Minority votes, women, youth contribute to didi's spectacular win

Putting an end to the endless speculations over her eroding popularity, Mamata Banerjee and her party Trinamool Congress came back for a second term in Bengal, winning a massive 211 of the 294 seats of the state assembly, decimating the state's unusual left-congress combine. 

Banerjee’s win was expected, albeit not as spectacular as it turned out to be on Thursday. 

She is the TMC’s face for Bengal, and has an ability to connect instantly with the masses. 

She has successfully maintained her popularity in rural Bengal through sops and by successfully implementing some of the popular Central government schemes, such as providing the poor rice at Rs2 and building roads in villages through the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna.  

Banerjee, in fact, took pride in her rapport with rural Bengal voters. To ensure a better connect with the tribals there, the TMC had also released their manifesto in a Santhali language in the Ol Chiki script, among other languages.

Had it not been for the twin jolt of a flyover collapse in Kolkata, a Narada scam and to a lesser extent, and the unprecedented left and Congress alliance to a smaller extent, TMC’s win was much predicted. 

These, added to the growing disillusionment of the urban middle class towards TMC’s hooliganism, corruption charges against its leaders, infighting within the party, TMC syndicates as well as an autocratic and whimsical chief minister, had added to the perception that the opposition (the left-Congress combine) may become stronger this time. A sightly-nervous Banerjee, too, had appealed people to vote for her and consider her as the candidate for all the 294 seats of the state in one of her election campaigns. 

In the subsequent campaigns, she had also apologised to the people of Bengal. 

Thursday's results testified her emotional appeals had paid off richly. 

An utter disappointment with the left government and Didi’s clean, pro-poor and street fighter image, brought the majority of Bengal’s people to the TMC fold, including the urban population. TMC won all the 11 seats in Bengal’s capital Kolkata and all of the 16 seats in neighboring Howrah. 

Important factors that contributed to her win was also Banerjee a massive share of the Muslim vote, comprising 29 per cent of the total votes, votes women and the youth, who in all probabilities, unfazed by the corruption charges against her party.

Barring some traditional Congress stronghold seats of Muslim-dominated Maldah and Murshidabad, the Muslim population areas of south and central Bengal, including Kolkata’s neighboring 24 Paraganasa and Singur voted en-masse for Banerjee.    

Banerjee’s decision to rope in veteran Marxist leader Abdur Razzak Molla, a prominent Muslim face, who had opposed the left front government’s land acquisition in places where the minority was dominant, helped here.   

Banerjee had also announced special grants for madrassas. She has started stipends for imams, ensured scholarship for Muslim students and setting up of Haj houses. As Molla had put it, “she had given an identity to the community”-- who paid her back generously through their votes. 

Many women voters who connect easily to the TMC chief is likely to have casted their votes for her. The Mamata Banerjee wave also swept off the rural and urban youths,  even as they were the most vulnerable to the corruption charges.

What else could explain the victory of five TMC candidates stung by Narada scam?

A charismatic Banerjee also gained heavily from the five per cent decline in the BJP vote share as against the Lok Sabha polls. The votes swung towards TMC instead of the left-Congress combine. A significant division of votes observed across Bengal also benefitted the party in different ways, like gaining her party 21 of the 54 seats of north Bengal, as against the 10 seats predicted. 

Despite the win, Banerjee has tough goals to achieve in the next five years. Her biggest challenge in her team, both the top brass and the base workers, most of whom, have corruption charges against them.

To control them and the infighting within them that also takes the form of serious gang wars in places like Maldah will be a major task for her party, 

Banerjee also has a humongous task of making the state safe for women, which has earned the notorious reputation, after a spurt in crimes against women in the last five years.

Aside protecting the interests of the rural population and the tribals, Banerjee will also have to get business in the state, and tackle the burning problem of unemployed youths in Bengal.