[Though one may take that it's rather self-evident that the portions in bold, in the two comments below, are essentially echoing each other, it may not be altogether a bad idea to specially pinpoint that.]
I/II. A remarkably cool and clear-headed explication. Also hits the nail right on its head - quite unfussingly. (Ref.: < https://indianexpress.com/elections/prashant-kishor-assembly-elections-mamata-banerjee-and-modi-tmc-bjp-clash-7249654/ >.) (May also look up and compare with: 'West Bengal: 2021 State Poll: The Shape of Things to Come' at < https://groups.google.com/g/greenyouth/c/NtUv9OsTN2s/m/7KC_sXCLAAAJ>.) <<Poll strategist Prashant Kishor says Bengal is a fight between Mamata and Modi and turncoats don’t matter, explains how BJP creates fear before a contest, and warns that *if TMC loses Bengal, India will be headed for one nation, one party* [emphasis added], with BJP controlling people’s lives ... The BJP’s strategy in Bengal has five legs. One is polarisation (ref., e.g.: < https://m.thewire.in/article/communalism/nandigram-west-bengal-election-mini-pakistan-suvendu-adhikari-mamata-muslim>). Second, they wanted to discredit Mamata Banerjee and create widespread anger against her. Third, they used all means to make sure that the TMC as a political entity collapses. The fourth strategy has been to get support of the Scheduled Castes. Fifth, they are banking on Mr Modi’s popularity. Now, they have been successful on all five counts to varying degrees. They have been able to polarise, but the question is whether they have polarised the electorate enough to cross the threshold of 60% (of the majority votes). Historically, when elections happen in a polarised atmosphere, the threshold has been around 50 to 55%. What I mean is that when an election happens in a polarised atmosphere — in Gujarat post-2002, or in Uttar Pradesh post-Babri Masjid — usually we see 50 to 55% of the majority community vote for the BJP. In Bengal they have to break that threshold. *They [i.e. BJP] cannot win Bengal unless they get at least 60% of the majority [i.e. Hindu] votes* [emphasis added]… I don’t think Bengal is as polarised as we have seen in other parts of India. ... Yes, it [i.e. anti-incumbency] is a factor and that’s why the effort is to mitigate it to the extent possible. Almost 60% of the Block presidents are now new. More than 80 MLAs have been dropped. All those things, I hope, have contributed to mitigate... I am not saying everyone will become a fan of your government, but it will certainly help mitigate some of the anger, if there was any. ... (On Brand Modi) I am not an expert but the BJP usually underperforms in Vidhan Sabha elections compared to the Lok Sabha polls. The performance in the Lok Sabha can be attributed to Mr Modi’s popularity, but the reverse is also true — the under-performance is because of his inability to transfer his votes to the provincial leader. If you plot it on a graph, you will see a downward trend (in Assembly poll results) since 2014. I am not saying he is not popular, but his ability to transfer votes is probably starting to go down a little bit... For example, *since 2019, the BJP’s performance in Assembly polls has seen a double-digit percentage point decline in vote share, whether it is Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Delhi or Bihar. Everywhere they have seen close to 12 percentage point decline since 2019* [emphasis added]. This underperformance was in high single digits between 2014 and 2019. ... Unless you have substantive proof [of EVM manipulation] to back what you are saying, it’s just gossip. Even if it is true, I don’t have proof... ... I have said this in the context of the Bengal elections... If the BJP were to win, we are looking at the prospect of one nation, one party. Why do I say so? We have seen governments with a bigger majority than this one. We have also seen parties ruling India for far longer than this. Why are we saying that this is different? It is because of the reason that beyond your voting preference, here is a government that wants complete dominance on the psychological mindspace of people. They don’t just want your vote. They also want to interfere into what you wear, eat, who you are friends with, and what your faith is. That bothers people... Never before in this country, a ruling party has given a war cry to wipe off the Opposition. That is problematic... People are not worried because they voted for them (the BJP) and they are in majority. People are worried that when they come, they will say you cannot wear jeans, be friends with Muslims... Hence, in this backdrop, *if they win Bengal, we would have made a decisive step in the direction of one nation, one party* [emphasis added]. ... It is worrying for a lot of people but the Opposition is just not getting it. They are thinking... it’s because they (the BJP) are winning elections and the media is fearful... But winning elections isn’t creating fear... *People are much more fearful because they (the BJP) want complete dominance beyond votes, electoral politics... They want to reset the narrative — the way you think, work. That is creating fear and the Opposition is not handling that issue. *[Emphasis added.] II. https://www.dawn.com/news/amp/1615434 Characters in a Sartre play Jawed Naqvi THE search for petty advantages has been the bane of larger quests — as true of politics as of any other public sphere. The Nazis, as everyone knows, rose on the rubble of a small-minded opposition -- social democrats, socialists or communists -- all fixated on a delusional tiny gain that may have seemed critical to them at the time but proved to be the collective undoing of German democracy and at what cost. Pakistan clearly lost its eastern half to personal squabbling at the cost of the big picture. India’s fractious opposition criminally created the ground for Narendra Modi to sidle close to seizing absolute power. But the opposition is living in the make-believe world of Garcin, Inez and Estelle, the three famous characters from Sartre’s play No Exit. The three were condemned to hell where they meet only to hide the sin for which each was being punished. By the time they are emboldened to confess to their crimes, they realise it is already too late as there is no exit from the dull hell nor from each other’s company. Last week, Nawaz Sharif’s party was engaged in angry exchanges with Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s group. It had the flavour of Mayawati charging Mulayam Singh with betrayal, not that Mulayam Singh was innocent. The PPP, according to PML-N, in a replay of an older disruptive tiff, went behind its back to win the post of leader of the opposition in the Senate that too by colluding with the treasury benches. What was the issue the two parties came together to address? They were to collectively challenge Prime Minister Imran Khan’s alleged misrule. The animus could derail the momentum to take on the bigger challenge. But this has happened before, several times. In India, the Janata Party experiment of 1977 is cited as a good example of opposition parties which came together ostensibly to confront Indira Gandhi’s misrule but that were soon found carrying their own axes to grind in the melee, and their own prizes to covet. The result was a graceless parting of ways. Their collective bête noire returned to power to continue to terrify them till she was laid low by her own bodyguards. The Hindutva component in the Janata Party moved swiftly to ban history textbooks like its life depended on it, a move that was inspired by its sectarian ideology. The left promptly got busy with its mandate to rule West Bengal. It didn’t lose time to align its Marxist perspective on Indian politics with the exigencies specific to Kolkata. It was the party that shot down Jyoti Basu’s candidature as prime minister for no known reason other than a discussion between its Kerala and West Bengal branches. The majority of Indian supporters still remain dazed. Today, it seems to have spent more time hosting Durga Puja festivals than educating the cadre with historical materialism. And what are the leaders busy with? They have discovered in Mamata Banerjee an enemy more dangerous than the BJP, a conclusion the rest of India is struggling to divine. The left has reportedly excluded Urdu spoken by many Muslims in West Bengal from the range of languages in which it has printed its election manifesto for the assembly polls currently under way. Prof Ali Javed, who heads the Progressive Writers Association in India, shared a troubling story. Word was sent to former communist chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee by the head of the erstwhile pro-Moscow party in Delhi that the PWA wished to organise an Urdu conference in Kolkata. “Do you want us to promote another partition?” came the tart reply, an understanding perhaps that explains how the CPI-M brought out a party paper from Delhi in Urdu and folded it up in no time. If Mamata Bannerjee does lose to the BJP in May, as some analysts fear she could, we know who to credit the disastrous outcome to. Having said this, it’s ironical if true that it’s difficult to see a meaningful opposition coalition without the involvement of the left. No exit for the left or its disgruntled supporters from each other’s company. Ditto for Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. He led the chorus from opposition ranks that welcomed the Aug 5, 2019, annexation of Jammu and Kashmir and the dissolution of its status into two union territories to be ruled directly by New Delhi. Last week, the Modi government passed a law that reduced Kejriwal’s office to a toothless entity subservient to the will (or whims) of the lieutenant governor appointed by and reporting to New Delhi. Kejriwal has cried foul, but his critics including those who had opposed the smashing up of Jammu and Kashmir are calling it his comeuppance. Kejriwal has proved to be no different from other opposition parties in projecting himself as a pious Hindu leader. Elderly Hindus under his rule would be accorded state support to go on pilgrimages. On the other hand, Kejriwal is also the one man who has taken on crony capitalism frontally. Perhaps the new law to clip his wings has been prompted by his intrusive stalking of big businesses considered close to the prime minister. For that alone Kejriwal remains indispensable in challenging the Modi regime. Neither the left nor Kejriwal has formally identified the crisis facing India as resembling fascism, something writer Khushwant Singh had intuitively noted in 2003 in a small book called End of India. "*Those of us today who feel secure because we are not Muslims or Christians are living in a fool’s paradise. The Sangh is already targeting the leftist historians and ‘Westernised’ youth. Tomorrow it will turn its hate on women who wear skirts, people who eat meat … prefer allopathic doctors to vaids, kiss or shake hands in greeting instead of shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’. No one is safe. We must realise this if we hope to keep India alive.” Are Garcin, Inez and Estelle listening? *[Emphasis added.] Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2021 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/greenyouth/CACEsOZiSqh63V_PkM5fKqqbE0E%2BLUKt8sDovzhV3d1AOEuVKrg%40mail.gmail.com.
