 So, good evening everybody and a very warm welcome to the South Asia institutes webinar today. That is a game of power, West Bengal's assembly elections 2021. I'm Sanjukta Ghosh setting the scene as convener and your host for the size and love, which is a public conversation forum. And today we have the expert panel members. So five speakers each will speak for 10 to 12 minutes in the first round, followed by a brief breakup for 10 to 15 minutes of discussion. And then the second round, we have three speakers who will do 10 minutes. And then we have a wrap up discussion for 15 minutes. And I would request that all participants use the Q&A box at the bottom of the screen to type the questions, and preferably with the name of the panel speaker, if you want to address to a specific person. And the chat function is not to be really used for questions. I'm going to briefly explain why we are assembled here today, particularly for those who are new to the region's power politics. The title is drawn from the election slogan. Hello hobby, which is the power game that we are talking about. And that is really drawn from South Asia's national politics, which is known for a very high pitch drama, emotional investment and demonstration of wealth conflict and contesting political parties. And there's also competition between an area of new promises. Okay, why do we pay attention to the state assembly elections that is also happening elsewhere in the country, particularly in the south. And I think the reason why we chose this is because we wanted to bring out through this discussion, how states actually have a big role to play in the South Asian region, where there is power over major issues, agriculture, for instance, a burning question today. There's also industries, health, education, public order and state public services. So there is a kind of a sub national level policy that really impacts on national implementations and relations with neighbors. And ultimately, there is also the foreign policy that gets impacted. These are really areas which are hugely neglected in any micro analysis of elections, partisan politics, as well as the literature on diplomacy. The Indian state of Bengal is located in the highly vulnerable sort of borderland region, which is, which is, which is actually a borderland region that is identified as a hotspot for communal tensions and violence. That comes from a historical context of partition and decolonization which some of our speakers will definitely touch on that that is really building up quite ahead of the ongoing eight phase assembly polls. And a target state that is Bengal for the ruling majority BGP as it has steadily progressed in the eastern region of India. Then we have to also consider Bengal's geopolitical importance, which is quite crucial for the central government's relations with its neighboring Bangladesh. There's also very ambitious maritime interest to constrain China in the Indian Ocean region, as well as the Indo Pacific, again an area which our speakers will touch on. Bengal is also the gateway to the Northeast, and there are strategic routes in North Bengal, connecting to where the world's attention is at the moment, that is the Silk Route economy. In this slide, if you have if you can take a quick glance, it gives you an idea of how the vote sharing has shifted in the state. And it kind of sums up a little bit about the majoritarian rule that is trying to target the state as well. So the Communist Party of India, the Marxist ruled the state for over three decades until the current Trinimal Congress under its leader and CM, the Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee won a majority in 2011, which is the year of change. And since India's post independent period the CPI am ruled maintaining kind of distance from the center and the Indian National Congress, except there has been some pre electoral seat understandings in about 2016. But currently it seeks to reorient and reposition and form alliance with the Congress that was unthinkable in its heydays. And in the first panel, we will begin with Mohammed Salim, who is the former MP and the CPI MP Politburo member who will speak on the repositioning of the left as new power centers emerge with the CPI Congress Alliance. And as this picture shows returned straight from the ground to join our forum, and it's very late at night in Calcutta on the very last day of his campaign from his constituency. We also have Bengal's decade, kind of a long decade long Trinimal Congress rule has raised the in the anti-incumbency factor due to entrenched corruption, minority appeasement, and despite some popular measures of social protection. There's a historically long period of communal stability in the post addition decades of communist rule. And that meant that past, which is a socioeconomic marker of identity politics. And on this slide you can see that we've used Professor Shekhar Vandavada who's going to talk on caste, his take on caste as a cultural marker. So that is something that, you know, Bengal has always looked upon caste as a factor that never really mattered so much in politics, because it has divided between the rich and the poor. So Shekhar Vandavada will speak again on the repositioning of caste just to continue the dialogue that Salim would start on. To look at caste at a time when citizenship legislations are really inspiring this new politics of course. So the Bhattajanta Party challenged the ruling Trinimal since its election in 2014. And even more, after winning a majority in the parliamentary Lok Sabha elections of 2019, it's all kind of set to do away with the conflictual federal relations that characterize the state governments of Bengal in the last 44 years. So we have three speakers that who will talk about this kind of electoral politics in the light of development and its regional impact. Professor Maitesh Gautak on political and economic trends over the last two decades. Dr. Inderjeet Roy on the battle for Bengal, regional resonance Bengal assembly elections and development, and finally Dr. Severe Senal on West Bengal's election campaign as the Civil War, and how the BJP creates its support base. So our final round will be really to sort of look at the, the kind of the emergence of Mofassil Hindutva, and the crisis of Padra Lok, with reference to Bengal's community communal level polarization, and with reference to social media as well. We will also touch on various issues of contentious federalism in the context of neighborly relations, particularly in relation to China. And for that we have three speakers. Again, Shahnawaz Ali Rahan, joining from Oxford University, Ipsita Haldar from Jadavpur University, and then finally Ambar Kumar Kosh from both observer research foundation and Jadavpur University. I will obviously introduce a little bit more when they come individually to sessions. But with that, I want to really turn to Mohammed Salim, and he will, he will start the discussion straight away. Thank you. So over to you Salim, or I think you have to unmute. No, it's audible. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Sangeetha. First of all, because of the invitation extended to me. And now the co-panelists, they will just excuse me because of my short throat, you know, straight from the campaign and battlefield have been working to you. First of all, as your point is game of power. So with these two words, Kala Habe means game by the TNC, the ruling dispensation in Bengal, and the power that is representing the central government and VJP. So on the one side, it is power, muscle power and money power. With this electoral bond, huge sums amassed, forget about PMKR's fund on the one hand, and the gangsters, the goons, which were earlier with the Tamil Congress. Now, Mamta Banerjee herself is blaming Shwabendu that he was a culprit. I'm not going into that. But those type of Arjun Singh, Jitendra Di, all this regional power with muscles, they are with the BJP. Thirdly, the power of this divisory tactic with our home minister and the head of the AFS. So from the beginning for the last few years, we've seen how this divisory politics is at work. I'm not entirely blaming BJP because they have known for this entire country, but particularly the Tamil Congress with whom many liberal, secular, Democrat, progressive forces have reposed their faith on the Tamil Congress because of the high drama place that as if Mamta Banerjee is taking on the BJP. Even when the BJP was not there, as a natural ally, as he came with the BBC interview, she went with the BBBJP when it was the Mukhouta or the mask, by the end of the last century. So now in this 21st century, we have two decades. One decade, governed by Bhuja Baracharya, led DPIM, led reform government, and another decade by TMC. For the first decade, you see how the Bengal was progressing on the question of consolidating its strength on the ground, through the various reforms, minor allegations, and after converting these crops to two crops, the three crops. Education, particularly education of this professional education, vocational education, besides this general education, and industrialization. The second decade, when it began in 2011, people expected that something more is going to happen. How you see the sliding of Bengal in all respects, be it education, health, or industrialization, etc. So there's disenchantment among the people in Bengal. This grass root-level democracy, which was symbolized with Kanchaitira system, with all its errors, but still there was a decentralization of power structure. Then democratization of the society which was going on through this one-third reservation for the women, and then SCSTs and all these marginal sections coming through this grass root-level administration and governments. That has been jeopardized because of this entire Kanchaitira system and its flexion went heavy in this last one decade. Thirdly, this goons, the liberalization of governments, when the opposition was asked to just keep mum. So the attack on democracy and all spheres, that gave rise to this whisper campaign. Rumors, that was at university, Facebook, which now you are talking about this Mofasil Hindutva. So through was at university this hatred was propagated. When Uttar Pradeshwari was not allowed to hold a meeting in 2011, August in Ugli, Mohan Dhaugwath was invited to address the rally in Malta, and it all stayed petrified. This is the symbol, so how this BJP grew over time. That apart, in this assembly election, so people wanted an alternative. In 2019, always it is being compared. In 2019, many people who wanted to get rid of the Tamil Congress and with high-pitched Modi campaign, and Balakot, Pulwama, the division, people thought that it's not pushing the button on the EVM, pushing the button of nuclear ourselves, so that Islamabad or Lahore is going to be bombed. But that's apart. Actually, when the anti-incumbency factor of the Tamil Congress was already set in, now with this agrarian crisis, this economic crisis after corona, lockdown and unlockdown, several phases of lockdown and lockdown, the problem of this marginalised section and the migrant labourers. So the anti-incumbency of BJP is also set in, which the mainland has entirely blacked out. So people wanted an alternative. In 2019, the Congress and the left could not come into an alliance. So that was a disillusionment with the alternatives, which Congress or the left was talking about. So people opposed faith on the BJP. But this time, for the last two years, we are working hard on the ground level. And it's not only the leaders coming together, but the parties coming together. Now we have the United Alliance of Congress, left-legged alliance with Congress and ISF. It's a newly floated Indian secular front with some tribals, some Muslims, some through-caste organisations coming together. I think some questions will be raised on that. So I will answer that and there are many questions. To cut into short, CPIM for the last one decade and the 2011 itself on record, we said that we want to revamp our organisation, we want to reposition it, revider it. And with this revitalised CPIM, tens technically we are at work with thousands of fake cases. Our Congress was also implicated, ousted from their house, ousted from their livelihoods, and molestations took place, attacks took place. And many people wanted to lure the carters and the leaders. Some of course, one or two defection was there, but mainly the political parties offices were sealed by the goods and gangsters. So we have taken this opportunity so that we can revitalise our party, renew our bonds with the younger generation, and with one decades of failure and disillusionment that there is no employment at all, if there is employment, there is huge corruption, so the new sections have come out. They were not allowed to enter into the college premises, university premises. Well, ABP were there, RSS branches were being held. But with this going back to the route, the route with the companies in Bengal, pre-partition days in forties, we have seen how those who are being attacked, they can just side with those who are at the receiving end. And during Corona period, lockdown period also, when the big two political parties were locked out, our people with the so much we can contain, the steep canteen, there's relief operations, online health services, extended services which state was supposed to do. But neither the state government nor the state government took any, you know, bothered to take any steps to mitigate the sufferings of the government. So the left would find out its own route, and that's why during Brigitte Valley, I said the spring has arrived, and it's a set of new leadership has come out. The BGP cannot boost with that kind of courage. The TMC cannot, whereas people are saying BGP has given rise to some hopes, but where are the younger generation within? They're posed only from the 79% of the TMC candidates are from BGP. But we have our own own road, this Menaxi, the CJM and all these new generation leaders, those for 10 years who have struggled hard. And with this, we have appealed to the people for all those who are not going to be bought by BGP or not going to be sold to the normal Congress, they have come to get that. And it's a new hope, even though the mainland media has not allowed us to make our views heard by the people, but with this alternative media, social media and physical movement at the grass root level, we are doing hard. But still, there are sections, as in your panel also you have discussed, like silica sections, tribal sections with the RSS network, they are anti, what they did is anti-TNC or anti-Mamta factors was converted into anti-Muslim factors. And this was done by both. That's why you say B.J. Mool, the TMC with his utterances, with her announcements, with her dramatics has shown that she has, she's ready to convert into, become a Mamtaz Begum. And RSS took this chance and painted her as Mamtaz Begum. So anger against the TMC or these dates was converted into the anger That's why our Sanjukta Mool has basic philosophical principles to bring in social factors, bring in the true class and minorities together so that we can take on this vision. Thank you very much, Mohamed Saleem, for your very insightful comments straight from the ground. And you are in the thick of elections, election campaign. And I hope you stay at least till the end of this first session so that we can ask you some more questions. And I certainly have some already. I want to invite Professor Shekhor Von Depadde, who is the Emeritus Professor of History, Victoria University of Wellington, and the former director of the New Zealand India Research Institute to present us and tell us about caste and how caste politics is actually repositioning in Bengal. Over to you, Professor Shekhor Von Depadde. Thank you very much, Sanjukta, for inviting me to speak in this panel. West Bengal election is getting interesting by the day as we move through different phases. And since last two elections, very unlike West Bengal, the caste question has become very important in this election as well as it was in the last 2019 parliamentary election, but more so in the 2011 assembly election. Actually, the caste question did not play a major role in West Bengal electoral politics for a very long time since the first election in 1952, but the caste issue never disappeared, although we did not see that issue being discussed too much in the public space. In this election, regarding caste question, there are two issues which are most important and being discussed from various angles. One is the question of the Motua vote and the other, the question of the extension of the OBC list to bring in certain castes, particularly targeting the Mahishos. Let me start with the Motua story. I mean, this Motua story had been important since last few elections. One has to remember that Motua is not the name of a caste. Motua is actually the name of a religious movement, an oppositional religious movement mainly which started among the Dalits, particularly the Namashudras of East Bengal. It was started by a Namashudra saint, Harichad Thakur, and it was given a full shape by his son, Guruchad Thakur, and he organized the local Namashudras who were very powerful in the East Bengal countryside into a movement, and they participated in politics as well, and their politics was mostly autonomous during the colonial period until the 1940s. In the mid-1940s, as the partition politics started, this autonomy of organized Dalit politics in Bengal began to lose its autonomy. It was divided on the partition question. One group under Jyuggen Mandal, they joined Dr. Ahmed Kursal, in the Asheru caste federation, but another section, mainly the Motua section, which was then under the leadership of the grandson of Guruchad Thakur, Pramodaranjan Thakur, or Piyat Thakur, moved towards the partition campaign which was instigated by Hindumasava and the Congress, and Piyat Thakur later on joined the Congress, and when the partition actually happened, they migrated to West Bengal. But the majority of the Namushudra peasants did not migrate at that point of time. They migrated only after the riots of 1950. From 1950 to 1957, there was a mass exodus of Namushudra peasants from East Bengal to West Bengal. And these Namushudra peasants, when they came to India, they did not have a very fair deal. Many of them, majority of them were put in refugee camps. And then from the refugee camps, they were sent to different places across the country, mainly to Andaman Islands and to Dandakaran, which was spread in several states, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Madhupradesh, et cetera. But also a large section who just crossed the border and settled down in North 24 Parganas and the Nadiya district, the two border districts, where the social demography of this district significantly changed. Now, as a result of that, this Dalit movement practically disappeared from public space in West Bengal because these Dalit peasants who were organizing their movement before 1947 now became refugees in West Bengal. And their focus, both Mandal and Thakur, their main focus was now on the rehabilitation question and the refugee movement kind of displaced Dalit movement from West Bengal. But then, as time passed, nothing happened, the condition of the Shedulkas did not improve. Piyat Thakur, for example, was disillusioned with the Congress and he reinvigorated the Motua movement from the 1980s. From the 1980s, he began to regroup this Namushadra refugees who had settled in North 24 Parganas and Nadiya. And by the 1990s, there were a very well-organized religious movement and with grassroots-level network. And at that point of time, they thought they could negotiate with the mainstream political parties. And they first became important in the parliamentary election of 2009, but more important during the 2011 assembly election when Mamuta Banerjee discovered this movement and both CPIM as well as Trinimal Congress were competing for the support of the Motua devotees. But in this, Mamuta had an advantage because she tackled the religious movement very well. She herself became a member of the Motua Moha Sangha. Now Moha Sangha is a very organized group. If you become a member, you get a photo ID card. So Mamuta got her photo ID card as a member of the Motua Moha Sangha. And at that point of time, the head of the Motua Moha Sangha was Boroma or Pinnapani Thakur, was the widow of Piyat Thakur. And Mamuta, in a public meeting, touched her feet, became a member of the Motua Moha Sangha, became one of them. At about 30 assembly seats, Trinimal Congress practically swept the election. But historically, Dalit support for the mainstream political parties in Bengal had always been strategic. They strategically aligned with the political parties, but in order to push their own issues, they could switch loyalty. Now the problem of the Trinimal Congress was that the main problem that the Motuas, who were mainly Namo Shudra refugees, was the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2003. Citizenship Amendment Act of 2003 stimulated that only those who had migrated before March 1971 would be given citizenship. Now what happened after this, whenever these Namo Shudra refugees wanted to have any documentation like Aghar card or ration card or a passport, they had to provide paperwork to prove that they had migrated before 1971. And not all these people had sufficient paperwork. And in 2009, some of them were even prosecuted for not for being kind of illegal aliens. So the major grievance and major issue around which the Mahasangha, Motua Mahasangha now started to fight was this citizenship issue. Now citizenship issue is a central issue and Mamuta and his Trinimal Congress just could not do anything about it. And then before the parliamentary election of 2019, BJP comes with the CAA 2019, which they say would solve once for all the citizenship problem for the members of the Motua Sangha or the Namo Shudra refugees who had mainly settled in the border districts of North 24 Parganas and the Nadia. The issue is that one major sticking point one could argue that Motua is a religious movement which is an oppositional religious movement which is anti-Brahmanical, which is anti-Vedic Hinduism. So how would they support Hindutva ideology? My field work suggests that not all of them situate or position themselves very firmly in a Motua Hindu binary position. So there is a space for ambiguity and BJP is targeting that ambiguous space when Narendra Modi visits Orakandi in Faridpur during his last visit in Bangladesh. Orakandi is the birthplace of Guruja Thakur. Now this is a huge symbolic gesture which can appeal to the Ghoshais and Pracharaks of the Motua Mahasangha and they have their network. So one could argue that this might tip the balance once again as it happened in the last parliamentary election once again in this assembly election. But my colleagues who are working in the field also tell me and this is also my experience that Motua Mahasangha is no longer a united house. The Thakur family, Binabani Thakur's sons and daughters in laws, I mean the Thakur family which lead the movement the family itself is divided and there is now a very strong Ambedkarite movement emerging from within this group. There are many people among the Motuas who are Ambedkarites and in recent years we have seen the emergence of a very radical literary movement and this literary movement is also located in the same area of North 24 program as Nadia which is the main base area of the Namushudra Motua refugees. And my reading of the situation is that many of them know very well that the paperwork that will be required for the CIA and the follow up of NRC regime will not really solve their problem of citizenship as they are expecting, but it will depend on how other political parties can convince them about this. At the moment what I hear from the ground that there is a kind of blind faith that once the CIA 2019 come their citizenship problem will be over so it will depend on how the other political parties can mobilize these people. But it is also true that this more non-BJP votes so to say will be split, will be split between the three normal congress on the one hand and the left congress or the Shonjuk-Morcha alliance on the other. But I would suspect that majority of these votes would go to TMC because Oflet, I was referring to the literary movement, this literary movement made a big issue of the Mori Chappi incident of 1979 when the left front government evicted thousands of Namushudra refugees from the Sundarbans and send them to Dandekaran. So Oflet in the last few years or two this issue has been had been quite widely discussed among this group. So I would say instead of left this vote would go more to the TMC. For in my view it's too difficult to call there is a very strong possibility that in at least 30 or 32 sits in this area this citizenship issue and the BJP's promise of solving these issues through the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 might be a good big factor. The other issue which is being discussed is the extension of the OBC list to incorporate the Mahishos, Thiles and some other group castes. But I hear that the main target are the Mahishos who are very demographically very powerful in eastern Midnapur which is now politically very very significant. But the problem is that Mahishos I mean historically they changed a section of the Chashri Koi Bortos changed their nomenclature as Mahisho and got that new nomenclature recognized in the census of 1911. This was mainly a movement by an upwardly mobile group. But this group the Mahishos from the very beginning from the early 20th century was a very diverse group. It included on the one hand large landed magnets and small farmers in Midnapur as well as industrial entrepreneurs in Hora and industrial working class in Hora. So it was a very diverse group and it had an upwardly mobile politically powerful counter elite who did not like to be leveled as depressed classes which was the earlier name of the Shedul caste because of the social stigma attached to it. And even today this group is not united around the issue of OVC although I would suspect a section of them mainly the lower middle classes would look at the advantages of reservation but they are not at all united on this issue and never before Mahishos or any other OVC have voted as a united vote bank. So it is highly unlikely that they will do this time particularly because both DMC and BJP have promised to include them in the OVC new extended OVC list. So whichever their entry into the OVC list is guaranteed so it is unlikely that it would kind of influence their voting pattern but only time will tell. So to sum up I'm really interested to say that after a gap of several decades since independent since the first election of 1952 the caste question or let me put it in this way issues that are specifically related to Dalit and OVC communities are again becoming important in electoral debates and what will be the actual outcome of this debate in terms of the results of the assembly sits it's I believe still too difficult to call. Some people are saying that Motua would go to the BJP and it will be a clean sweep I still have a doubt about it because there is still a very strong constituency which will not go the BJP way so let us see what happened so I would like to stop there and I'll have you to later on respond to any specific question. Thank you very much. Thank you so much professor who is also with us joining from New Zealand I definitely mentioned that and you know it's a delight to have you because it's a way of travelling back in time and looking at how definitions of caste is also changing with the new citizenship bill is also the issue of the OVC and so we will hold on to some questions towards the end I hope you can stay with us for the questions turn now to the changing vote and the seat patterns among the major political parties over the last three assembly as well as the Lok Sabha elections and touch upon the economic condition of the state over the last two decades so political and economic trends over the last two decades. Thank you very much. Thank you very much professor Moitish Karthik LSE economics professor and fellow of the British Academy if we can have you on the floor. Thank you you've got to unmute your Thank you. Thank you for the invitation and I'm really happy to be part of this so without much ado I want to get to play to the stereotype of an economist and throw in some numbers in terms of both the seat patterns as well as some patterns of growth that has happened over the last few decades I think the previous two speakers set the political picture in terms of the triangular contest that is happening and some of the salient issues which at least just some of them happen to be unfortunately divisive and therefore we all watch with anxiety as to how this is going to play out and of course professor Bantabadai mentioned some of the caste equations that are at work here so I think that looking at some even kind of secondary sources for some numbers can be quite sort of mind clearing in the midst of the bustling dinner of electoral campaigns and kind of opinion polls and all kinds of things that are out there so there's a lot of discourse a lot of claims a lot of counter claims and there's a sense in which of course we'll find out in less in about a month what will actually happen so I think what I would like to do in my allotted time is really talk through some of the voting pattern in the last two decades really if I look at both the assembly as well as the parliamentary elections and you know some of this will come there will not be any surprises in terms of the broad patterns will be known but there are some aspects of what I'm going to say hopefully I will have some some interest or something that are not so well known so I think the really striking figure if I look at in a recent piece I wrote in the wire where we looked at some numbers of parliamentary as well as assembly elections one of the things that the striking facts that if you compare say the local elections of 2004 then 2009, 2014 and 2019 is the decline of the heft of the left essentially from say the total number of local seats in 2004 of about 35 26 for the CPI M and 9 for the other major left parties like for a block RSP and CPI in 2019 this has gone down to zero now again this is known but it's still when you look at a cold sort of you know a hard look at the numbers it does seem like a pretty sharp decline and if we look at how this stage came to be in 2009 the seats share had gone down from 35 to about 15 and then 2014 the stage share had gone down to 22 so the kind of the downward trend was pretty palpable and then of course in 2019 it went down to zero parliamentary seats and of course the major beneficiary of this seat has been the General Congress and from the total number of local seats of about exactly one in 2004 in 2019 it has now has 22 seats right and in between they have kind of you know they had a high of 34 seats in 2014 so they have come down a bit and therefore as much as the rise of the left of the three normal from one to you know 34 in 2014 is striking also striking is basically the BJP's rise if you look at zero seats in 2004 the BJP in the last look show by elections had 18 seats and the vote share of 40% that's striking especially when its vote share was 8% in 2004 now I will not bore you with all the specific numbers but since it's assembly elections it might be useful just to look at the seats of the major parties from starting from 2001 so since it's a triangular contest let's look at the major contenders here in 2001 this was in 2006-30 in 2011 the election of the Puri Bhartan was 184 and in 2016 it was 20 to 211 so that's the three normal congress which basically from 30 has now 211 out of 294 seats and once again the left had overall CPIM had 143 seats in 2001 and the other major left party is about 50 seats 49 to be precise and back in 2006 this has gone down to 26 seats overall as well as for the other left parties it's just 6 seats and the vote shares tell a kind of similar story the BJP's number of assembly states is pretty trivial still so if we since this assembly elections of 2021 that we are in the cusp of are actually going through in 2001 the BJP had 0 seats in the assembly election which is what it was till 2011 and in 2016 it only had 3 seats okay so this is just sort of rattling off some numbers where essentially what we see is especially in the Lokshava the BJP has emerged as kind of really the rival to the TMC as the political powerhouse and the left's position has really been you know severely diminished the left has been severely diminished but the BJP has not really gained this much now I do not I do have with me some statistics in terms of Lokshava seats where their corresponding assembly seats what has been the vote share of the different parties so I do have that analysis with the left but the BJP has not really gained this much share of the different parties so I do have that analysis which was you know with me here and once again what the pattern here suggests is something interesting and confirms at least one broad conjecture about what is happening to the vote patterns which is there has been a shift in some of the non-attached votes which initially went from the left to the three normal congress these are not the committed votes but the floating votes that kind of swung in the elections and for example gave the 2011 elections vast majority of the three normal congress so if you look at essentially the Lokshava seats and look at what is happening to the assembly aspects of that essentially there is a shift from red to saffron so clearly some of the seats that have basically you know earlier were solid red seats and they held on and they have did not switch that much to the three normal congress at least some of them have you know increasingly turned a bit to the saffron camp okay so this essentially what it sort of brings me to is the core problem I think and that I think is a pretty interesting and general problem that you would not know how we'll play out until we see the results which is in a triangular contest right especially given the situation of the three different parties they're very different ideologies and platforms what will a voter of course the committed voters will vote for their parties that they're committed to and the left has to its credit launched a pretty lively and energetic campaign and they have filed fielded a bunch of sort of young and very very well spoken and appealing candidates and we'll see how they do so clearly there is some positive energy coming from that front but the reality is and I hate to be the person who has to say it but I'm sure it'll come up during the discussion because it's kind of it's in the room it's like as they say it's the elephant in the room that we cannot deny that some of the voters who would have been happy to vote for the left if it had a real chance of winning and forming the government are facing the dilemma that to the extent that doesn't happen what should they do because essentially they will have to choose between two alternatives none of which are appealing to them because they would have been happy to have voted for the left and once again let me clarify they're not talking about committed left voters they will vote for the left they voted for the left even in the 2019 elections which were a bit of a wipeout for the left but there's still a committed voters of 8% even in that look show by election that voted for the left. Now the dilemma is the following so suppose and this is where at least in the ecosystem of left liberal voters many of us are familiar with there's a fierce debate going on between the no vote to BJP campaign which some of the bomb jolt would then reduce that to saying that that's basically saying vote to Trinomu. Now in a two-sided contest that would exactly be right if you say no vote to A that means vote for B but in a triangular contest it's not so simple because no vote to BJP also can mean just vote for the left vote for the BJP right. Now the point here is that a left leading voter but who is not quite a committed voter who has in the past switches switched his or her allegiance in the electoral and the ballot box is facing the following problem the Trinomu has generated a fair amount of anti-incumbency discontent there are all kinds of issues from ranging from corruption to nepotism to really various forms of repression that led you know for example the Panchayat elections were quite quite led to a lot of allegations of voter suppression and all of that has happened and therefore there is a very very strong anti-incumbency feeling that is coming from that side right. On the other hand if you look at the BJP clearly 2014 was when Modi Nomics was leads of some appeal to some and despite some of us who were in vain working out the numbers and trying to say that the Gujarat growth model is really a lot of it is really advertising as opposed to based on solid fundamentals in terms of a growth model and leaving aside the majoritarian politics just if you look at the economic aspect of things in 2014 you know hope was in the air for some folks clearly and that gave BJP the massive parliamentary majority but in 2019 the BJP was already exhausted demonetization had happened the messy implementation of GST had happened and even before the coronavirus crisis and the lockdown and all the chaos happened clearly in the national economy the BJP is not essentially have claims to doing a doing a fantastic job and yet and this is the puzzle yet to a lot of voters the question is because they're frustrated with what is going on in West Bengal and what is going on with the General Congress they're kind of facing this choice between two unappealing choices right whether they want to you know vote anti-incumbent but because they don't expect the left to actually win and own the government should they go for the BJP and the BJP of course has bought in campaign money and of course they have recruited candidates you know like headhunters do in the corporate world they have you know rated a lot of the Tunumul's existing candidates and have now therefore have this genuine phenomenon that when you're voting I think we even saw some of the memes as to even candidates in campaigns saying you know when they have really switched to BJP and by mistake they kind of you know they've forgotten because if you of course change parties frequently it is hard sometimes to keep in mind exactly where where where where you so this dilemma is a real one right so and in a triangular contest right and that I think you know that there would be I hope that there would be general agreement whatever our specific conjectures or hunches as to what's going to happen as to how this vote will break will be very decisive so if this vote largely goes to say the bomb jolt right so those who are kind of in a dilemma but they said fine there's a rejuvenated bomb jolt campaign let's go for them right then there's still this issue that what will be the swing between the anti-incumbency wave against the Tunumul versus the BJP and to the extent then the bomb jolt will essentially help either the Tunumul come to power which I'm sure would not necessarily be appealing to to the bomb jolt voters that by voting their first reference of their genuine kind of you know party they support they would basically split the anti-incumbency kind of wave and help help elect the Tunumul but it could exactly flip the other way that to the extent the anti-incumbency feeling is very large and the BJP might have an edge and some of the opinion polls with all that they're worth and with all the due skepticism that one should have in reading them is showing kind of you know bit of a toss up between how the BJP of the Tunumul are going to do they could also have this problem of which way you know effectively the BJP has an advantage then by voting for the their first preference they could be splitting the anti-BJP vote so that puts them in a real dilemma and indeed I don't want to sort of you know that there are a number of other things I want to say but in keeping in mind the time constraints and I will just mention a few couple of remaining points and my talk so the one interesting thing is if I look at these Lokshava seats and how the assembly segments of the that they voted which has said that if you can see a kind of transition over time I have a feeling that a lot of the anti-incumbent votes could actually go in the BJP direction so I think that that is a real possibility so and you know again I describe how these voters would be so that could be a real you know this I say factor based on how they evolved over the last few electoral cycles and the positive thing of course going for the energy campaign that they have launched and certainly there is a sort of you know air of youth air of exuberance you know pop pop songs that are being used etc we'll see how it all pans out. Now I just want to end with the following things about the economy though so this is what the electoral trends are and we see how this sort of you know vast middle group who decides election breaks not the committed left to know more about the committed BGP votes if you look at the economy and if you really look at the growth numbers and again this is something that is something as an economist I do take a look at and carefully interestingly West Bengal's growth record compared to the rest of India if you really compare say West Bengal's growth rate in state domestic per capita income and compare that with India's actually has been below the Indian average for the last decade you know we have now enough numbers if you really compare these but interestingly this was not true Emily West Bengal actually was ahead of the rest of India for the first part of the of this you know the left-front rule in this century namely from 2000 to 2006 its growth rate was actually strictly higher so from then on there has been a dip so West Bengal has fallen behind and it's a little bit more than a year it's a little bit more than a year and I think the Tune em all regime that really has not quite corrected some of the first economic opportunity on unemployment that that the state is facing and the voters are facing is a real one but interestingly and this will be my last point this is growth rates and growth rates have their usual limitations because there are kind of macroeconomic look pretty good because growth rate is a total income so therefore if we add up everybody's income whichever you know extent is growing fast will be reflected in that. In terms of the NSS numbers in terms of per capita consumption which is a very different sampling base and you can then compare again West Bengal and other states with the rest of India. Now the trouble with this is that the Modi government published the 2017 18th NSS numbers and then they withdrew it you know citing some problems which we don't exactly know what those are but the point is before that there were periodic publications that gave us a little bit of a household level sampling of what is happening to individual consumption levels household consumption levels. So for measuring poverty you know one of the shocking things about India right now is we do not have official poverty numbers up to 2011-12 which was the last time you know the NSS reports were published and the poverty rates were computed based on that. So my last observation is interestingly if you look at this consumption numbers then even though in the growth numbers West Bengal hasn't done you know well compared to the rest of India and not just for the last 10 years actually for the last 15 years in the consumption numbers they haven't done so bad okay and that's an interesting tension now whether it is because of a number of redistributive programs that are in place and to be fair some of them also happened in the earlier regime I think that is an interesting dynamics because in terms of whether employment generation and growth that clearly appeals to a certain kind of voters and certain demographics but whether it's the Karnash 3 and various kinds of programs that essentially are you can call them dolls or you can call them transfer or redistributive programs of various kinds there I think West Bengal has not done too badly anyway I will stop here and I look forward to coming back to some of these issues in the Q&A. Thank you Professor Moitish Gautuk for touching on some very key points about you know growth fetish and of course we are targeting sustainable development goals and these kind of things are also coming up and how West Bengal then fits into growth picture and of course if that is going to affect the elections so I think the whole issue of development is going to crop up in our next speaker the battle for Bengal regional resonance Bengal assembly elections and again the development issue is brought on by Dr. Inderjeet Roy who is the senior lecturer of global development politics at University of York and he has also created a podcast series called India tomorrow for the conversation on the eve of the India's 2019 elections which is also forthcoming as a Manchester University press publication as I understand so over to you Dr. Roy for taking on from where Moitish left thank you so much for this very kind information invitation it's I was telling someone it's a privilege to be sharing this the stage as it were with such eminent names from diverse disciplines so thank you for thinking about me. I'm going to spend a few minutes thinking about the implications of the West Bengal elections not just for the state per se or for that matter for India but for the Indo-Pacific region more broadly and I think that's the take I'm going to take on development so slightly different from Moitish but of course he's presented a lot of the material already for everyone to have a better understanding. I should say I don't have any slides so to audience members don't worry if you can't see anything on your slides because there isn't any. I'm coming to this sort of talk from three different angles on the one side I have I'm drawing on collaborative investigations with colleagues on contentions over citizenship that have been made necessary by the Citizenship Amendment Act. The second angle that I'm drawing on is the ongoing changes in the global order thanks to emerging powers in the global south and that's where the Indo-Pacific link comes in and the third angle is the interplay between developments inside countries and developments in global politics more broadly. So as I said the West Bengal elections or the battle for Bengal as it's being called is significant not only for West Bengal or for India but for the Indo-Pacific region more broadly and the Indo-Pacific has emerged as a key geopolitical and geo-economic region in global politics as I will reflect in a while. Now I think the first thing to consider really is the the the general context in which the elections have been conducted and the legacy of what many would call the long partition. These elections have been conducting conducted among amid deteriorating relations between between West Bengal's Hindu and Muslim populations. As has already been said religious polarization between the two communities has become acute in recent years as the BJP and the Trinamul have sought to slug it out so to speak and the BJP as has already been pointed out has tried to extend its footprint in the state on the back of discontentment among Hindu refugees fleeing religious persecution from neighboring Bangladesh and Professor Shekhar Bandabad had already pointed to some of the population shifts and the sort of place them in historic perspective. In December 2019, India's parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act which among other things discriminated between Muslim and non-Muslim applicants for citizenship from Muslim majority Bangladesh in addition to Afghanistan and Pakistan led by Home Minister Amit Shah. Supporters of the legislation frequently invoked the legacy of partition and repeatedly called attention to the persecution faced by Hindu minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan as well as Bangladesh and Amit Shah did make a reference to how Bangabandhu was trying to build a sort of secular Bangladesh but made it a point also to say how that legacy was not honored. Now Shah promised parliament as well as audiences during rallies and press conferences that the amendment would be followed by the enumeration of the controversial national register of citizens and so Indians would now have to prove their citizenship by providing certain documents so they could be enlisted in the NRC. Failure to do so could result in detention as an illegal immigrant and possibly deportation although it's not quite clear deportation to where and we'll come to that in a bit. Although the legislation was couched as providing succor to the persecuted minorities in India's neighborhood of course the BJP's ill-concealed Hindu supremacist worldview is well known and it has resulted in justified anxiety among critics that the CAA in conjunction with the NRC will in fact be used to target India's 200 million Muslims who are not covered under the ambit of the CAA and they could find themselves disenfranchised and stateless if they are not able to prove their citizenship. The NRC registry is already in process and in the neighboring state of Assam we know that it has left nearly 1.9 million almost 2 million people stateless a majority of whom are not Muslim but who would be covered by the safety net of the CAA so don't have to face the same worries that their Muslim co-citizens would face. Now as Professor Bandupad had just reminded us the CAA has been largely welcomed by West Bengal's Hindu refugees and their descendants and it makes sense for whom it offers the for them it offers the prospect of obtaining and or confirming Indian citizenship so it's absolutely reasonable and rational for them to support the CAA. As members of communities that have been labeled low caste and of course the reference was made to Mari Chappi massacres and you know the general sorts of discrimination that they have faced many of these refugees have faced social discrimination from which the BJP's project of constructing a monolithic Hindu community offers escape and perhaps even equality. We could talk more about the BJP's attempts to create an etnified Hindu community and the dynamics of what many would say is a secularizing and democratizing Hinduism which I'm sure will come up in later presentations but we can pick them up in Q&A if necessary. What's interesting for the present moment is that the BJP has promised to implement the CAA in West Bengal should it be elected to power and these prospects are straining and have strained Hindu-Muslim relations in what is a very sensitive border state and I don't think that's adequately sort of you know we don't remind ourselves enough. After several decades of relative communal amity incidents of tensions between the two communities have begun to rise since this decade and the surge in inter-communal violence predates Prime Minister Modi's ascendance to power in 2014. Relations between Hindus and Muslims appear to have nose-dived since the BJP's free election in May 2019. Maitreya has already offered very detailed analysis but just to pick a key point the BJP won 18 out of 42 seats allocated to West Bengal in the Lok Sabha up from only two in 2014. The Trinamul continues to rule the state of course and the BJP's emergence has been the foremost challenge to its dominance and this can hardly be ignored. The BJP's espousal of the CAA lends it an edge among refugee populations. Trinamul's opposition to the CAA has significantly contributed to its popularity among the state's beleaguered Muslim population which correctly fears it will be unfairly targeted by the legislation. Even a cursory glance at the electoral campaign that we're sort of witnessing suggests the extent of communal polarization that has permeated the state's politics and anyone who's followed what was going on in Nandi Gram will know what I'm talking about. The BJP has accused Chief Minister Banerjee of appeasing Muslims all sorts of epithets have been hurled at her and she has been accused of striving to create a so-called greater Bangladesh. Such communal polarization bears an eerie resemblance to the religious violence that plagued British Bengal in the lead up to independence illustrated by such ghastly episodes as the great Calcutta killings of August 1946. It's become very fashionable these days to criticize narratives of Bengali exceptionalism but remember that Hindu-Muslim violence was endemic in this province before the onset of relative communal amity and I think it's important to remind ourselves of these episodes because I think we've had about two if not three generations that have actually lived in relative communal harmony so they don't quite remember what August 1946 was about. I want to now think a bit about the regional dynamic and the regional instability that we are likely to witness. Irrespective of which party wins, this divisive electoral campaign will strain Hindu-Muslim relations for years to come. The religious filter of the CAA is likely to cause large-scale turmoil in the region. Despite Home Minister Amit Shah's assurance that the CAA will not target Indian Muslims and will only be used to identify quote unquote illegal infiltrators, the onus of proving citizenship rests on the individuals. Furthermore, local bureaucrats enjoy enormous discretion in approving and verifying citizenship claims leading to anxieties that West Bengal's Muslims will bear a disproportionate front while proving their citizenship. There is a Sam in the background. I don't want to touch on that because of the focus in this talk on West Bengal. Many such individuals, West Bengal's Muslims, will likely be dubbed Bangladeshi nationals and then what happens? The government may well attempt to deport such individuals to Bangladesh. We don't know because we don't know who or where the deportation will take place. And this is not fair mongering. For anyone who's seen the recent BJP video in response to the Amra we are not going anywhere. So the BJP had a response to that and one sort of line in that video, I think you will probably, it'll come up for discussion, I'm sure, where the singer says, and there's a reference, there's an image of an Arab on a camel in the background. Everyone knows that's a veiled threat. So it's not just being alarmist. Such moves obviously will exacerbate tensions between the two communities, especially if India begins to identify such Muslim individuals, it claims are illegal infiltrators and seeks to deport them to Bangladesh. As president of the BJP back in 2018, Amit Shah himself invoked such dehumanizing imagery to describe these illegal infiltrators. He referred to them as termites among other things. And of course, it was a remark that prompted swift response from Bangladesh. Now in the absence of any reliable data on the actual number of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in India, both countries are likely to contest any claims on this issue. There are few reasons to expect Bangladesh to accept such individuals as its own citizens. Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina politely indicated as such. The NRC at CAA she said is not necessary, but she also said it's India's internal matter. Why would Bangladesh oppose this? For one thing, such movements of population, and this will not be the first time that such movements of population have happened. But such movements of population today are likely to strengthen the growing Islamist social movements in Bangladesh, not something that Sheikh Hasina would want. Second, Bangladesh already hosts thousands of Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar and is unlikely to be able to cope with any more strain on its resources. Its impressive recent economic development notwithstanding, the Bengal Delta is ecologically fragile. It's especially vulnerable to the unfolding climate crisis. Bangladesh already faces an internal migration crisis due to climate change. Population transfers from West Bengal are sure to destabilize relations between in Bangladesh as well as relations between Bangladesh and India. And now I want to think a bit about the larger region of what is being called the free and open Indo-Pacific. You can expect unstable relations between India and Bangladesh to hinder the success of the emerging visions of this Indo-Pacific region. It is an idea that was first conceived in 2006-07. And of course now everyone talks about how Trump and Biden have sort of invented the term, but the term has very subcontinental origins. It could be credited to Dr. Gurpreet Khurana, who was an executive director of India's National Maritime Foundation and a captain of the Indian Navy, who coined it as an expression of shared anxieties that India and Japan have over China's rising assertiveness in Asia and beyond. And of course with the United States becoming interested in exploring alliances in the context of its own competition with China, this term has now gained geopolitical significance. Despite varying interpretations, I mean everyone has a different take on what the Indo-Pacific means, but most considerations are based on imagining the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean as one contiguous area through which a majority of the world's goods and energy supplies are transported. Many observers have perceived the Indo-Pacific as an alternative to the multi-trillion dollar belt and road initiative that crisscrosses Eurasia. Barack Obama had outlined plans for an Indo-Pacific economic corridor during his second presidency. Donald Trump extended this vision when he declared his support for a free and open Indo-Pacific at the 2017 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and nowadays people are increasingly talking about the Indo-Pacific to replace the Asia-Pacific. And building all those initiatives, Joe Biden recently committed to a free, open, secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific region in a very rare op-ed for the Washington Post, which he wrote together with Prime Minister Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. Now Bangladesh is a member of the China-led Belt and Road Initiative and has so far resisted joining the security and development umbrella of the Indo-Pacific. Bangladesh's impressive rates of human development should make it a natural partner for India's own rapid strides in economic growth. Bangladesh has been a valued partner in India's fight against militancy in its own troubled northeast region. Indeed, India's role in the founding of Bangladesh, well-recognized by that country's political elites, could be expected to cement the friendship between the two countries. However, prospects for such friendship and development partnerships are easily threatened as evidence from recent protests against Prime Minister Modi's visit to Bangladesh. The religious polarization that has been fermented by politicians in both countries threatens to curb not only the development partnership between the two, but also any promise of freedom and openness in the Indo-Pacific. In concluding, it's fairly obvious that the results of these elections are likely to impact not only the 100 million people who live in West Bengal, but far beyond. Religious polarization already challenges the framework of liberal democracy in India, as many international and national observers have remarked. The population movements that will be required by the implementation of the CAA, if the government is indeed serious about it, and it sort of brings it to full force, which is likely, and all the reference to the unfinished business of partition should leave us with no doubt. And these are references that have been made by several members of the BJP, including the Honorable Home Minister on the floor of India's parliament, the unfinished business of India's partition. So identifying so-called illegal infiltrators, possibly deporting them to Bangladesh, is likely to destabilize relations between the two countries, resulting in wider regional instability. Bangladesh may well remain reluctant to join the Indo-Pacific security umbrella if it perceives unfair population pressures from India. And obviously, under these circumstances, the prospects for a free and open Indo-Pacific will remain remote. So I'm sorry to have to end on such a somber note, but that's what I have to say. Hopefully the Q&A will bring up themes that one can be more hopeful about. Thank you. Thank you very much for a very interesting sort of canvas, the regional canvas, the broader questions that you've raised, especially in relation to Indo-Pacific, and what can happen if certain political parties can actually get to grips with power in Bengal. So that's quite speculations, a lot of speculations there, and we can take this up later. But we do have Dr. Savir Sinha here, who is an expert on emerging forms of politics, if I can say that to you, Savir. The senior lecturer for institutions and development in Sawas, and you're going to talk about West Bengal election campaign as Civil War and how the BJP creates its support base. Savir also has recent publications in the Geo Forum on Modi's authoritarian populism, open democracy, as well as the conversation on the use of social media and digital communications to consolidate the BJP's support base while disintegrating that of his opponents. So I'll leave it to you, Savir, to take on. Thank you. Thanks very much, Sanjuta, and the other panelists from whose presentations I've learned a lot. And thanks also to the 43 attendees who have decided to spend the evening listening to us. For anyone who's following the campaign at the moment in Bengal, and in fact, obviously there are a few rounds of voting that have already happened, this is a time of high anxiety to say the least. One can see following social media that there are people who are celebrating premature victories. There are other people who are lamenting premature defeats. There is hope one day and despair the next day depending on how they believe the previous round of elections or the campaign itself has happened so far. And to my mind, this is actually very much a part of politics as we have come to experience it from 2014 onwards, where there is a very high emotional pitch to political campaigning. And that is partly because of the fact that the reigning model of politics that we have both nationally with Mr. Modi and within Bengal with Mamta Banerjee is basically of a certain kind of a populist genre. And within populism, what one can basically think of is that polarization between supporters of one political party and the nomination of other social groups which are not a part of this coalition as the enemies of that particular camp, that has effectively become the norm for Indian political campaigns going back well at least seven or eight years. So we have heard the term Bengali exceptionalism and perhaps that will come up later in the conversation as well. But what I basically want to suggest is that what we are seeing in the Bengal campaign of the BJP and that is the campaign that I'll primarily be talking about is that they have a kind of a national template that they have then perfected to some extent in tweaking so as to be able to take regional specificities or state oriented specificities. Now, the other element of their campaign is that the BJP's campaigns are very long campaigns. The campaign for 2021 literally started in 2016, one could say, not so much even in 2014. And one could even say that the current campaign that we are looking at is the culmination and the most perfected form really of the BJP in campaign mode. So what is basically going on here is that since 2016, Bengal has remained has always been a long sought after prize for the BJP. It is so counterintuitive that the BJP will actually win Bengal that this particular achievement, if it was to happen, would be a very major triumph for the BJP. So from 2016, when they lost, well, when they didn't do that well in that particular state election, the RSS increases its presence within Bengal quite significantly. It identified places and social groups that they wanted to win to their side. And also targeted and identified individuals within various political parties that could be either arm twisted or induced to defect on the basis that they had information about their goings on financially or corruption. So we have seen a lot of movement effectively going on from other political parties initially. And that is sort of an overall trend as well. My three pointed to much more specific trends. If I could only point to overall general trend, that there's been a shift effectively from the support base in some areas. And one has to speculate in terms of how large that has been from the CPM initially to the TMC. And then in the last couple of rounds of local elections and 2019 elections, the so-called bomb to Ram movement that people seem to be referring to, which makes us uncomfortable and perhaps points to the very fluid nature of politics where political allegiances that were solidified for some time have effectively come unstuck. And one can see that also as something not only peculiar to Bengal, but also something that one has seen as a basis for BJP's victories in other states where they've been able to break up the consolidated support base for other political formations. We've also obviously seen since the 2018 Panchayati elections and then in 2019 a really very alarming and steady decline of obviously the Congress's decline has been much more kind of long term, but off the CPM so that the political field right now appears to be effectively polarized between the BJP and the TMC. I mean, yes, we know that this is a sort of three-cornered contest and so forth, but and I'm aware that both the Congress and the CPM Alliance has pockets of strength, but if you were to just watch the media and if you were to watch the social media, effectively the election has been reduced in these two media as if the other third element does not exist. And that can have both an interesting positive effect for the third sort of front as well as a negative one. The positive one, of course, is that it allows them to operate a little bit under the radar. The negative one, of course, which again Moitish alluded to, which is that if people become convinced that that is a wasted vote, then as we know from electoral studies from around the world, especially those who have not yet decided might want to go with the side that they believe is the winning side rather than the third front, which might have other attractive elements particularly given the fact that there is anti-income policy. So the long campaign of the BJP that I'm talking about and especially social media is something that we need to think about. I mean, the BJP obviously is the first party to have gotten familiar with social media and to have basically checked out the so-called technological affordances of social media for the purposes of electioneering. The other political parties are really much, much later in terms of how they have arrived and how late they are in this particular game. I remember conversations with particularly CPM people from 2014 onwards trying to convince them that social media was in fact a terrain that they needed to take more seriously only to be met with considerable derision that that is not how real politics or grassroots politics actually operates. So it has been, I think, to the BJP's advantage that every other political party has been so late in figuring out the full potentialities of social media, both in terms of the creation of an alternative narrative in a scenario where mainstream national media is so heavily one-sided towards the BJP and also in terms of creating sort of electoral mobilization and things like that. So a kind of ground has been ceded to the BJP on the social media. I mean, we know the nature of India's corporate media especially at the national level. So one doesn't really expect that they will have anything like a kind of fair kind of coverage of this particular election or a level playing ground. The other element here is the fact that if you take a look at the heterogen, moving from the sort of regional to the national level and the kind of a general kind of Hindutva which the BJP has been looking to implement in the case of Bengal. And yes, we know that they have paid a lot of attention to regional specificities, particularly Mathur and Amashudra issues that Professor Shekhar Bandopadhyay has referred to. But also keep in mind that they brought in some general Hindutva slogans, this whole thing of Jayashiram as a slogan that has had some traction within Bengal to my surprise as it turns out. I come from the neighboring state of Bihar where even Jayashiram is still not a sort of particularly popular slogan given that even our sort of gods and goddesses in Bihar are not the same as those of which find favor within the Hindutva campaign. We have found large numbers of well-known communal campaigners being brought into Bengal over the last several years. Yogi Adityanath or Tejasvi Surya, Tajinder Singh Bhaggha, people who are well known to be folks with a record of extreme speech and those who have actually taken street side action in terms of creating Hindu-Muslim polarization. In all of this, it's been quite interesting to me to look at an Indian Express sort of dataset from last week where they were looking to compare states in which people identify as belonging primarily to a state versus the national identity. And I was quite surprised to see that at this point, only 22% of Bengalis were reported to think of themselves as Bengalis first. The rest of them or a large number of the rest of them identify as national rather than as Bengali. How that would play out electorally, I don't know, but certainly it seems to me that that is one effect that the current social media blitz has resulted in. So apart from the massive amount of fake news circulating via social media and apart from that fake news also identifying Mamta Banerjee as basically a Muslim, we also have seen a large number of social media campaigns which have had kind of polarizing elements within that. And you see the thing with social media, it's not just the fact that so many people use it. From what I understand, from at least 2018 onwards, the BJP has spent an enormous amount of money on creating social media networks within Bengal. So for example, people have been hired who are not particularly ideological but had skills in the social media and they were given very well paid jobs to create WhatsApp groups for the 2019 elections and of course they will have advantages to that. And if you look at the overwhelming advantage that the BJP has enjoyed on social media, that is matched by its overwhelming advantage in many other spheres as well, massive amounts of cash, speculations of up to 90% of the expenditure on the Bengal elections coming from the BJP, which of course, we are not entirely able to see. We saw the 1000 rupees coupons, I've heard of the Mahatman show meals being served. I know of the 250 rupees coupons given to two-wheeler riders so that they can fill petrol at the pump. And now we see these gifts which are being sent around. You open a card and as you open the card you can hear Mr Modi speak. These things don't come cheap. So where is this money coming from and the fact that you've had such a massive infusion of cash in the Bengal election, I think is totally unprecedented and it gives a kind of a feeling which is slightly counter-intuitive. If the BJP was really on such a strong wicket, would it have to do this amount of pouring of cash and effectively skirting on the other side of the boundary of the model code of conduct with the distribution of coupons and so on and so forth. Obviously they also have a massive advantage in terms of institutions. Less said the better about the election commission, but the whole sort of coercive apparatus of the state, CBI, NIA, ED, et cetera, charges against people, the creation of a certain perception just before polling day by using agencies to make opponents appear as if they are on the verge of arrest. You can also see in terms of the policing arrangements for this particular election with the entry of the UP police and of the CRPF changes within Bengal police itself. We, for example, you know, one can point to the suspension of Vivek Sahe, the IGF police. So there's a whole range of things which are going on, which basically give the impression of a very skewed political field and so on. Take again the use of violence. You know, it's not just by making appeals in words that new political constituencies get created. What we see from 2018-2019 are waves of violence, the center of which have been prominent members of the BJP, many of whom are contesting the elections, whether it is Jadavpur, Shanti Nikita in Calcutta University, the Vidya Sagar statue destruction, and so on and so forth. Now, you know, violence is not a monopoly of the BJP, nor is it new in Bengal politics as far as this particular election is concerned. We have seen that in the past by the CPM and also by the TMC. But what violence does is that it is a consolidating of the base of the parties as well as the othering of the political opponent in such a way that violence becomes not a substitute for politics, but it becomes a primary mode of doing politics. You can see that, for example, in the rhetoric of someone like Dilip Ghosh or other members of the BJP currently contesting the elections, where open threats of pure gundagardhi about beating up opponents are now part of relatively open political rhetoric. I was planning to say something about the Mato Annamshan, but I think people have said far deeper things than I was capable of. So I'm going to withdraw from that particular conversation. Hopefully, if it comes up later, I'll come up. I might contribute. On the issue of corruption, and that again sort of tangentially refers to a point that my three raised about the paradox of growth slowing down, but consumption remaining stable or even increasing, which it seems to me is a quite interesting way to think in terms of corruption and anti-incumbency. Is it the case that on the issue of subsidies, welfare programs, programs basically that allow people to subsist, that there is not much anti-incumbency on that? Could we take anti-incumbency itself as a block term rather than as terms which can be disaggregated? So for example, corruption over unfun relief, but perhaps less when it comes to the distribution of certain kinds of welfare measures, because it seems to me that this is politically and intellectually consequential. People are reading perhaps too much. I don't know that large numbers of women coming out to vote, perhaps points to Mamta's advantage in terms of some of the welfare measures that she has been able to implement. I want to sort of refer briefly to the figure of Modi. Why does the figure of Modi have traction in Bengal? This is something to think about and perhaps to discuss, because as it has been pointed out, the record of the man in office is very poor in many respects. Failure on the economy, corona containment, the fact that employment itself has not been his strong suit and the entire persona, the beard, it's a bit surreal to try to appear like Rabindranath Tagore in Bengal, I think for most observers from the outside appears to be very strange. Not only that, attempts to speak Bangla, for those of us from the outside, that also appears to be very strange. So then you look at the visuals. Some places the rallies are empty, other places the rallies are full. For some rallies, we have fake and morphed photos of crowds circulated on social media, but at the same time, both on social media and on national media, there has been the creation of a narrative of his invincibility. One thing that comes relatively to mind is why we have not seen, or at least we have not heard of in the media or even in social media, the economic issues becoming electoral issues. If we look at all of the previous speakers that have spoken, there's been a lot of emphasis on caste issues, which of course, I think is a relevant and an important one. But given the fact that we saw during the corona lockdown, large numbers of migrant workers from Bengal, why migrant workers' issues have not become a very major political issue or electoral issue, I think is worth thinking about. Why Modi's claims that he's going to be able to provide jobs or development have not been challenged in the political rhetoric or on social media, it seems to me is yet another question to be looked at as to why exactly. We are basically focusing on the communal issue and the caste issue, which are extremely important in their own right. But why not so much on the class issue as well as on the issue of things that also matter, jobs, for example, or the way in which migrant workers, and we know that Bengal has among some of the pockets of grave poverty, some of the poorest blocks in the country. So these things should have had more traction. And I wonder if the political parties have kind of walked into a BJP trap of making this election much more about identity than about bread and butter issues and the record of the BJP in governing the economy such as they have. I just want to close now to think in terms of the momentum. If you think in terms of the momentum at the moment, and if you were to look at the momentum issue from the point of view of the fact that several rounds of the election have already taken place, one would get a view just watching media and social media that the momentum has been with the BJP, but momentum itself is not an objective thing. Momentum is created in order for the momentum to be able to have a consequence on the political behavior of the voters who are yet to vote. So one very important element on the question of momentum is whether the political parties and their supporters which are against the BJP, the TMC as well as the Congress and the it's the CPI managed alliance, whether this momentum is something that can be potentially challenged and whether this momentum is something which is losing out of steam. We are only halfway through the elections. Four more rounds of voting are to be held. We know that the BJP had major problems with the selection of candidates and riots and disturbances broke out in their district level offices when the names of candidates were announced. So in this context to think of this election and its outcome as loaded in the favor of the BJP, it seems to me is quite premature and therefore not really on a hopeful note but on a note of being, of quizzing this particular momentum narrative, let me stop and say with my last sort of question which is what are political parties at the moment thinking which can change the narrative of the momentum heading in the direction of the BJP. Thanks very much. That's great Severe. Thank you so much for bringing this on for on a different note I would say. The momentum narrative that you've kind of established and I mean I can't help but think of another session perhaps where you can really talk of comparisons between states. You can see how the development narrative works for example in Orissa and also if you take Inderjeet's point about the larger story of the regional imbalances and all that then of course it all ties up with the question of what do we prioritize you know work development and I just had a conversation with a journalist and I was saying that you know in Nundigram there were lots of promises were made for development and really it hasn't had the chance to pick up. Instead it is now a politics between the switch from Trinimo to joining BJP at the very last minute and therefore it's a policy or it's a politics of reaction rather than you're playing the card on politics of development here and that has been the kind of you know the underlying theme of this discussion today that state versus center to create this kind of an all overarching Akhanda Bharat narrative of nationalism which is also hyper nationalism as you've said in on other occasions and that is again facilitated by the advantage of the social media that that you've raised and whether that narrative stands for Bengal which is very much just the other day we had Kobir Shuman on another social forum and he was saying that you know I am a Bengali my Bengali language matters so we do have a history of ethnic nationalism quite strong in Bengal and those kind of stories are getting perhaps changing the momentum is changing the diet's getting diluted and let's hear about the grassroots story now slightly but we do have six questions and I'm really going to say that you know as as a gatekeeper of time I think I thought we will all be able to squeeze in but the discussion has been so interesting and so good that I didn't want to stop anybody and maybe keep up the momentum there but if we can just take some questions and I would say to speakers if you can just keep that within a few lines your your replies then we can really see some hope of doing some justice to the second round of panelists really waiting very patiently so there's a question to Salim I'm not sure if he's still with us but I think I think I'll skip that for the moment and say yes I'm here okay thank you so it says given the majority of media has turned the election into a binary one that is TMC versus BJP and as the social media narrative have been proven to be successful in creating this polarization how does the shangjukto lands comes to my name really have managed to convince voters at the grassroots level that to stop BJP TMC is not the only choice and vice versa so do you have a quick answer as one of the speakers have already pointed out the BJP started the last five years they're doing this job and video also after 2019 election they started scripting the result of 2021 and it was a binary dual binary on the politically it is BJP versus TMC and in the social front is Hindu versus Muslims both these binaries were active but even then after this brilliant valley of the shangjukto which was announced where even the photograph of the CPI left's valley was you know stolen by the IT cell so media is now talking about these third force of course hesitant but they were not seen not written not heard of all these years but since this pressure from the grassroots level the rallies the grassroots activism you will see that the every election campaign you cannot buy the media space and as you know the character of this media but even social media even though negative they started doing negative thing but why ISF why you left joining hands with the inner circular front buzzard then they started talking about secularism all those media which are talking about secularism they never rewrote secularism but they used to term as a secular because of the right is sent and third day I'm the street level movement is going on village level movement is going on and that has broken this binary because some of the speakers pointed out last speaker that livelihoods to the left was always since beginning we think that the issues of livelihoods come first then this consciousness is developed and because of unemployment because of flight of the migrant level because of the shorting price rise particularly fuels and essential commodities the people are discussing something else we cannot see in the discussion in the evening hours the television studio they're far off from the rural Bengal one point is there and then the Bengal it wasn't culture during election you may make a break up political parties future but five years gone but culture because these are bit of a century so this BJP Jai Srinam maybe you you are not listening on the streets you are listening on the BJP rallies and or some DLC rallies as a counter narrative and and the media but I'm moving around Bengal how many places you are hearing this you are not but media is focusing so time is out my question was there about forceful alliance that particularly Mamta Paraji herself said that there are gaddars still in the party so the naturalized of BJP the estranged allies of BJP if the fight is between the BJP and its estranged allies or natural allies then that binaries media is created and not the favorite favor of BJP but you have a large section of population in Bengal who are not with BJP who don't think BJP is their naturalized and that is the strength of the left but that is the strength of the third force. Thank you Salim thank you for your response I think that sums up quite well the the question and I think we have a next one that is not really addressed to anybody but let me just go to something that's addressed to Moitish from Sugar to Ghosh do you think perceptions of the growth versus retribution issue could be important in deciding the outcome of the West Bengal elections and if so which of the three parties is it likely to benefit most anything that you can quickly think of? Thanks Shagothi for that question I assume you mean redistribution not retribution although you know one can never rule out you know different angles in these very strange and dramatic elections but I assume it is a growth versus redistribution so yeah it's a fair question I think that really if one takes a very objective look at things leaving aside the political angles and opinions I think clearly especially given I think the first round of the coronavirus crisis and then the migrant worker is coming back and then the unfund the you know the natural you know the devastation that unfund cause and the relief there was a lot of allegation of irregularities etc I think there was a little bit of ground under the feet of Trinamol was a little shaken at that time I think the general perception and I'm really going by conversations with various important sources as well as what I read since I would say the last six to eight months there has been some concerted effort with the Shastra Shathri and some of these other schemes and therefore going back to that you know that's in a way also plays to the earlier kind of perception of of the Trinamol as basically dole giving whether it's the puja committees and the clubs of the Paras who who in essentially get this so there is a little bit of you know in an ironic way that you know many of us here would support a strong social safety net or welfare and I have nothing against that but we would also support that to be given out in a systematic and well designed way and and and not in the way of political patronage etc right so therefore so therefore I think that does pay to the Trinamol's advantage to some degree however interestingly on the growth issue one of the reasons for the Puri Bharton slogan that it seemed to have worked in 2011 clearly it worked out electorally was there was frustration in the second half of the left front's rule in fact I my early career work on Operation Borga that basically showed that the rural reforms were quite successful in West Bengal you know one can always draw their various nuances and and and kind of you know but the reality is you know these reforms were relatively successful and and the left front gained from that popularity in the rural areas right but in the later decades the industrial growth employment prospects etc there was a problem there was a certain kind of you know frustration that was setting in and that clearly was the same frustration that for example sunk the UPA2 in a way that there was this perception of kind of you know stagnation and then Modi had the magic button that would give you know high high growth rates etc so going back to Shukla's question I think that this is the so in a certain way the redistribution narrative normally should help the left because I think the left does have a very strong electoral discussion and focus around some of these roti-roji type you know issues and and it's to their credit that they're doing it and and not getting in the various identity and and kind of divisive issues that we are we are also hearing but the fact is the Trinomul does have certain schemes that seem to have worked well and and especially among female voters they might play a role but interestingly and I'll I'll stop with the statement on the growth issue though if this was 2014 the Gujarat model whatever that bubble that was floated and clearly some people you know I wrote an article in Outlook that ended with a somewhat whatever pessimistic thing that as as as with commercial bubbles or caught word sector bubbles you know the trouble with bubbles is unless they're backed by fundamentals at some point they have to you know they they will burst because you know any any growth episode has to be backed up by solid infrastructure investments solid kind of you know climate for industrial investment etc so in 2021 where is the growth where is the growth I mean you know so therefore to the extent normally it would have played in the BJP rhetoric right that there's a party of growth the party of opportunity at least that's one part of the sort of two-sided messaging that they have on the economic front it's kind of a kind of robust kind of growth kind of thing as opposed to welfare and then of course the more identity politics issue but anyway that's that's that's what I have to say thank you I mean you know this the the topics are so big you could probably speak for a long time on growth as well and and whether growth stands anymore as the magic word you know this is something that we can talk on later perhaps and there's a question that comes from Nilanjan Banerjee which I think probably severe can probably take this is Mamda Banerjee following Nitish Kumar's model of getting large number of votes from women voters which even many pollsters could not predict with its welfare schemes for women and consciously made campaigns like Bangla, Niger, Meike, Chai and the insider-outsider debate just a camouflage to it that's a question from Nilanjan Banerjee and I think there is another one that I would like to read out probably Indujeet you could take this. Daipa and Choudhuri who is writing does the amendment of recent CAA pave the way for creation of an ethnic democracy in South Asia as Sami Smuha would have put it even how there's a political monomy between the Hindu-Nazi state and the Zionist-Israeli state oh I leave that so so where do you want to take first and then Indujeet can answer. Yeah Mitrish obviously you know already addressed part of that one but you know it's not just Mamda or Nitish Kumar who are who have targeted programs for women voters I mean you know you look across the country and one interesting trend of redistributive if you want to call it that you know what your programs from around the country have been programs that have been directed specifically for women whether it is Nitish Kumar handing out bicycles among other things girls' educations kutumbashri in Kerala or the programs that you know have been implemented for example to induce families to not marry their daughters below the age of 18 by Mamda for example if you are 18 and above you can prove your age certificate you get I think 25,000 rupees at the time of your wedding and those programs are meaningful and so that is why I basically want to reiterate that you know whole point the anti-incumbency I think is a kind of overall catch all umbrella term but it needs to be looked at in a much more desegregated way it is possible that there are people who are badly affected by Amfan but then benefited from some of the other programs it is possible that so you know these kinds of combinations make it difficult to just say corruption in all programs or programs have been successful and I think that is the unknowable here what one does take you know I think from people from within the TMC one hears that large numbers of women coming out to vote in one place you know including for example in Nandigram which had in any case high you know what the turnout that these are seen as silent you know support for apparently a beleaguered chief minister. Thank you severe Inderjit would you like to take the the question? Of course yeah I think it's a good question and a lot of scholars have started using the concept of ethnic democracy to describe India. Christoph Jafferlord for instance talks about the key feature of an ethnic democracy and it's associated what he calls two-tiered citizenship where the Hindu majority enjoys a more desure and de facto rights than the Muslim minority. You also have Catherine Adini who's writing about how the Hindu nationalists define the ethno-religious majority as eternal heir to India's sort of cultural legacy. Now while the formulation of ethnic democracy is quite useful and it cautions against accepting India as a liberal democracy but I think it also downplays the extent to which democracy in India is reduced to a shell of just holding regular elections. So I think the democracy in the ethnic democracy bit is a bit problematic because if you have a polity that is based on the structural exclusion of a section of its population it does not reasonably can be said to qualify as a democracy. So I think an alternative conception that I'm sort of playing with if you will is the concept of ethnocracy which is a very specific expression of nationalism where a dominant ethnos in our case the Hindu ethnos so to speak and the way in which a religious community has been ethnified as has happened in in our in the Indian case gains political control and uses the state apparatus to ethnicize the territory and here of course you have the CAA in place but you also have the various other expressions of what used to be called Hindu nationalism but I think is much more a way of ethnifying what is you know quite a diverse and if you will a hierarchical worldview and sort of ensure that it's the Hindu ethnos that really gains control and dominance and is considered to be at the core of the nation whereas groups such as Muslims are considered peripheral and external to the nation and of course the CAA is a classic example. Thanks. Thank you. I think there are two more questions that have come out and I mean you know I really feel that the question that comes from Abhishek Banerjee on the feminist angle and how women are seeing things change. I don't know whether Salim is still here to perhaps respond slightly as to what you know you were talking a lot on culture and how the whole CPM campaign has been revolving around you know a lot of songs a lot of music and a lot of you know whether that has encouraged more women to come out and participate in the campaigns and whether they've responded more favorably that could be one thing and there's another question which is again a much more general question from Jormish Tapal given the lumenization of politics do you see voters voicing against this so there's not a particular party that's implied here and do you expect to see Bengal voters punishing the defectors criminal politicians. I think the defectors are not all criminal politicians there's been a lot of defections here for various reasons so I think I just keep that open to anybody who wants to reply to this but maybe Salim you have raised your hand so I'll move to you for a quick reply yeah thank you. While this discussion was going on about women voters you forget for the younger the new generation and this left campaign is not only youthful but is driven by the youth there's no IT cell no PK or ITAC it's just young volunteers students teens mainly the 18th to 25th and both male and female you see that picture of the rally so it's not published or shown in the ABPR and all that but you will find out in the whole of so creativity technology and it's very much Bengali, parody, cartoon, graffiti, slogans, poetry and this is why it's not just one or two individuals that bring it so a lot of generation has come up and that's it it is driven on the streets in the campaigns so it is really good really good youth campaign one thing and that improves both male and female again of course elderly people I can't say objectively those most studies particularly the women with children with so much of burden of the family what kind of this Swasya Sabhi and Shikha Nassri has been through that the young generation they have firmly said that they don't want to depend on those even singhura have seen that so you will get two rupees rise that's not enough they want industry they don't trade commerce to queries this is one part I can add on this and this in pair Bengal is not lost on this Hindu Muslim background there are Muslims who are opposing this manga kind of quote unquote regularly focused by RSS but Muslims are not at least in Bengal you see this real so in the neighborhood people are seeing from far you can see to those who see telegraphically Bengal or those who see telegraphically Bengal they can have a you know a particular view but they never people are seeing how the sufferings are common some are common and then defections unfortunately this Mokul, Roy, Mamta kind of politics have legalized and normalized this defections but there is hatred among the Bengalis about this so that's what the slogan is then our left voters are coming back I can tell you so don't all these opinion polls their base is 2019 so please instead of 2019 you can go back to 2016 or you may not but don't depend on 2019 that's the basic aspect okay thank you so much so maybe we should keep with the momentum narrative may I take leave now your small warning I have to go early thank you once again Selim for joining us and we look forward to welcoming back again perhaps another time and again thank you again from all of us as well as the South Asia Institute very grateful thank you I'm going to have to close this session now and move on to the next session because I think there are some questions still unless someone is very keen to answer any of this I think there's a question on NRC whether is communal violence guaranteed should be JP wind state and implement CA and NRC and you know how much violence is going on in the election campaign I think these sort of questions as well as another question on the Love Jihad campaign I think these kind of questions can come up in the next session when we will hear a little bit more on subaltern and grassroots narratives as well as on the social media