The Economy, Stupid

The Bharatiya Janata Party must acquit itself with responsibility and dignity in the West Bengal election. Local leaders speak loosely of using the ‘Durga card’. Durga is not a card. She is a much revered deity in Bengal. She must not be encashed for electoral purposes.

Smriti Irani’s reference to Durga in Parliament was in a particular context. It cannot by any means spill onto the streets of Calcutta. The central BJP should put a stop to such attempts by its local unit. West Bengal has enough concerns of its own to add a beleaguered goddess to it.

The state has been brought to financial ruin by a Chief Minister who has little understanding of economics and cares even less. Growth and development in West Bengal are not keeping pace with the rest of the country and especially the states in the West and South. This should be the chief campaign issue for the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The Marxist opposition to Mamata Bannerjee in the state has a still poorer reputation in matters of growth and development. In decades of Marxist rule, West Bengal was plunged into backwardness from which it shows scant signs of emerging. If there was any entrepreneurship in the state to speak of, it collapsed with the jute economy and the onset of Naxalism in the 1970s, from which there has been no recovery.

The erstwhile Marxist government of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee tried to revive the economy using ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. It grabbed rich farmlands to give to industry and triggered Mamata’s shrill agitation in Singhur, etc, which drove fear into the hearts of industrialists. The redoubtable Tatas fled. Now her pleas to them to return are falling on deaf ears.

The first and last victims of Bengal’s backwardness and de-industrialization are the people of the state and they ought to be the BJP’s constituency. People are tired of Mamata Bannerjee’s antics and inability to deliver on the economic front and they see no hope from the CPI-M as well.

This writer would not trust one rupee of his money to Sitaram Yechury’s economic and financial skills or to those of his nominees in West Bengal. This is the greatest predicament and tragedy of Bengal.

There can be no hope from the Congress party too seeing how Manmohan Singh was stymied from carrying out critical economic reforms at the Centre. The ruin of the national economy is UPA’s doing over 10 years of unmitigated loot and venality.

Witnessing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s herculean efforts to revive the economy at the Centre, the people of Bengal would place hope on the BJP to do the same in West Bengal, provided the party visualizes politics beyond emotionalism and short-term gains.

Winning elections on non-emotional subjects and something as esoteric as economic revival is not easy. But that is no reason to give up. Modi didn’t give up on that theme in the 2014 general election despite abundant attempts by the Opposition to distract him.

The Bengal BJP should learn from Modi’s success in 2014. Voters want change and a reprieve from looting and growing backwardness. Bengal has a key role to play in the country’s growth and development. On Bengal’s growth depends the future growth of Eastern India. The BJP should be sensitive and responsive to this fact.

The party should embark on the arduous task of convincing Bengal’s voters to its agenda of growth and development. It will take time. It may or not bring short term results. It may have moderate impact on the polls. But this is the path for the BJP to take.

Elections are not won in a day. BJP’s West Bengal leaders should not forget this. The party’s growth at the Centre and in the states took decades of hard work and dedication. That dedication must now be seen in Bengal, but far removed from emotional issues.

The BJP should have its sights set solely and entirely on the electorate. It must speak the solitary language of growth and development. It will be baited by the Opposition. Votebank politics will be atrociously played. The papers will be partisan.

Big monies will have gone to proprietors to take sides. (In Uttar Pradesh running up to the elections, news channels are already fixing deals for ‘positive coverage’.) The BJP, however, should stick to its core agenda of growth and development.

Bengal comes first. Who wins the election is secondary. The BJP should put its best foot forward in the state.

P.S.: The Prime Minister should do minimum campaigning in assembly elections. It befits his office to keep away from the rough and tumble of state polls. He should trust to the BJP chief and second line leaders to carry the show.

This article was first published here.