CHANDAN MITRA recounts the highs and lows of his experience while contesting the lok Sabha election from Hooghly in the heat and sweat of mid-summer Bengal
The headline of this piece is based on a famous slip of the tongue by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi while addressing an election rally in Faizabad during the 1991 poll campaign. Perhaps the father of Hinglish expressions, this sums up my own feelings at the end of a gruelling 42-day campaign to wrest the lok Sabha seat from my ancestral home district where I lived approximately 10 years in my childhood. Returning to the burgeoning town (which I visited quarterly for a few days each year on an average), I realised, elections apart I learnt a humongous amount of things not only about people, but also the culture of rural Bengal and also the grammar of politics in the raw. Jeetenge ya loosenge, I will have no second thoughts on the correctness of my decision to plunge into the biggest talent contest available to Indians.
“Ki bolchho, okey ami chinbo na (What are you saying; how can I not know him)IJ His real name is Bubul. Wearing half-pants, he used to practice cycling outside his house. And his mother would yell out from the terrace, not to go beyond her sight. He is a parar chhele (locality boy). Of course I will vote for him,” proclaimed the aged woman, shopping bag in hand inside Kharua Bazar, the biggest marketplace in Hooghly-Chinsura (this is a twin-town, and Hooghly and Chuchura — its de-Anglicised name — is used interchangeably). This is where I started out on my six week-long mass contact programme.
Cut to polling day, April 30, in a polling booth located in a school on the outskirts of Chinsura: “Arrey Dada, agey to bolun sholo tarikher por aapnake abaar dekha jabey toh (first tell us, will we get to see you here again after the 16th May, counting day)IJ” This jibe came from a few CPI(M) activists as I exited the booth area, who added for good measure, “Kothai chhilen eto bochhor (Where were you all these years)IJ”
landing in Hooghly on March 12, two days after the BJP Central Election Committee named me as the party’s candidate from this seat, I had to first combat the ‘outsider’ tag. People, especially the more educated ones, had no recall problem; they watched me enough on TV new channels. But not all of them could connect me to Hooghly till it was explained that I studied in two local schools, Auxilium Convent and later Hooghly Branch School. My ancestral home on the banks of the Hooghly river (the name by which the Ganga is known here), was familiar to most townsfolk, so were my parents and relatives. But they were still reluctant to recognise me as a “local”.
Small town people have a need to place a new person in terms of his mohalla and relatives, before they trust a newcomer. “If I need you urgently and you are sitting in Delhi, how will you be able to helpIJ” asked an elderly morning walker rather bluntly. While the sitting MP, Trinamool’s Dr Ratna De-Nag, isn’t exactly hyper-active with her MPlADS funds, she does live in the constituency and attends weddings and cremations rather regularly, I was told. People, it seems, don’t need an MP to work, but want their representative to be socially active and available on demand.
However, a fortnight down the line, the “outsider” tag got progressively diluted as more and more people observed my ancestral haveli and recognised I wouldn’t be abandoning the place in a hurry. I also participated in a few TV discussions from my Hooghly house. The sight of OB vans waiting outside the gate convinced doubting Thomas’s that I could even continue my career based in Hooghly.
I had a reasonably committed team to work with. The only problem was that they squabbled a great deal, requiring my intervention and, thus, time to get the election engine moving. But then the Bengali is compulsively argumentative and congenitally disrespectful of authority. Everybody believes he or she is a better ideator or implementor than the next person whose abilities they disdainfully run down. Factionalism is rampant in India’s political parties; even in the relatively disciplined CPM, two groups in Kerala are out on the streets every few days, trying to settle scores with each other. I faced no organised factionalism in Hooghly probably because everyone in the party was a faction unto himself. Fortunately, my word carried and my decision was respected throughout; its downside being that the pettiest of problems landed at my door and even the most inconsequential activist thought nothing of calling my mobile way past midnight.
The campaign routine was killing, especially because the temperature soared past 40 degrees Celsius by the last week of March and stayed fixed there till voting day. Unusually, there were no thunderstorms barring one in late March. The incandescent Sun seared through my bedroom window by 5 am and most often, there was hardly any mitigating breeze, despite my house’s location on the banks of the river. The heat was kept company by insufferable humidity. I was often compelled to change clothes thrice every day and wash my dust-smeared hands and face as frequently as possible, wiping them every 15 minutes with a face towel even while talking to potential voters.
We evolved an innovative campaign tactic by landing up at marketplaces almost each morning. The muffossil Bengali is a sucker for fresh food, with a healthy distrust of the refrigerator. Around 9 am every morning, family elders and housewives thronged the town’s myriad bazaars to buy fresh vegetables and fish. With a big river dominating the landscape and a multitude of large ponds, there is no dearth of marine food, although delicacies like hilsa are fast disappearing on account of overfishing. Confident of meeting much of my electorate, I would ride pillion on a party activist’s motor-bike, dressed in tracks with shopping bag in hand to hit the local bazaars.
Inside the bazaar, usually covered by tent material as Bengal is a rain-drenched part of the country, party workers would lead me from stall to stall, approaching both owners and customers, introducing me and handing out a leaflet describing my career. The leaflet emphasised my Hooghly origins as also my performance as Rajya Sabha MP of 10 years’ vintage. I visited bazaars not only in Hooghly-Chinsura, but also adjoining Chandan Nagar, Bhadreshwar and Bandel. To my pleasant surprise, many people had seen me on TV or read about my credentials in Bengali newspapers. Most were impressed with my educational background, particularly my Oxford degree. Education remains one of the issues on which middle-class Bengalis lay great emphasis. But many shoppers expressed concern that the BJP was not organisationally strong in Bengal. So, they argued, that the “hawa” in favour of the party, especially the universally felt need to make Narendra Modi the next PM, may not materialise in many parts of the State. But many others, surprisingly, small stall-owners and fishmongers, were effusive in their response: “Bolbar darker nei. Aamra achhi (No need to say more, we are with you),” was a common refrain.
Indeed, the most spirited response I got during my campaign was from the poorest of the poor — rickshaw pullers, thela (cart) drivers and even those eking out a miserable existence in squalid slums. Rickshaw-pullers in particular, would raise one hand in acknowledgement and support whenever I waved to them. Sharing tea with some of them and daily labourers at tea stalls across my constituency, I posed this question to some, asking what they expected from Modi. The answers were common. Modi had generated hope that things would improve, opportunities would blossom and their miserable lives change for the better. One daily wage-earner said: “Babu, our lives won’t improve. I am an uneducated labourer and die as one. But I only pray that my sons get decent, affordable education so they get a proper job” (which usually means that of a Government clerk in Bengal).
Delving into interior villages, I discovered other concerns. In Dhaniakhali, one of the seven Assembly segments that make up the Hooghly Parliamentary constituency, (where elections were rigged massively by Trinamool cadre) I learnt that snake-bites were the biggest cause of death in that area. People in several villages complained that the promise made during both the last lok Sabha and subsequent Assembly election to build a good Government hospital in the vicinity had not been kept. Snakebite victims had to be taken to Chuchura (Chinsura) Imambara Hospital, at least an hour’s journey over uneven roads, and most died on the way. When at a street corner meeting, I pledged to build a hospital with my MPlADS funds if I couldn’t get Central Government approval, I saw scepticism writ large on listeners’ faces. Getting down from my jeep, I asked some of them why they didn’t believe me. “We have heard this for close to 20 years; all candidates promise the moon and disappear after polling day.” There was no way I could convince them that I wouldn’t follow in my predecessors’ footsteps.
I discovered I was getting an enthusiastic response in many places, because I looked and talked like a bhadralok (gentleman). But most people believed I was a medical doctor because party posters proclaimed me as Dr Chandan Mitra. It was difficult to explain the difference between a doctorate in history and a medical doctor to semi-educated (often semi-literate) farmers. So I gave up after some days and wondered if it was a good idea to prefix my name. In many places, villagers indeed mobbed me with their medical problems and all I could say was that I would set up good medical facilities and introduce the 108 ‘Ambulance on Call’ service, if elected.
The Hooghly constituency has been one of the worst victims of Bengal’s de-industrialisation in recent decades. What was once a prosperous jute mill belt from Howrah in the north to Bandel in the South now lies derelict with just a few mills working and that too in limited factory shifts. The majority of workers here are migrants from Bihar and eastern UP and they stare hopelessly at a non-existent future for themselves and their progeny. Since Hindi-speaking people in Bengal are traditional BJP supporters, I visited their slums and factory “coolie lines” on at least three occasions. Driving through narrow bylanes, I was frequently stopped by unemployed workers, some seeking help to get back payments from factory owners, while others pleaded for employment of their children. These were depressing campaign journeys that inevitably demoralised me. Even the most stoic visitor to these parts would not remain unmoved at the plight of the hopeless out-of-work industrial labour.
The most depressing foray I made in the course of the campaign was to the once-flourishing Dunlop tyre factory at Sahaganj sandwiched between Chuchura and Bansberia. Almost every family in Hooghly-Chinsura had a male member working at Dunlop in its heyday; my grand-uncle as well as my father’s elder brother among them. The Dunlop factory was once India’s biggest tyre producer. British-owned for long, it included a prim and proper officers’ colony. I still recall family visits to my grand-uncle’s (Chhoto Dadu) neat bungalow with its manicured lawn and quarries of daisies and sunflower plants. It came as a staggering blow to my happy memories as I drove into the colony this time.
Creepers and weeds had over-run the houses. Roads were mere dirt tracks. There was no electricity. Darkness, broken occasionally by petromax lamps stared out of dilapidated bungalows. In the midst of this sordid setting, some occupants came out to greet my motorcade, apologising for their inability to invite me inside what they still call home. “Why are you staying hereIJ” I asked a bit insensitively. A woman broke down, while her husband replied in English: “Because we have nowhere to go. Fortunately, the Court has ordered the owners not to evict us, so we have a roof over our head at least till the legal dispute is settled. The company owes us a huge amount as back payments. Many of us are still on the rolls although the factory shut several years ago. Pay us the backlog and find a place for us to stay and we will vacate. Who wants to live in this hell-hole, without electricity, water supply or sanitationIJ” he queried.
The hapless residents allege that the owners are routinely cannibalising remaining equipment. Trucks move out of the factory gates at the dead of night. “The management is even cutting off trees and carting them away to sell logs. They want to leave behind a desert here,” a resident alleged. In the adjacent slum where former Class III and IV staff of the Dunlop colony live, a strong stench of cow dung greets an occasional visitor like me. “We have no work and no hope of work. So we have kept some cows and buffaloes and sell milk to survive,” said a Bihari labourer. I felt embarrassed addressing a meeting in their midst, asking for votes.
It’s equally hopeless in Singur, which hit the national headlines first for Tatas’ decision to manufacture the Nano car from a Greenfield factory and its subsequent exit to Sanand in Gujarat after Mamata Banerjee went on hunger strike to evict it. Farmers who sold their land know that the factory won’t come up ever and their hopes of progeny getting jobs wth the Tatas or other ancilliary manufacturing units or even in prospective hotels and restaurants are all gone. Those defiant peasants who want their land back know that the land is no more arable. It’s covered in sand; steel rods and concrete debris lay all around. Singur has reconciled itself to yet another shattered dream. My assurance to try and develop an IT Park there, given its excellent connectivity to Kolkata was greeted with the same scepticism as the pledge to build a hospital in Dhaniakhali.
Undaunted, I trudged on. Every afternoon I would board a topless Gypsy, fitted with a megaphone or a mike (microphones were not permitted till April 12 due to Board examinations). My co-workers chanted: “To strengthen future Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hands and with a pledge to develop Bengal… vote on the lotus symbol and elect BJP candidate Dr Chandan Mitra”. Riding a hoodless Gypsy was exciting although made uncomfortable by the humidity and dust. The dust clung to the moist facial skin while periodic attacks by hordes of insects attracted by the bright lamps that illuminated my face post-sundown, made matters worse.
We took breaks at market places and I initiated my own version of Modi’s game-changer ‘Chai par charcha'’, inviting locals to share a cup of tea and get to know me. This and my morning visits to bazaars, I would like to think, were novel campaign tactics. Hooghly has over 18 lakh voters, 70 percent living in remote villages. So, I figured that the best way to reach out to the maximum numbers would be at places where people generally congregate. As I discovered, there are Adivasis too in my district; I was even made to shake a leg with them on a visit to the Balagarh segment.
Considering the depth of hopelessness pervading Bengal and even the once-prosperous Hooghly district, it is perhaps not surprising that faith in the Almighty has climbed in direct proportion to desperation. For a State that has willingly suffered the yoke of ‘Godless’ Communists for 34 years, West Bengal is a remarkably devout State. In the course of my election campaign, I have probably bowed to more deities than in my life so far. I have visited temples, ashrams, Maths and other religious places and shrines in almost every segment of my lok Sabha constituency of Hooghly.
I was on one occasion advised to attend an assembly of Matuas, a close-knit community fighting for SC status. Their annual fair just outside Chinsura town entailed walking a few kilomteres before the narrow, cobbled lane opened onto the fair ground. Several hundred Matuas, who follow their female leader, the Matua Ma who resides in Bongaon district, had assembled there to pay obeisance at their own Radha-Krishna temple. I figured they were a part of the Bhakti Movement of 16th century India. Amid raucous drumbeats (for many Matuas are drummers or dhakis) and frenzied dancing with cries of ‘Hari Bol’ renting the shamiana, I was led up the steps of the temple to pray to idols of the cult figures of the Bhakti Movement, namely, lord Krishna and his consort.
Each time I began a road show or a padyatra, party workers pressed me to pray at the local Kali temple (ubiquitous in Bengal) or a Shiv Mandir. Invariably I was informed the Devi is exceptionally “Jagrat” (living) and her blessings are a must. Mostly I ignored their entreaties, saying I have already prayed to the Gods and in any case “Kan-kan mein hain Ram” (God is everywhere). It is truly astonishing that so many temples thrive in every nook and cranny of small towns and villages. Yet Bengal is generally regarded as a State of agnostics in which the BJP does not have a significant presence.
I will return to Hooghly for counting of votes on Friday. History doesn’t exactly make me cheerful about the outcome. That doesn’t matter because I have learnt so much in just six weeks. In a sense I have discovered the India I didn’t know all these years. So, jeetenge ya loosenge, Hooghly will never leave me, nor I Hooghly. That’s one pledge I know I can keep.