In BJP's Bengal Blunders, Lessons For All Parties

The BJP’s biggest mistake, as it desperately sought to occupy people’s mindspace and create hype, was to invite hordes of TMC leaders accused of goondaism into its fold

- GS Vasu

HEADS should roll in Delhi, in all fairness. How could so many agencies—the CBI, ED, I-T, central police forces, and, of course, the Election Commission, have so spectacularly and collectively failed to deliver the goods, and leave the ruling establishment licking its wounds after the results in West Bengal? Political and regional factors apart, it is the overdose of almost everything that has now come to be associated with an Indian election that seems to have done the BJP in.

The BJP had ticked every box: dozens of trips by chartered flights/helicopters as “imported leaders” crisscrossed the state, 30-plus hotels including five-star rated ones booked in Kolkata to host guests, hundreds of campaign vehicles, aggressive mainstream and social media campaigns, all of which were topped up with alleged cash handouts to voters, ranging from ₹ 500 in tribal belts to ₹5,000 per head in urban pockets. Result: By the time the poll process began and progressed further, a sort of revulsion had crept in.

What the BJP leadership crucially did not take into account are historical factors specific to Bengal—the language divide, absence of a local leader who could be the face for the party, and lack of cadre at the ground level to build on the anti-incumbency vote. Bengal has this history of having always voted for a party associated with struggles/movements. If it was the Congress that benefitted in the initial years because of the freedom movement, the Left received support by virtue of the multiple struggles it had waged over the years. Then came Didi with her own brand of agitations including the famous Singur/Nandigram stir. The BJP has no such record.