The question baffles political observers before each poll in West Bengal – why is there so much political violence in a culturally evolved state? The question has resurfaced before the three-tier panchayat polls in July. The answer can be arrived at from the series of contradictions – or conflicts – on nearly every aspect of the electoral process.
Claims, Counterclaims, High Stakes
During the filing of nomination, at least half a dozen people, allegedly, were killed, an unknown but very high number of people were injured, and candidates could not file nominations en masse, and bombs were hurled randomly. On the contrary, the Kolkata-based Anand Bazar Patrika reported that the State Election Commission, a state-appointed referee, has denied deaths, confirmed 100 injuries and recovered 61 bombs thus highlighting a contradiction between various sources about the degree of violence. The violent events include several skirmishes within the ruling Trinamool Congress as well.
The other significant contradiction in the 2023 panchayat poll – compared to the last one (2018) – is about the volume of nomination. In 2018, the opposition could not register their candidates in 34 percent of seats – a record in Bengal since three-tier village council elections started in 1978. Trinamool was reprimanded across the board and even Trinamool supporters opined that its poor performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections was an outcome of the violence engineered in the 2018 panchayat poll. In 2023, the percentage of nominations filed by the opposition is way higher.
Yet the opposition claimed that they were “obstructed” in many places, while the ruling party alleged that the opposition could not find enough candidates. Meanwhile, the Calcutta High Court ordered deployment of central forces in all districts, which was challenged by the state government in the Supreme Court.
The conflicts – which are often technical and minor – are played up in both the mainstream and the social media 24/7 in Bengal and an atmosphere is created where a victory or defeat, even in a village council poll, is projected as the ultimate purpose in a cadre or leader’s political career. It escalates tension resulting in large-scale violence.
Another reason for panchayat poll violence is procedural. In Bengal, candidates contest with party symbols. Dr Sushil Trivedi, the first Election Commissioner of Chattisgarh (2002-08) and an expert of local elections, opines violence “sharpens” in panchayat polls when symbols are awarded as candidates’ political identity is exposed. In many states, the party symbols are not used for the village council elections minimising violence. However, this has its own innate problem. The winner, almost always, joins the ruling party after the poll, reducing the efficacy of the democratic exercise.
Left, Congress As “Class Enemies”
The continuous opposition on every aspect is a feature of Bengal’s politics and history. Way before the politics of polarisation began, Bengal’s key parties – the Left Front and the Congress – were considered “class enemies” and pursued two diametrically opposite political lines. Congress represented the landowners and the Left defended the landless. It triggered an acrimonious – and somewhat sectarian – politics. Tens of thousands were killed.
As Congress eroded, the reason to continue with the “class war” ended and a new contradiction emerged as Left’s focus shifted to resource mobilisation in a cash-strapped state. Mamata Banerjee envisioned this period better. She quickly designed her model which was not based on investment assurances from big capital.
Big money – she realised – does not change its course overnight to explore an uncharted territory, especially when Congress debilitated Bengal and east India’s industrial sector (1947-1966) as argued by the journalist Ranajit Roy in his seminal The Agony of West Bengal (1971).
In 1947, West Bengal “accounted for about 27 percent of the gross (national) industrial output,” wrote Roy, underscoring that Congress’s industrial policy in Bengal brought it down to 17.20 percent in 1960-61. The crisis was aggravated by the Left’s excessive focus on agrarian economy at the cost of industrial reorientation.
Entrenched “Party Society”
Soon after Banerjee moved into the Chief Minister’s office in 2011, she focused on developing the medium and small sector which is labour intensive, modernised the state’s tax collection mechanism, and increased the efficiency of multiple service delivery projects which entails reasonable financial gains – often illegitimate – for the party. The plan secured Trinamool over the last decade, but has its flipside.
The party – like it was in Left’s time – emerged as the largest “employer”. People’s dependence on the party for financial benefits increased.
The funding at the panchayat level for developmental projects and implementation of welfare schemes is reasonably high for a state with the second highest population density. In order to access a tiny or sizable portion of the panchayat “pie” it is desirable to align with the party especially when legitimate jobs are scarce.
Therefore, the hoi polloi engages with the same dispensation for decades underpinning the significance of a much discussed “party society”. The “party society” promotes political sectarianism, which accentuates violence. Data furnished by the main political parties before 2021 Assembly polls, underscores huge loss of lives in political violence over the last years.
Trinamool claimed 1,067 of their workers were eliminated since the party’s formation (1998) till 2020, broadly averaging a death each week. Home Minister Amit Shah indicated that nearly 130 BJP workers were killed in the run-up to the assembly polls. For the Left Front, it was 615 between May 2009 and November 2019, averaging 61 deaths annually. The decades in the past century were no less bloody.
The toll is expected to climb in the run up to the panchayat poll as a victory would guarantee relative ease of living for Trinamool’s beneficiaries over the next five years, provided the party wins the assembly poll in 2026.
Suvojit Bagchi is a Kolkata-based journalist and previously worked with Ananda Bazar Patrika, BBC World Service and The Hindu. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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