“Ei bhadroloki Chandan Mitra! Padma phool korey! Taley banya atkaley vote dibo. Kotha dao! (Is this Chandan Mitra who stands for the lotusIJ I will vote for him if he saves us from floods),” says Ujjal Dhara, of Bora, his eyes glistening with hope. Hope because “padma phool” is comparatively new in the area, untested and untainted.
Bora is a panchayat in Singur Assembly segment of the Hooghly parliamentary seat from where Mitra is contesting against sitting Trinamool MP Ratna Dey Nag and a newer CPI(M) face Pradip Saha. “Dekhe bhadro lagey. Sikkhito lok. Khali halla korena (He looks suave and educated and does not shout),” says Mahadeb Dhara. “Vote diley amader BPl korbe to! (Will he give us BPl card if we vote for him)IJ” he enquires.
The area gets flooded every monsoon, thanks to a man-made crisis. The local drainage system is choked due to some construction “projects” undertaken by the Trinamool-backed builders a few kilometres ahead. From the roadside, people wave at the convoy of the BJP candidate as it meanders through the dusty village roads. The 5,000-odd population of this back-of-beyond region rarely saw a lengthier procession of the BJP before. A face cranes out from the throng and appeals: “Dada, we all are from SC/ST community. Please see to it that we get BPl cards. This Government is not giving us anything.”
At Ugardhaha railway gate where the road rally stops for a while, this correspondent, who is mistaken for a BJP worker, is confronted by a middle-aged woman Archana Ruidas. She looks at Dr Mitra, who waves at the crowd from atop the Chota Haati, and wonders whether he is a “simple MBBS or an MD!” “Where does he sit at Chuchura,” she asks, talking about the headquarters of Hooghly district, once a Dutch colony. When told that Mitra is a doctorate and a noted journalist, the woman insisted “he looked like a doctor.”
The rail gate opens and the BJP supporters heighten the pitch of their sloganeering. By the time the rally reaches Gangadharpur, the Sun sets in after beating down mercilessly throughout the day. “You have to take this in your stride or else how will you know the suffering of the common villagers,” says Bikram Sarkar, a former Trinamool MP who has joined the BJP recently. Sagar Biswas, a local grocer who “prefers to watch English news”, says the people of Singur have seen through the bunkum of all parties. “Many of us have changed our minds because the BJP makes sense. They have a national policy unlike the local parties.”
A local informs how the State Government doled out of lakhs of rupeesto local clubs and now making them work for the ruling outfit. “This is one reason they do not allow anyone to put up the flags and festoons of any other parties, not even the CPI(M),” he said.
Incidentally, the West Bengal Information Culture Department has allocated more than Rs 150 crore for “development” of the clubs which is allegedly getting routed for electoral purposes -- all under the nose of the Election Commission. While the basket of locals’ grievances brim over, the convoy takes a turn toward Mirzapur-Bankipur. On the left is the constituency of Trinamool MP Kalyan Banerjee who is facing a tough fight against music director Bappi lahiri. Thinking that the Mumbai star was visiting them, throngs of villagers rush out of their houses to have his glimpse.
This, even as a farmer shouts at the slowly moving convoy, “land is not the issue here. We want to vote without fear. The ruling party has asked us not to vote.” This area was not affected by the land movement and hence the issues here range from violence to non-payment of MGNREGA wages to the unavailability of BPl cards, power and poor roads. When asked as to what they think of Mitra’s suggestion for IT parks or similar other industries in the area, they say: “The promises are fine, but we want the promises to be fulfilled.”
Cut to Singur proper. The road show ends within yards of the Singur Railway Station some eight km away from the site of the Nano conflict. Even as the rallyists are given some puffed rice and tele bhaja (fried brinjal and potato) a local points to a huge building constructed by Mamata Banerjee, the then Railway Minister under her Kisan Vision scheme for storing of perishable vegetables.
“Utter nonsense this!” he screams. “Not a single kg of vegetable is kept here because of its distance from the villages. Didi knew that the farmers will never use this to avoid carrying cost. Still public money was wasted only to gain publicity.” He also points out at the stalls constructed for those who were affected in the Singur movement and laments that none of them is functioning. “The CPI(M) murdered Singur and Trinamool is trading with the corpse,” he says.