Vikas is the antidote to TMC in West Bengal

Turning it into an ally under TMC is fraught, when as a border State, it is aiding and abetting a crescendo of anti-national activity. Analysts looking at West Bengal are alarmed at the increasing Islamist terrorist infiltration routed via Bangladesh.  The belligerence of the State’s 27% Muslims with Wahabi-Salafist elements has increased lately. This suggests the State’s Hindus are deserting the TMC, forcing Mamata Banerjee to lean more heavily on the Muslims.  In Uttar Pradesh, the 80% plus wins, at 325 out of 403, has been made possible because of masterful electoral mapping, and the Prime Minister’s extensive campaigning using his “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas” poll plank.   The unprecedented win is inclusive of the votes from a significant number of young Muslim men and women. A replication of this in West Bengal should be pursued, targeting the moderates not enamoured of the Salafists, Shias, the aspirational young, and Muslim women who want a uniform civil code and triple talaq gone.  Combined with a consolidation of the multi-caste Hindu vote, it could work very well.  In Manipur, where Hindu unity has been elusive though Hindus are the most numerous, the BJP came in from the cold and defeated the three-term Congress Government with a 36% popular vote to the Congress’s 35%.  In West Bengal meanwhile, some open Hindu-Muslim rioting in Dhulagarh recently, and in Malda before, is sought to be hushed up. Nevertheless, it suggests that the TMC has provoked a ready polarisation already. The Shahi Imam of Kolkata’s Tipu Sultan Masjid, Maulana Nurur Rahman Barkati has been making himself ridiculous by offeringd Rs 25 lakh to anyone who shaves Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hair and beard.  He also issued a fatwa against Dilip Ghosh, the BJP State president, to be stoned and thrown out of Bengal.  The TMC also seems to be in a telling panic about the hard work being done by the RSS to increase the BJP's voteshare. Other recent Muslim demands include seeking a ban on RSS-run schools. This, shamefully, is currently being implemented by the TMC, even as the Salafist madarsas are left alone.  There are also demands for curbs against the popular Saraswati Puja and Durga Puja, renaming of Hindu customs and terms to remove their Hindu connotations ( eg, Ramdhonu), and so on. Even the godless Communists never tried any of this in their 34 years in power. Wads of counterfeit notes meanwhile are infiltrating the State’s borders at Malda, and bomb-making factories and stashes have been found several times in Burdwan.  The TMC Government, already mired in chit fund scams, has been one of the most vocal critics of the recent demonetisation. This even as a very large number of shell companies used to channel black money have been outed. Huge stashes of demonetised notes are inexplicably being found. History may well be repeating itself, because similar excesses saw the long serving Congress Governments of West Bengal thrown out in 1977, never to return.  And 34 years later, exactly the same thing happened to a seemingly impregnable Left Front.  The people of West Bengal gave the TMC more than the Left Front in the general election of 2009, at 19 seats to their 15. And in 2011, they removed the Left Front from power in the Assembly. The voting public responded to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s calls for “Poriborton” for the first time in 2011 in the backdrop of Singur and the expulsion of the CPI(M) spawned Nano car project.  Despite the activist-style populism, the people expected overall progress and prosperity from 'Didi'. Mamata Banerjee’s no frills public persona, simplicity, a no make-up look, unkempt hair, trademark crumpled white cotton sari with minimal border, and chappals, was reassuringly “one of us” to the poor.  She had well established street activist credentials, came from the lower middle class herself, and had been put in hospital more than once by CPI(M) goons. Coming to power in a coalition (184 seats to TMC) with the Congress (42 seats), atop a public, subjected to 34 years of Marxist indoctrination, she looked and seemed perfect for the part.  But, if her first five years were hoped to be a gradual return of economic  liberalism and the heyday of the mercantile/mercantilist Bhadralok, it just didn’t happen. Except for a mushrooming of real estate projects in Kolkata. The public debt till 2016 stood at $45 billion, tending towards $50 billion in 2017. The GDP of the State is at $140.68 billion as of 2015-16. So, public debt is at more than a third of GDP!   For a population of 95.5 million, the per capita income is $1,473. West Bengal, however, thanks to its size, is even now the 6th largest economy in the country. But economic matters are not very important to Mamata Banerjee. Since 2011, the TMC supplanted iffy Hindu support with that of West Bengal’s Muslims. It then stitched together a rural bastion composed of Muslims, OBCs, and the Maoists in “Jungle Mahal”.  It ruthlessly uses strong-arm methods by the former CPI(M) enforcers who are working for the TMC.   But it confounded critics by winning a thumping  Assembly victory with 44.9% of the popular vote and 211 seats on its own in 2016. At least 17% of the vote must have come from Hindus. But how exactly was it extracted? Can the BJP rework the electoral mathematics and mine the popular discontent against the TMC for 2019?  The way to do this may consist of reviving West Bengal’s mercantile past DNA, and the nation-wide appeal of Prime Minister Modi’s clarion call of Vikas.  The alternative, after all, is a blatantly thuggish TMC, which delivers gains, not to the masses, but to their sinister organisers. The BJP has indeed been growing in West Bengal. It won just two seats in 2014, but was runner up in three more, with a 16.8% voteshare.  The CPI(M), in a how-the-mighty-have-fallen mode, also managed only 2 seats in 2014, but with a scattered popular voteshare of 29.71%.  The TMC won 34 seats, with a voteshare of 39.05% then. But will it lose to a BJP, almost certain to win at the Centre in 2019, and again, in the State Assembly election in 2021? Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs and views expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this website are personal and do not reflect the opinions, beliefs and views of ABP News Network Pvt Ltd.