The Game is On

West Bengal represents the BJP’s final frontier but the party heavyweights are up against a gutsy street fighter in Mamata Banerjee. The elections have become a volatile mix of horse-trading and power games and, to paraphrase the TMC slogan, the game is on. The final score will have a major impact on national politics

- Sujit Bhar in Kolkata

AS the somewhat successful businessman sits back in his chair in his comfortable office, he wears an uncomfortable smile on his lips. He is a Jain by religion and a staunch Congress party supporter by choice. The Bharatiya Jana ta Party’s (BJP) intrusion into Bengal has left no mark on his preferences. His family has been in Bengal for well over a century and he is clearly uncomfortable at the horse-trading going on as much as he is uncomfortable with the Left Front’s alignment with a rabid semi-Islamist party, ironically called the Indian Secular Front (ISF), and he is completely dissatisfied with the economic failures of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC). As the icing on the cake, he is also dissatisfied with the state of his favourite party, the Congress.

“There is a state of fear now, but more importantly, a state of complete confusion. We say the people of India are intelligent, they vote the right people into power, they choose well…do they?” he asks. This is a difficult question, especially in the context of Bengal, where politics precedes breakfast and even the morning tea, ending for a minor break with the nightcap. “Adhir Chowdhury (the state Congress chief) suffered too many personal problems. He had no help from the centre (aka Sonia Gandhi), and the entire grassroots network of the party has disappeared,” says the businessman. “Now the high command doesn’t sound that sensible either.” The dissatisfaction has not yet grown strong enough for him to tilt towards the BJP, but it is strong enough to start disliking his family dependence on the Congress.