Perhaps Narendra Modi finally tired of Mamata Banerjee's public snubs, because he tore into her government in West Bengal with an enthusiasm West Bengal's BJP cadre has not seen before.
Narendra Modi. Reuters.
For a state that sent just one member to the Lok Sabha in 2009 (Jaswant Singh), Modi took a rather bold step in mocking Mamata. The state's 42 LS seats could be a critical gap for Modi's Mission 272.
"Give me all your seats," he told the gathered crowd, "and we will have a contest to see whether a BJP-led Central government does more for West Bengal or the state government."
The BJP is also completely absent in the state's Legislative Assembly. The 294-member Assembly is now dominated by the Trinamool Congress. In 2006, they contested 26 seats of these 294 and won none. In 2011, they contested all 294 seats. And again returned a zero-win result. In effect, the BJP is nearly non-existent in the West Bengal polity.
Given that Modi's Prime Ministerial dreams hinge on some extent on his performance in states where the BJP has no presence, the Gujarat CM may have been better advised had he remain patient. An opinion poll conducted by CSDS for the Lokniti-IBN poll tracker suggested that even compared to last year, a greater percentage of people approve of the present Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal.
Thirty nine percent of the respondents said that they prefer the current TMC government, as opposed to 30 percent who said that the Left government was better. And, of the people giving a thumbs up to the Mamata Banerjee government, 54 percent are Muslims. In fact, Muslim support for the TMC seems to have gone up in the recent past sharply -- just 39 percent of respondents who preferred the TMC government in 2013 were Muslims. That statistic is reason enough to suggest that wooing Mamata will be crucial for any party hoping to grab a sizeable number of Lok Sabha seats from West Bengal.
Doubtless, the BJP's popularity is on a slow rise, thanks mostly to apparent faith in Modi being the best man for the country's top job. The poll showed BJP's estimated vote share up to 14 percent now from 12 percent last year.
But the Trinamool Congress still has nearly triple the vote share, at 33 percent. There is a rider to that -- eighteen percent of the respondents believed that Narendra Modi was a better Prime Ministerial candidate than Mamata, who got eleven percent votes. (Read more here)
Given that Mamata Banerjee has been a part of the NDA in the past and switching national allies has not really affected her political prospects at home before now, one would have expected her to join hands with BJP without batting an eyelid. She has to swallow quite a bit of her pride to go back to the Congress and the BJP could have been a great choice, but there is just one thing holding her back - and that is Modi and his reputation for being Muslim unfriendly to put it lightly.
Banerjee has always played to the galleries when it came to the Muslim vote bank and Modi is a risk she is probably not ready for. She has made sure Taslima Nasreen doesn't come back to Kolkata, she has given various sops to maulvis despite criticism and she has even not spoken up when Muslim fundamentalist organisations tried to disrupt a book launch which they alleged was anti-Muslim.
He suggested - and Mamata Banerjee will absolutely not be delighted to hear this - that Muslims have been deliberately left out of the development drive in Bengal. Banerjee has probably taken all appeasing measures possible, including proposing reservations for jobs for Muslims, after she came to power in Bengal.
"We have a Haj quota of 3,800 and we get 37,000 applications. Bengal has a Haj quota of 12,000 and a bigger Muslim population than Gujarat, yet they get just 11,600 Haj applications. This shows that Muslims don't have enough money to travel to Haj. This also shows that they have not been included in the development race in the state."
Also, while Mamata has not vocally backed the idea of the Third Front, she has suggested forming a federal front - something Modi dismissed as a 'third rate' solution for the country's problems in his Kolkata rally. Again, Mamata might not indulge in the luxury of reading between the lines and categorising it as an attack on Mulayam Singh Yadav. She is most likely to take this as an attack on her politics and jeopardise BJP's chances of forming an alliance with TMC.
Then again, in his somewhat confused stance on the Trinamool Congress - where he at once derided the condition of the state and at the same time chose to not haul up Mamata vocally for her performance as CM - Modi then tried playing on Bengali pride so to say. Some one must have briefed him about Bengal's deep devotion to Sourav Ganguly and the state's cricket fans' grudge against national cricket bodies and stars like Sachin Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni for the treatment meted out to their favourite cricketer.
Assuming that Bengal's voters possibly suffer from a persecution complex epidemic, Modi sought to comment on what is easily Congress' internal politics. He first said, "You have placed Mamata ji in power for the state, you can put me at the Centre and there is Pranab da at the top anyway."
He then went on to remind his audience how Pranab Mukherjee was given a short shrift by Congress in the past and instead of choosing him as the PM candidate after Indira Gandhi was killed, Rajiv Gandhi was made the Prime Minister. "Again in 2004, Sonia Gandhi chose Manmohan Singh as the PM candidate and not Pranab Mukherjee," he said, his voice deep with remorse for Pranab Mukherjee's aborted political ambitions.
It's another thing that Bengal's Sourav Ganguly complex probably extends to its biryani, sweets and its literature - not so much its politicians.
Finally, Modi refused to touch any topic that is typical to Bengal or has had a bearing on the state's politics. From the contentious issue of land acquisition which had put CPI(M) in a spot to Mamata's stir against UPA's price hike - Modi scrupulously steered clear of topics that Bengal obsesses about. He did touch upon the state of industry - he said that industry is on a back foot - but he neither mentioned what could be a possible remedy for it, nor did he enumerate the reasons why he thought Bengal's industry suffers. Possibly because, the current Bengal government's pro-farmer stance, which cost it the Tata Nano project, is something Modi is not ready to address yet.
Modi mentioned that agriculture is suffering in Bengal, though there are rivers abound in the state - one will remember he said exactly that in Bundelkhand, UP and a few other places too. Mamata rode to power from the great wave of support from rural Bengal - a part of Bengal which thrives on agriculture and saw Mamata'a anti-Tata move as one that is pro-agriculture. The same project which then found pride of place in Sanand, Gujarat. Did Modi effectively communicate with those voters who bear the largest chunk of Bengal's vote? No, he didn't.
He pointed out that while Bengal was the leader in the IT revolution that India saw, most other states left it behind within a short period of time. Apart from what is common knowledge, did he explain what ails the services industry in Bengal or what could possibly be a solution to its tribulations? No, he didn't.
He talked about electricity problems in Kolkata, which is fairly well-placed in terms of power supply. He spoke about unemployment, which as as much an problem of any other Indian state, as it is Bengal's. He neither spoke about the several hundreds of acres of land, which now lie in the Tata Motors' deserted plant and remains undeveloped and also out of reach of the farmers who owned them. Nor did he speak about the Maoist problems the state faced or the Gorkhaland stir that Mamata Banerjee very recently managed to stifle.
"Give me the responsibility of Bengal at the Centre," he exhorted. Did he give another reason, except for the Congress' failure, why? No.
Nostalgia and Tagore, a nice speech make. Only, it doesn't earn anyone votes.
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