There is news that the people of Varanasi, the privileged constituency of Prime Minister Modi, are screaming for help to fight Covid.
They are aghast that infection is rampant, but hospital beds, oxygen and lifesaving medicines are not adequately available. This disturbing news could be an overhyped version made viral by Modi detractors. But it is true the saffron brigade lately has been blundering on many countless scores.
Overconfidence and, perhaps, the swelling coffers put together has given rise to this behaviour of the BJP poll strategists most of who are pinheads and dumb. They are only self-proclaimed masterminds fit to be slaves.
The fact that the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC had lost popularity is not without robust foundations. Mamata is of course an arrogant, intolerant political creature that loses no time in having critics crushed though to be offended later by law courts.
Once, she used to be a great girl, but as time rolled by with success coming her way too fast and too soon, she began imagining no power can ever beat her down. But times changed and people began to despise her dictatorial methods.
Just two years before the just-concluded polls, she had somehow sniffed trouble and lost no time in roping in Prashant Kishore, the magician poll strategist.
The rest is history. Kishore had a score to settle with Amit Shah, the makebelieve BJP mastermind who has methodically sold himself too well within the BJP fold as a ‘second to none’ in devising foolproof victory tactics though it was Prashant Kishore who was instrumental in getting the BJP a landslide victory in 2014.
For months on end prior to voting, TV channels and media agencies across the country, more so in Delhi and Mumbai, kept predicting people wanted anyone but Mamata in Bengal. Naturally, the only option left was the BJP that went to town asking for votes on the shoulders of ‘cut-money, tolabaazi’ and more.
Over-smart Amit Shah kept haranguing about Didi's despotic regime that displayed scantiest regard for ‘rule of law’. Some local BJP loudmouths even asked Mamata to flee to Bangladesh for shelter as post-election situation would turn dangerously anti-Didi.
Further, they made out-of-the-world promises which clearly sounded hollow. The lower-middle-class guy coughing out Rs 92/litre on petrol to take his bike to Shah’s rally by braving the summer sun returned home fuming with disgust. The know-all Shah did not utter a single word of solace or ‘better times ahead’. He was so sure of his ‘Bengal takeover’ that he did not bother once to know how the poor and the middleclass suffered under the unprecedented pricey times. All that they heard jarringly was the promise of statues and cries of ‘Jai Shri Ram’.
For Bengalis, identity has always been a very big issue. The results of Matigara-Naxalbari stand big testimony to that sentiment. The Trinamool Congress first fielded a Bengali from the seat. They then replaced him and fielded one Rajen Sundas, a Nepali from a Bengali-majority Darjeeling constituency. All the Bengali votes went to the BJP's Anandamay Barman, a Rajbongshi man, who has won the seat by 70,848 votes. In a State where the BJP hasn't even crossed double digits, that victory margin is just too huge.
The final word on Suvendu Adhikari's win in Nandigram came pretty late. He snatched victory from Mamata by 1,956 votes and left doomsday predictors in a fix. That seat witnessed huge acts of drama. The results were ‘declared’ three times.
First, Mamata won. Then, Suvendu won. Mamata accepted the verdict but her party did not. Then finally, the Election Commission made the declaration of Mamata’s debacle. Bengal victory has been rather pyrrhic for both. Suvendu won; his party lost. Mamata’s party won; she lost.
All said and done, Mamata Banerjee succeeded in hurting the BJP where it hurts most: identity. Week after week, as BJP national leaders went out to talk religious identity in Hindi, Mamata addressed the masses in coarse, rustic ‘Bangla’ the locals understand well. Every time the average Bengali saw the respected Prime Minister take digs against their CM, Mamata took advantage and consolidated her base. Around this time, the final nail in the coffin for Bengal BJP flew in on the sturdy arms of a virus. The BJP was damned.People have mobile phones and data in rural Bengal. As they went to fill water at the municipality tap and lamented lack of direct pipelines, they saw scenes of dead bodies piling up outside crematories in North India.
The BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh; Delhi, where Modi lives to rule India, were overflowing with the sick and the dead. They gasped, switched to a lighter video, lifted their water cans and went back home heaving a sigh of relief: ‘At least we are much safer here in our own Bengal.’
Then there was the issue of machismo too. Bengal has never quite responded well to men who flaunt their muscle. The BJP could never figure that out. Women in Bengal voted for a woman. The fairly popular woman in power promised them money and a better tomorrow. She has done a lot for the villages.
There is no industry; and jobs are still a far cry, but in the villages there are roads. Every house has heard the promise of money if Didi comes back to power. The BJP had nothing of that sort to move hearts. Statues don't get votes. Promises of alleviating the plight of Hindu Bengalis in another country don't win votes either.
The social media has revealed that the votes for TMC were not for TMC. It was against the alien BJP. TMC had by now lost all credibility and public respect. People have been crying hoarse for jobs.
They haven’t wanted a TMC Government whose representatives want cut-money and indulge in ‘tolabaazi’. But they voted for Didi because they did not want their fate put in the hands of unknown creatures.
The votes the BJP collected were only in favour of Modi who unfortunately never made clear any CM candidate. So, down among the BJP cadres, a word goes: for every two people in the BJP, there are three factions.
The party had never succeeded in establishing any ground presence. Further, its star campaigners in North Bengal are all ex-TMC members. BJP had scooped many TMC leaders but ignored the grassroots workers. So, having been abandoned in a way, they remained with Mamata. When the ex-TMC folks received tickets, this old BJP fumed.
Modi is a loved one for his supposedly humble background and also for his oratory. But slowly, the nation has begun realising that he is an immensely sophisticated puppet expected only to talk when required.
Some other guys who play money games deftly are the real masters calling all critical shots.Lastly, after giving massive success to BJP in 2014, Prashant Kishor was tossed out of the BJP by Amit Shah, particularly when the former was extremely keen to be an integral part of the saffron fold.
So, the superbly-established, highly-sought-after poll strategist has come a full circle. He crushed the ‘once humble fold’ to dust only because an arrogant guy is the de facto boss of the party emboldened by stalwarts now thrown behind the farthest curtain.