition issue provided an outlet to years of pent-up anger and frustration.But why this frustration and anger among the rural masses, the very people whosesolid support the CPI(M) claims to be enjoying? CPI(M) leaders would do well todelve into the reasons behind the disconnect with the masses. To others, ofcourse, the answers are apparent: the party machinery has become venal,high-handed and autocratic.

The CPI(M)'s vice-like grip on all aspects of a person's life, including hissocial life, in rural Bengal has bred ill-will and turned many into silentopponents of the party. At the grassroots level, party leaders and workers havebecome a highly corrupt lot. Their high-handedness and arrogance has alienatedlarge sections of the people. Also, the fact that the party, and the stategovernment it leads, has done precious little to develop rural Bengal and itseconomy has only recently dawned on the poor folks and this realization has,naturally, turned them against the Left. At many places, informal understandingsbetween the opposition parties also caused upsets for the Left. The neglect ofMuslims, as brought out in the Sachar Commission report, was driven home to theminorities very effectively by Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind. 

What, then, will be the immediate fallout of the panchayatelections? For one, the state government will go very slow on acquiring land fora slew of industrial, commercial and housing projects, especially in North andSouth 24 Parganas districts and East Midnapore. A number of projects thatinvolve acquisition of farmlands would, most probably, be shelved. ChiefMinister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will face stronger opposition from the juniorpartners in the Left Front government, especially the RSP and Forward Bloc, inhis unbridled pursuit of industrialisation and policies like entry of big chainsin the retail sector. The opposition would also be bolder and challengeBhattacharjee on many fronts, including industrialisation. The Chief Ministerwould, thus, lose his USP and would have to face the ignominy of seeing his petindustrialisation drive suffer even as other states surge ahead. 

However, all said and done, though the results point to a definite trend of themasses getting disillusioned with the Left (read: the CPI-M), a lot would dependon how the opposition, especially the Trinamool, conducts itself from now on. IfMamata behaves responsibly and shuns her impulsive and destructive ways thathave alienated many of her supporters in the past, and if she works towards atie-up (even an informal one at the grassroots level as had happened in someplaces this time) with the Congress, there would be some hope for drawing thecurtains on this uninterrupted Left Front rule when the Assembly elections areheld three years from now. That is, however, assuming that the CPI(M) doesn'tmend its ways and doesn't beat the opposition and all those who voted against itthis time into submission in the intervening period. 

Given Mamata's track record of irresponsible behaviour, senior Congressleaders' deep complicity with the CPI(M) (they've been scuttling oppositionunity moves to help the CPI-M win elections) and the CPI(M)'s own reputation foreffective 'damage control', chances are that Buddhadeb's smiling visage would beplastered all over the front pages of newspapers after the 2011 Assembly polls.The 2008 panchayat elections would have then been relegated as a minoraberration in the Left's eighth successive win in Bengal's Assembly elections.