One thing that can be said about the West Bengal election is that it is not an unequal election. The Prime Minister has clearly met his match in Mamata Banerjee, the West Bengal Chief Minister. And more. S. Prasannarajan, editor, Open magazine, wrote that there has been no local election since 2014 and he is right for every electoral battle, down to the municipal polls in Telangana recently, has been about the PM’s track record, and has had him as the chief campaigner. So it is with West Bengal, but in the feisty TMC leader the PM may have met his match, both when it comes to active campaigning and the art of political spin.
As Suhel Seth, commentator and marketing maven, told me in the Roundtable recently, Mamata Banerjee can spin as well as Amit Shah, and no one can play the victim card better than her. She did so successfully in Singur when she took on the CPM and now she is doing the same with the BJP. What is strange is the way the BJP reacted to her. They sent a couple of junior level leaders to the hospital to call on her but not before the entire party machinery made it clear that they thought Mamata’s injuries were “fake” and this was all part of a political drama.
As Seth pointed out, all that it would have taken was a call from the Prime Minister to Mamata Banerjee to set the issue at rest. It would have also been the statesman like call to make. But maybe the PM did not do so, keeping in mind the bitter and sometimes fatal exchanges that have taken place between the TMC and BJP workers on ground.
As Nistula Hebber, political editor, The Hindu, pointed out, five years ago when these same states went to polls and the results poured in with only the BJP winning Assam, Amit Shah congratulated every winner (including Mamata who won Bengal) but not Pinarayi Vijayan, the Kerala Chief Minister. When asked why, Shah commented that the bloody clashes between the BJP and the UDF workers stopped him from extending this courtesy.
That apart, has the BJP erred in not sympathising with Mamata Banerjee? Will she use it, as Rasheed Kidwai, author of 24 Akbar Road, seems to suggest, as her Aandhi moment (in the movie based on Indira Gandhi, the lead actress Suchitra Sen campaigns with a bandage on her head). Definitely, the BJP needs to do more than wave it away as a mere foot injury, for social media is full of pictures of first Mamata being carried out from the scene of injury and then lying in a hospital bed. Political analyst and commentator Sandip Ghose is right when he says that since we live in a post-truth world the BJP could have handled the optics better. As he adds, Mamata Banerjee comes with a Teflon-coating in Bengal. However, Ghose sees a ray of hope for the BJP for he feels that there is a difference between the TMC and Mamata Banerjee in that she may not be able to translate her popularity into votes for the party.
However opinion surveys differ and while they have been known to get it all wrong (oh so many times!), the latest episode has only served to add to the Mamata mystique.