Of Triumphs and Losses

State Assembly Elections were recently held in five states of India – Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala, Assam, and Puducherry.  Let us look at West Bengal and Assam – two bordering states of Bangladesh.

Despite conflicting predictions, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee (61) has retained leadership of West Bengal. Her Trinamool Congress (TMC) won an overwhelming 212 seats in the 294-seat Vidhan Sabha.

Mamata split from the Indian National Congress and formed the Trinamool Congress in 1998. Since then, a determined Mamata made inroads in West Bengal politics and finally won a historic majority in the State Assembly Elections in 2011, winning 184 seats and ousting the  34-year old deeply embedded CPI(M)-led Left-front government (1977- 2011).

This time, the confident Mamata did not go for any electoral alliance with any party. She single-handedly took on the Congress-CPI(M) alliance. Congress-CPI got only 70 seats, while the BJP managed only 3. Compared to 2011, her victory this time bears significance as she has come back with a larger mandate.

Her victory can be assigned to several factors. Though there were smear campaigns against her, people believe that she is "honest" and "clean". The Saradha scam and the Narada scandal could not dent her clean image. Analysts say that TMC's better organisation and Mamata's efforts to deliver good governance and her "pro-people and pro-rural programme" helped her win rural votes. After the election result,s she said, "Despite the best efforts of all opposition to malign us, the blessings of Ma, Mati, Manush [mother, land, people] have reinstated us in power". Even the BJP paid compliments to Mamata, saying that the landslide victory was due to Mamata's "clean image". 

However, Mamata will face challenges from several fronts – she has to meet the rising expectations of her voters; reign in supporters committing violence; repay the Rs. 3 billion central government debt, which will curtail development projects; attract investments to the state; and forestall Congress and BJP conspiracies to unseat her government.

Mamata's relations with Bangladesh appear to be good. She visited Bangladesh twice – once in February 2015 to attend the Mother Language Day commemoration, and again in June 2015 with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

During her visit, she assured Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to have "trust" in her, apparently over the Teesta Treaty. Can she convert that assurance into reality, keeping in mind that the Teesta Treaty is a central government issue? It is well-known that Mamata was against signing the treaty.

Mamata Banerjee was sworn-in as Chief Minister on May 27 for the second term at a colourful ceremony, where Industries Minister Amir Hossain Amu represented Bangladesh.

The BJP-led alliance made significant inroads in the otherwise strong Congress bastion in Assam, winning 86 seats in the 126-seat House. BJP, for the first time, is leading the state government after it ousted Congress, which held power without interruption for 15 years.

BJP did not make the mistakes it committed in Bihar in November 2015. BJP has a tie-up with Asom Gono Parishad (AGP) since 2001, and this time the local party Bodoland People's Front (BPF) was also on board. It also chose tribal millionaire Sarbananda Sonowal as its Chief Minister candidate. He was sworn-in on May 24.

Assamese politics has always revolved around the so-called immigration from Bangladesh. Thus what potentially ensured BJP's victory was the anti-immigrant (immigrant here mainly refers to Bangladeshis) slogan. Formed in 1985, AGP raised the bogey of "illegal migrants from Bangladesh", when Prafulla Kumar Mohanta became the Chief Minister of the state. 

Apart from exploiting Congress' corruption scandals and misrule in Assam, the saffron alliance rode on the same narrow communal slogan and a mellowed Hindutva agenda. Playing on the fear that Bengali Muslims from Bangladesh will inundate Assam and take over the land helped consolidate the Hindus of Assamese, and Bengali and people of tribal origins under the saffron flag.

Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh have assured Assamese that the Indo-Bangladesh border will be sealed to end the problem of infiltration. India has already built a 3,406 kilometres-long fence on the 4,097 kilometres border - a large part of which is electrified. Only a few kilometres of the 263-km Assam-Bangladesh border remain unfenced.

What surprised many is that given the current level of understanding between Delhi and Dhaka, the BJP chose to play the cheap anti-Bangladesh card to win elections in a bordering state of Bangladesh.

People actually migrate to richer pastures, not to economically poor lands, where sectarian violence is common and prone to insurgency. The North Eastern States of India are a neglected region and much poorer than Bangladesh.

It must be reiterated here that Bangla-speaking Muslims in Assam have not been regularly migrating to Assam since the Partition of 1947. But that is another narrative for some other time. One only hopes that the basic rights of 35 percent of the  minority Muslims will not be denied under the new state government.

In Tamil Nadu, the AIADMK party of J. Jayalalitha won 134 seats in the 232-seat Assembly and shall form the government for the sixth time. In Kerala, the CPM-led Left Democratic Front took 91 seats in the 140-seat Assembly. The Congress-DMK coalition won 17 seats in the 30-seat Union Territory, Puducherry.

Results show that the Congress is unable to convert its share of votes (percentage of votes has remained same) into numbers in the assemblies. BJP, by making alliances of convenience, has got the numbers in Assam. BJP now controls more states than Congress and its allies in India's 29 states. 

After regional parties won the Delhi and Bihar elections in 2015, regional leaders were talking to form a third front to oppose BJP. Now with TMC winning West Bengal, will a third front emerge to halt the Hindutva bandwagon?

The writer is a former Ambassador and Secretary.