By making the maximum possible noise over several irrelevant details, Mamata Banerjee’s party has gained an advantage in the coming panchayat election
Putting incumbency to the test is a game of cops and robbers, and West Bengal's political parties are playing by the rules set by West Bengal Chief MInister Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress. As the rule maker, the Trinamool Congress is certainly the dominant player, the winner of every election held since the 2008 panchayat election, when it first won two district councils or zila parishads.
There are different ways of playing the game, one of which is, of course, might is right. The other way of playing it is by turning the tables. The Trinamool Congress is doing both and confounding the Opposition, both the CPI(M)-led left Front and the discarded ally, the Congress. Distracted by the play of might is right over the scheduling of panchayat election dates and the security arrangements for the polls, the Opposition is being forced to fight a battle that is irrelevant to the voter. It is also being lulled into a sense of expectation that the incumbent believes it is under attack and is, therefore, nervous about poll outcome.
No one in the hothouse where political managers reside is in any doubt that the face-off between the State Election Commission, particularly its chief, Mira Pande, and the Trinamool Congress is a clash of wills. The confrontation is between two constituted authorities, both wielding executive power and both determined to discipline the “Other”. By asserting that the State Government has the right to declare the dates for the forthcoming panchayat election, namely April 26, and the number of days over which it will be held and the security arrangements for it, Ms Banerjee has positioned herself as the tough lady to her admirers and a disrespectful bully to the Opposition.
For the voters, the issue is mostly irrelevant. What the voter needs to know is when they will have to go to the booth and deal with the political processes that precede that event. Unfortunately the Opposition has to engage itself in the battle over dates and time tables and security because to ignore the provocation is to appear to be a loser even before the real fight starts. In the process all the political parties are creating campaign stories that ought not to be the focus in the panchayat election.
It is unlikely that the voters will get a chance to reflect on how the varying claims of delivery of programmes have affected them. To the voters in a village in South 24 Parganas living in the Sundarbans the panchayat election should be an occasion to assess how in the past five years the local Government has functioned vis-a-vis their problems and needs. Rival parties making claims of 70 per cent or 20 per cent non-partisan delivery of a particular scheme, does not amount to much unless the targeted beneficiary knows and understands the issues. With all the noise over who is better or worse, the constant comparisons and generalised accusations, the voter is going to have to make up their mind not on facts but on impressions.
In this game, Ms Banerjee is significantly better at managing impressions and emotions than her political rivals. She has already turned the tables on her rivals, by posing herself as the challenger instead of the defender. To outwit her at this stage, when the CPI(M) is groping for words to present their case to the voter and when the Congress has similar problems, is going to be difficult. The incumbency game is all about suggesting to the voter that one party is better than the other. In West Bengal this has turned into a morality play, with righteousness claims by all the rivals.
By making the maximum possible noise over irrelevant details, the Trinamool Congress has gained an advantage. It has done so by obfuscating the issues that ought to be fore-grounded in a panchayat election. For the CPI(M) to escape the trap that Ms Banerjee has set, the leadership has to do more than accuse her of subverting the principles and practices on which the system of Government is founded. Without a campaign strategy and the sort of tactics that turns voter attention back to the immediate and mundane experience of governance under ‘poriborton’, neither the CPI(M) and its allies nor the Congress has hopes of politically exploiting the shenanigans and the internecine warfare that are a hall mark of Trinamool Congress politics.