Why South 24 Parganas is ground zero of the electoral battle for Bengal

Summer is coming. The heat, both literal and metaphorical, has been rising as Bengal heads into a blockbuster electoral battle between the incumbent Trinamool Congress, led by chief minister Mamata Banerjee, and the challenger Bharatiya Janata Party, led by prime minister Narendra Modi. The BJP, which has never had much success in the formerly Communist-governed state, believes it’s now within striking distance of power. It is sparing no effort. A steady stream of union ministers led by Modi and home minister Amit Shah – apart from top BJP functionaries such as party chief JP Nadda, RSS leaders from Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat down, and chief ministers of BJP-governed states such as Adityanath – have been touring Bengal in continuous succession for months already.

The reason becomes apparent from the numbers. In the last assembly election in 2016, according to the Election Commission’s records, the Trinamool contested 293 of the 294 seats, and won 211. The BJP contested 291 and won three, forfeiting deposits in 263 constituencies. Things changed dramatically in the intervening years, with the Left collapsing and a lot of its former cadres, apart from disgruntled Trinamool leaders, switching sides. In the 2019 parliamentary election, the BJP won a surprising 18 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats, only four less than the Trinamool. Translated to assembly constituencies, this would mean the BJP was ahead in 121 seats while the Trinamool led in 164.

With the BJP trying to close the gap, every seat matters. There are, however, a few seats and regions that are receiving special attention. The constituency of Nandigram, where Banerjee will be taking on former lieutenant Suvendu Adhikari in his home base, is one such. A set of 31 assembly constituencies in the district of South 24 Parganas, of which the Trinamool currently holds 29 and the CPIM the remaining two, is another. Remarkably for one district, it will vote in three phases, two more than the entire state of Tamil Nadu.

South 24 Parganas is a very diverse district. It extends from Tollygunge in Kolkata Metropolitan Area, home of the Bengali film industry, in the north to the Sundarban forests, home of tiger on land and crocodile in water, in the south. It includes the port of Diamond Harbour, the predominantly Muslim area of Metiabruz, the university of Jadavpur, which is a bastion of the Left, the Hindu pilgrim site of Ganga Sagar on Sagar island, the old Ramakrishna Mission at Narendrapur, and a whole host of brand new malls, flyovers and retail outlets in several rapidly gentrifying areas at the suburban fringes of the expanding megacity.

The population dynamics of the district are complicated. According to the 2011 census, it was the second most populous district in Bengal with 81,61,961 persons. It is predominantly rural, with 74.6 percent of the population classified thus, the remaining 25.6 percent being urban. It has been urbanising rapidly: the 2001 census showed an 84.3 percent rural population. The burst of urbanisation that shifted 10 percent of the population from rural to urban in just 10 years is visible in the skyline of places such as Narendrapur, Sonarpur and Rajpur, and the entire stretch of road leading to those places. New malls, apartment blocks, and brand outlets jostle for space with poky little shops. Many of these apartments are occupied by Bengali migrants from outside Kolkata, including a sizable number from Northeast India. The narrow main roads, only a lane wide in each direction, are bustling with traffic even in the midst of the pandemic. The worst traffic jams are late at night, when the trucks start to ply. They typically ferry construction materials further south, where the urbanisation is now ongoing.

In sharp contrast to this rapid urbanisation and gentrification, or what is generally called “development”, at one end, there is chronic “underdevelopment” at the other. About half of the southern end of the district is within the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve where there is no question of building highways, flyovers, or malls. The remaining parts, between the urban north and the forested south, are a mix of rural and urban.

Agricultural landholdings are typically small, below one hectare, with 62.48 percent of operational land holdings being in this category according to the District Statistical Hand Book 2010-11. Cultivators and agricultural labourers comprise about 39 percent of the working population. Many belong to the Scheduled Castes. The district has a 30.19 percent Scheduled Caste population, the highest for any district in the state, according to the 2011 census. It was listed among the 115 “Most Backward Districts” of India by the Niti Aayog in 2018. The basics of life such as jobs, healthcare and education are lacking for many. Around 37.21 percent of the families live below the poverty line, according to district authorities.

On top of that, Cyclone Amphan wreaked havoc here in May 2020, destroying crops, fisheries and farmlands. It was a cruel blow in the midst of a pandemic and a lockdown that had brought the country to a halt, sending migrant workers working in cities back home to the districts.

Matters of livelihood are therefore of critical importance. The Trinamool has been trying to build its election campaign around these, by highlighting its development and governance initiatives. At their core is a set of government schemes called “duare sarkar” or “government at your doorsteps” which brings public services and officials to neighbourhoods. Two particular schemes rolled out by the government and taken to every neighbourhood via special camps have been popular. A health insurance scheme called Swasthya Sathi had 76,85,413 persons across the state signing up for it until February 2, 2021, according to government data. Khadya Sathi, a food security scheme, had 17,46,088 takers. Several others among the dozen schemes on offer, including Kanya Shree for promoting female education for girls up to the age of 18 years (on condition that they are unmarried, to discourage child marriages), have also been popular.

Apart from these, the party is counting on its secular image and the charisma of Banerjee. Walls painted with her image and the Trinamool symbol declare in Bengali, “Bengal prefers its own daughter.”

The BJP’s messaging is also a mix of development promises, sops and its characteristic identity politics. Shah has promised Rs 18,000 into the bank account of each farmer under the PM Kisan scheme. On March 7, speaking at a rally at Brigade Ground in Kolkata, Modi attacked Banerjee’s government for destroying democracy in Bengal and promised to bring about changes in the police, government systems and administration. “Didi had given a slogan of change when fighting against the Leftists. She had promised to work for Ma, Mati, Manush,” he said, using the Bengali words for mother, earth, people. “For the past 10 years, the Trinamool has been in government here. Have ordinary Bengali families experienced the change that they had hoped for?”

On his part, he once again pledged “ashol poriborton” meaning “real change”. The promised change is towards building a “Shonar Bangla” meaning “Golden Bengal” – ironically an expression borrowed from a song by Rabindranath Tagore that is now the national anthem of Bangladesh. While Modi himself avoided direct communal attacks, other speakers who shared the dais with him were quite open about what they were aiming at. Adhikari, the Nandigram candidate, accused Banerjee of being the phuphi, or paternal aunt, of infiltrators and khala, maternal aunt, of the Rohingya. He added that Banerjee would turn Bengal into Kashmir if voted back to power – a change from his earlier statement that she would turn Bengal into West Bangladesh.

Less than a week before, Adityanath, the BJP’s first star campaigner to hold a rally after the election dates were announced, had raised his favourite issues of cow protection and “love jihad”. The location of his rally was the communally sensitive Muslim-majority Malda district bordering Bangladesh.

The entry into the electoral fray of a local Muslim cleric named Abbas Siddiqui, the Pirzada of Furfura Sharif dargah, and of Asaduddin Owaisi and his AIMIM party, have further polarised the election. Siddqui launched a new party in January with a predominantly Muslim base. Called the Indian Secular Front, or ISF, it is in an uneasy alliance with the Congress and the Left parties. A joint rally of the three parties was held at Kolkata’s Brigade Ground on February 28 where an estimated two lakh people turned up. The stars of the show were energetic young ISF supporters, and Siddiqui himself. He walked on stage in the middle of Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury’s speech, interrupting him in the process, and received a roaring welcome. The matter of seat-sharing between the Congress and the ISF has still not been concluded, and with most Congress seats coming from the Muslim-dominated districts of Malda and Murshidabad, the negotiations are bound to be tricky.

Religion, language, caste and class are all in play, and every possible social faultline in this complex landscape is being exploited for potential political gain by some party or the other in the electoral battle for Bengal.

Samrat X, a former editor of newspapers in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, is currently based in Kolkata.