Elections in Bengal and Assam

The Good:
a. Communists have been handed a thorough drubbing. We won’t have to look at the incompetent, violence backed self-righteousness from Karat et. al. Good riddance to putrid trash. People of WB seem to have woken up from a deep red slumber.

b. Seemingly fair and violence free elections in Assam and WB. People defied heat and threats to vote. These are signs of a mature democracy.

c. Gogoi has used all his political acumen to win a third term despite of mediocre to bad performance. A shrewd political manipulator like his ilk in Kerala.

d. Gogoi has made overtures to the ULFA and used their help to win the elections. Maybe now there can be a lasting peace and ULFA will give up their murderous ways and stop providing the ISI with yet another way to hurt us.

e. MB (Mamta Bannerjee’s long and tenacious tapasya has finally yielded her what she wanted). I hope she proves Oscar Wilde wrong who said, "In life there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what you want, the other is getting it."

The Bad:
a. MB is an activist leader and not a politician leader. A rabble-rouser and extremely honest, she is more like Mahmoud Ahmadinijad than Bhai Narendra Modi. Her performance in the railways stands out because of all the SOPs for WB rather than her performance. She used the Railways as her own ATM to fund her victory in WB rather than using black money stowed away in Switzerland. Performing worse than Laloo Yadav is not exactly and endorsement of any kind.

b. I am afraid that she is going to turn out just like Chandrababu Naidu who used to use his MPs in the central govt. as leverage for unlimited funds from Atalji’s govt. MB is now going to ask for disproportionate funds for WB. While the central govt. should help out WB recover from communist inflicted wounds, giving them too much money at the expense of other poor states is unfair. What is even unfair is that the taxpayers of Gujarat and Karnataka are now going to fund WB and get lesser funds than is commensurate with their contribution.

c. MB needs to start from scratch and build WB following examples of Bhai Narendra. She needs to examine the strength of the workforce of WB and try to attract industries that can provide employment by offering them SOPs. This is a taller order than suggested. Workers in WB are used to excessive entitlements like large amounts of holidays. I worked in WB in a factory where each worker had more than sixty days of paid vacation every year. This on top of large number of national and state holidays. If you attach weekends to it, you really wonder how much did they work? Mamta’s real challenge would be changing the work habits of the workers over there without upsetting them. The workers need to realize that they will have to sacrifice their vacation time and reward the investors with hard work. In other words look at Gujarat.

The Ugly:
a. MB used the Maoists to break into the red bastion. If we think that those terrorists are going to walk away from this kind of a Faustian pact, then we are mistaken. They will demand their pound of flesh eventually and she will have to pay. By that it means the aam aadmi will have to pay.

b. MB also pried away the Muslim voters from the communists by all kinds of appeasement tricks. They would now demand their pound of flesh. That would be lesser of the worries. What worries me more is that now with the new empowerment, they will harass the hapless Hindus of WB. Expect more repeats of the Deganga episodes. In my mind, choosing between the communists and a govt. backed by Maoists and the Muslim vote bank (I am talking the fatwa driven Muslim voters) is like choosing between jumping from a tall building and a taller building.

c. Gogoi has taken a huge risk by talking peace with the ULFA. If they do not respond to his peace overtures then there will be hell to pay for the aam aadmi in Assam.

d. People of WB have voted out the communists but they still get 40% of the total votes. NO MISTAKE. IT IS 40%. Congress is ruling the nation is less that 30% of votes.

e. BJP’s performance has been miserable. The BJP leaders’ lack of focus and knowledge about the WB electorate was prominently on display. Thirty five years of communism has taken deep roots in WB. Even in defeat the commies polled 40% and yet the BJP contested all the seats instead of concentrating the efforts on the winnable seats. Of course the flip side of this is that they may have realized that they are not going to win any seats and by contesting all the seats they are trying to position themselves for the future. If that is the case then it was a good ploy only if local leaders are nurtured who will work with the RSS and other grass root Hindu organizations to build a base for the future.

f. If the BJP had made a pre-poll alliance with their old partners AGP, they would have won Assam. Either the BJP leadership or (most likely) the AGP made an extremely costly mistake. Yet another example of the arrogance of the regional parties handing over advantage to a corrupt UPA.

g. The day after counting is done, the UPA has raised petrol prices by Rs.5. My congratulations to all the voters who have ensured victory of the Congress and their partners.