Minutiae of Politics

 IT IS ENTIRELY possible that many of my friends in both school and college found my extra-curricular interests remarkably peculiar. At an age when most others were preoccupied with sport, music and chasing girls, I was busy reading newspapers from all over India and absorbing the minutiae of politics. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only oddball in my class at La Martinière. My interests were nurtured and cultivated by endless conversations on political developments with my close friend Chandan Mitra who, alas, now belongs to the ages.

The mid-1960s were captivating times, not least in Calcutta. The city then was pulsating with energy. It was also a prosperous city and seen by the rest of India to be on a par with Bombay and Madras. Delhi was regarded by us as a tad too provincial, despite being the nation’s capital. It was this vibrant metropolis that was infected with a bout of madness in the form of leftwing radicalism. It destroyed the city, led to the destruction of an entire generation and triggered the marginalisation of West Bengal from the national mainstream. Yet, and I would be wrong to deny it, the prolonged bout of self-destruction was an experience that I cherish.

To cut a long story short, my interest in politics extended to a bizarre preoccupation with election statistics. It was a great time to nourish that interest. There was a General Election in 1967 and another one four years later, in 1971. The record in West Bengal was even better. The Assembly election of 1967 produced a ramshackle anti- Congress coalition that collapsed (or was made to collapse in less than a year). The alternative Congress-led government lasted a bare three months because, in an intriguing turn of events, the speaker refused to convene the Assembly. This triggered a constitutional crisis and the imposition of President’s Rule. The next election was in 1969 which led to a landslide victory of the CPM-led United Front. But the Left was in a self-destruct mode and this government too collapsed in a year. There was another election in 1971, which took place along with the national exercise that saw Indira Gandhi capture the high political ground. The national mood rubbed off on Bengal and Congress made a remarkable comeback. But it was still a fragile majority that couldn’t endure the challenges posed by the crisis in East Pakistan. The government was dismissed in mid- 1971 and the path was cleared for West Bengal as the springboard of the operation to create Bangladesh. Consequently, Congress approached the Assembly election in 1972 on a high and reinforced its advantage with an administrative highhandedness that has not been seen in India—apart from Jammu & Kashmir. In hindsight, I would say that Indira Gandhi and Siddhartha Shankar Ray saved Bengal from anarchy, although this five-year respite from Left rule was insufficient to restore the state to its former glory.

The experience of living through and witnessing four Assembly elections in five years was something that did wonders to my political education. Now, if I add my deep involvement in every General Election from 1991 and my own candidature—alas, I failed to win— in West Bengal in 2021, I can claim a certain academic expertise in the dynamics of elections in India.

Of course, the knowledge and expertise need constant upgrade. The advent of technology has altered political communications unrecognisably. Today, a special type of professional expertise is required to drive home a political message. What used to be done by a team of enthusiastic and ideologically committed activists in the old-style war rooms is now the preserve of agencies engaged by the political parties. The dominance of the lordly amateurs in politics is well and truly over, at least for the duration of the election season.

I am not going to express any opinions on the desirability or otherwise of this so-called professionalisation of electoral politics. All that can be said is that there is a significant mismatch between what the professional politician with grassroots connect believes needs to be done and how the professional number crunchers imagine the direction of politics. It is difficult to say who is right and who is wrong. All I would suggest at this juncture is that both sets of people could do with a greater appreciation of each other. At the same time, the poetry of politics cannot be subsumed by the facelessness of AI culture. I look forward to a happy meeting of the two cultures.