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Why did TMC win in West Bengal?



Why did TMC win in West Bengal?
By Deepak Parvatiyar
May 20, 2016
- See more at: http://www.elections.in/blog/why-did-tmc-win-in-west-bengal/#sthash.aDh2kCUD.dpuf

Post verdict, Didi summed it all aptly. “If a party loses its ideology, it loses everything. CPI(M)-Congress have lost everything,” said the Trinamool Congress (TMC) boss. But was that so? After all even Mamata Banerjee is known to switch affiliations – from centrist Congress to right wing National Democratic Alliance and so on! In 2011, she was the first to exploit the Congress’s support to oust the Left from power in West Bengal.  This time she termed the Congress as a “creeper…” But isn’t she a hard bargainer who loves to put her finger in every pie?
Mamata has emerged stronger than the last time
Still to the uninitiated, Mamata has emerged stronger than the last time after winning more seats than what it had won in 2011 in West Bengal. In the process, she has not just decimated the Left but also subdued its uncomfortable ally, the Congress.
As in Bihar last year where it was a junior alliance partner of the Janata Dal (United)-Rashtriya Janata Dal-led Grand Alliance, the Congress had thought of a piggy back ride to power by entering into a pact with the Left Front. As it is, the Left Front now sees Red, getting lesser seats than what it had managed last time in the state!
The question thus arises is whether the dilution of ideology alone cost Left dearly this election in socially/ideologically conscious Bengal or was it just that the voters were still yet to forget its “misrule” before Mamata’s TMC had emerged as an alternative in 2011? It though goes beyond dispute that the Left-Congress pact – a first in Bengal politics – was nothing but sheer political opportunism, devoid of any ideology.
It did discredit the Left much as the voters ignored corruption issues involving TMC leaders, be it the Narada sting where a few TMC member of Parliaments were shown on camera accepting cash or the Saradha scam where the ruling party was allegedly involved. Although the TMC lost the Kolkata seat this time, the recent collapse of under-construction flyover outside the city, in which many were killed, had no impact on the party’s electoral fortunes as it conveniently shifted the blame on the CPI-M whose government had launched the project.
The TMC victory proves that voters were more willing to buy Mamata’s development plank than that of the Left. Yet statistics suggest that the anti-incumbency factor worked in the state only twice in the last 39 years – in 1977 and then in 2011 and this implies that the voters of West Bengal are more willing to give the ruling party more than one chance. Still, this was the fourth consecutive time that the TMC thrashed the Left in elections in the state starting with the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and the first time that a party won while contesting alone.
The verdict endorses Mamta’s claims of restoring peace and development in the Naxal hit regions. Besides, winning more seats than before also meant that the Left-Congress alliance could not win over the Muslims as they would have been hoping to amidst reports that Mamata had lost her grip on the Muslim voters because of her government’s apathy towards their agrarian crisis and the absence of minimum support price for their produce.
Does her resounding victory mean that her government remains “government of common people … (which) will never do anything which could become a burden on people”. After all this too was her poll plank to woo the voters!
- See more at: http://www.elections.in/blog/why-did-tmc-win-in-west-bengal/#sthash.aDh2kCUD.dpuf

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