COMMENTARY

West Bengal Elections

The Verdict of Politics
Ranabir Samaddar

Engaging with the change that

has actually taken place in the
political sphere of West Bengal,
it is argued that the results of the
assembly elections point to the
subalternisation of politics in the
face of the oppositions hollow
campaign to restore democracy.

Ranabir Samaddar (ranabir@mcrg.ac.in) is the

Distinguished Chair, Calcutta Research Group.
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

JUNE 11, 2016

he outcome of the West Bengal

assembly elections 2016 presents
a set of unique traits.
First, this election must be considered
as one that involved the deepest dynamics
of social divisions and stratification.
A second trait of this election was
its confrontation with an abyss created
by the powerful forces in the West
Bengal society bent upon achieving an
absolute negation of the presence of the
lower orders in politics. This was evident by the absence of any positive
programme on the part of the major political parties. Instead, they relied on
the negative vote.
On one hand, the ruling party, the All
India Trinamool Congress (TMC) claimed
that it developed West Bengal, but
avoided any call to the lower classes to
defend the government, scared of the
powerful forces in society. The TMC

vol lI no 24

seemed reluctant to raise the focal point,

namely, development for whom, and spell
out why its developmental policy marked
a departure from the neo-liberal developmental policy of the previous regime.
On the other hand, the leftliberal
CongressCommunist Party of IndiaMarxist (CPI(M))combine attempted a
restoration of power lost in the elections of
2011, avoiding any politics, any references
to classes, divisions, and programmes.
Third, logistics became the core of the
electoral exercise. Elections governed by
logistical considerations do not furnish
political arguments to any party, holding others to be adversaries. The more
elections became a logistical exercise,
the louder became the liberal call to
freedom through law and order, strengthening the state machinery of policing so
that citizens could enjoy democracy,
with the police forces guiding them.
Elections had to be regimented, garrisoned, phased, policed, patrolled, monitored, relayed, measured, evaluated,
and judged as they progressed. With
calculated deployment of guns and men,
democracy was to be ensured. This was
a logistical operation, the hallmark of
neo-liberal governance.
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COMMENTARY

Finally, this election was ideologically

promoted as a fight against an authoritarian, monarchic, lumpen, undemocratic,
and despotic government. The call to
fight for democracy constituted the liberal
being-together of our times. Unlike the
post-Emergency election of 1977, where
the call to fight for democracy had a mass
response, the democratic call in West
Bengal this time had no social input for the
lower classes nor set any specific political
discourse for them. It instead upheld the
intellectual community as saviour of an
endangered society, and sought to
change in this way the very concept of a
democratic political community.
LeftLiberal Discourse
The high intellectuals in Bengal, unhappy
with lost authority and injured legitimacy
to speak for the society, articulated the
call for democracy putting forward the
idea of an abyss. This, to say the least,
added to the unpredictability of the election. The subalternisation of politics has
made politics much less Kolkata- and
media-centric, to that extent the TMCs
strength was almost proportional to the
destitution in society.

NEW

TMC had never been as organised as

the Left Front, and had emerged primarily as a movement: unruly, uncontrolled,
and as a response of the subalterns to
the six-decade long rule of the Left Front.
Invariably, in this response, there was a
due amount of lumpenism and crime, but
also an entry of poor people who envisaged the TMC as their protector. The populism that TMC represented was perhaps
the last resort of the subaltern masses in
the trying times of globalisation.
The left had thought of development
not only in a highly statist manner, but
progressively in a neo-liberal manner.
The upper middle class intellectuals in
Kolkata, satiated with the principles of
enlightenment, enjoyed the prestige of
the left and the power of the right for all
these years. Hence the aspirations of the
higher classes more or less supported the
Left Fronts industrialisation drive and
articulated the cultural contours of the
peculiarly leftliberal ideology.
In short, intellectuals never reconciled themselves to the fact that Bengal
was taking the path of Bihars politics. A
new style of functioning, political patronage, welfare schemes, questions of

caste and social exclusion were gradually being addressed in Bengals distinct
manner, which reminded us of the way
issues of social justice were raised in
Bihar from Karpoori Thakur to Lalu
Yadav, and now Nitish Kumar.
If TMC has won despite middle class
disenchantment and upper class opposition, then we can say that a model based
on a strong government which has marginalised the opposition and rules the
state under a stable, populist, benevolent, autocratic leadership is generally
succeeding in the peripheries of India.
Jayalalithaa, Navin Patnaik, Nitish Kumar
and Mamata Banerjee will all be seen as
the makers of that model. In this milieu of
emphatic subalternisation, both lumpenisation and empowerment struck together,
difficult to distinguish from each other.
Stung by reality, the educated in Bengal
asked: what is this paribartan that had
been assured in 2011? The change of 2011
was in many ways novel, though often presented by the learned classes as a ridiculous episode, a moment of uncertain madness, when people erred. Yet this was a
new form of socialisation, a sort of anarchy
created by a curious, single blow (of 2011)

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vol lI no 24

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Economic & Political Weekly

COMMENTARY

that has destabilised traditional relationships based on authority and hierarchy.

The chaos scares the upper classes: hence
the discourse of brink, void, decline, ruin,
and the consequent cry for democracy.
But in this discourse, it is evident why and
how the liberalleft combine lost the working class. The neo-liberal discourse, both
euphoric at the prospect of restoration
and worried at the prospect of anarchy,
is tied to certain events inscribed in the
political and social contentions of our time.
Logistical Exercise
This election saw a logistical planning of
elections which led to a poll schedule
stretching over six and half phases with
intriguing developments during the morethan-month-long duration. During this
time, the banal became spectacular: the
save democracy plank and media link-up
did not happen without design. It wanted to and perhaps did set the agenda for
the Election Commission (EC) to intervene. Phasing the elections ostensibly for
logistical management made the situation
unequal for the adversaries. The domination of logistical discourse, aimed at
helping the cause of restoration, invited
speculation and the bookies went wild,
though most predicted a win for TMC
with a low scoreline.
With large scale participation of women
voters the guess became even more uncertain. In one district, Murshidabad, for instance, for 22 seats the number of women
casting votes shot up from 16,92,903 in
2011 to 19,50,385 in 2016. In 2011 more
men (17,10,437) had voted than women
(16,92,903). In 2016 women (19,50,385)
outnumbered men (19,39,208). The
rumour mills conjectured what such a
large voter turnout, thanks to the management of democracy by the EC, would
mean for election outcomes. In all this, it
was conveniently forgotten that in 2011,
the voter turnout was high, in fact fractionally better at 84.33%.
Lower Classes and Populism
In any case, with a high index of opposition unity, why was there no swing in
favour of the opposition?
Corruption, small and medium scale by
Indian standards, buttressed through chit
funds, graft and the syndicate business
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

JUNE 11, 2016

have been a part of the TMC rule, as much

as the TMC rule has been acknowledged as
developmental. This association cannot be
regarded as accidental. Much of the smalland medium-scale corruption which has
its genesis in the long Left Front rule, is
now held up by the media as spectacular;
however, the more important point is that
a developmental policy marked by petty
production, rental transactions (mainly
skimming money through the procurement system), and large-scale construction activity is bound to produce peripheral income under the aegis of corruption. There is no way for the TMC government with its loose mode of mobilising
masses to control this. The developmental policy will also spawn rent-seeking
activity. One reason why this does not
disturb the vote bank of the TMC is the
lower class foundation of this corruption.
So with the verdict out on the save
democracy versus the poor needs development campaign, can we say that a
Bengal model of governance is emerging?
We need some more years to arrive at a
definite answer. But we know this much
that by financing the traditional social
particularly youthclubs the TMC and its
leader Mamata Banerjee can now afford to
ignore the high intellectuals. She can claim
to represent the masses. She reminds us of
Lalu Yadav, who in Bihar spent 15 years
empowering backward castes at the
expense of the upper-caste elite, at times
by dubious modes. She also reminds us of
Nitish Kumar, who had followed a developmental policy. Through all these she is

creating a model of a strong, highly centralised administration, empowering the bureaucracy and asking it to deliver results.
Is this populism? Yes. Will it also meet
its limits? Yes. But, while it may reach its
economic limits sooner given the neoliberal central economic policies, its
political possibilities may last longer. It
may innovate, develop, find new forms,
and mobilise people in newer ways
against the effects of neo-liberal economy.
The cry to save democracy, saving Bengal
from anarchy and corruption, may not
mean much in such a milieu. This is
where the fortune of the restoration
agenda may be different than that of the
velvet uprising in Eastern Europe notwithstanding the similarity of the two.
The history of the engagement of Marxism with populism, the idea of the people
and the popular, is long and tortuous. This
history perhaps began with Marxs admiration of Nikolai Chernyshevskii, and Lenins
long engagement with Russian populism,
Antonio Gramscis ideas of the people and
the national-popular. It is marked by a
variety of historical experiences of populist defiance in the entire postcolonial
world, including Latin America. Lower
class responses form the basis of popular
reasoning. Unfortunately the Indian left
trapped in liberal reasoning never cared
to examine the history of populism in
India and its subterranean presence in
our times. Hence, its failure to come to
terms dialectically with populism and the
popular, and thus strategise its response
towards social transformation.

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