Rosogolla, but no votes!” Who else can that gem come from but Mamata Banerjee? The Bengali’s love for the rosogolla is proverbial. Except when it’s associated with performance—there it connotes a big ‘zero’! Just like ‘motta’ (egg) in the south. But unlike the egg, the rosogolla has a doubly delicious irony—it’s auspicious and a big nought at the same time. A Bengali mother will distribute rosogollas when her son does well, but also scare him about getting only rosogollas if he fails to focus on his studies, especially math! Since much is being made about poll math these days, Mamata’s allusion is loaded with a mirthy edge. A rajbhoj (a Bengali sweet of same genre, with a more elevated status) carries no such connotation!
Why are sweets being thrown around in the midst of heavy-duty electoral slanging matches? Well, because the prime minister did a little political expose on Mamata in an ‘apolitical’ interview, filled with mango talk, to Hindi film star Akshay Kumar. A tongue-in-cheek Narendra Modi told Akshay that Didi sends him sandesh (yet another Bengali sweet!) and kurtas twice or thrice a year and that he’s making this public despite knowing it may hurt him or the BJP electorally!
Mamata, sure enough, was livid and issued her rosogolla jibe forthwith. Were voters listening? We’ll know on May 23. But why did the astute Modi want to hint at a kind of underlying bonhomie that’s nowhere visible in the bitter political fight for the 42 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal? Particularly after he had virtually opened his previous interview—a ‘political’ one, to two anchors of a friendly English news channel—on the bloodbath taking place in Bengal’s booths. ‘Raktaranjita’ was how he had described, in evocative Tagorean language, the first two phases of polling.
The BJP has invested big in Bengal, with Modi and Amit Shah leading the charge. Perceptionally, it’s paying off. Depending on who one speaks to—a middle-class, upper-caste Calcuttan, an NGO activist in the hinterland, officials in unofficial conversations, or the hoi polloi, the BJP could be doing “exceptional well”, i.e. picking up 8-10 seats, or a more reasonable 2-3. All agree, though, that the Trinamool tally won’t dip below 30 and not exceed 34-35. All perceptional conjectures.
Mamata anyway is going for the jugular to max her share of 42. The Left is still not out of the ICU, though not totally headed towards a rosogolla (zero). Nor has the Congress entirely lost its little foothold in the chicken’s-neck corridor. But every which way, from Darjeeling up north to 24-Parganas in the south, the TMC is fighting to restrict the rise of BJP.
But that’s pre-poll warfare. Post-poll could be another story altogether. A Mamata with a sizeable tally under her cotton saree pallu could be as beguiling an ally as she is a ferocious tigress in the election arena. A sandesh from Mamata (in the Hindi sense of a ‘message’) could be more than welcome for any bloc trying to form a government after May 23!
Hillary Clinton once lamented that a parliamentary system is more conducive to the emergence of women leaders than the American presidential system, citing Indira Gandhi and Theresa May. Quite so. Indian elections have rarely been fought without a few powerful women acting as major influencers. Mamata and Mayawati are filling a void left by Jayalalithaa’s demise and Sonia Gandhi virtually vacating the centrestage. How they perform, which way they tilt, these are questions laced with a lot of piquant curiosity. They are not only the X-factors, but their stance can shape the next government—directly or in reaction.
Right now, the image that prevails is that of Mayawati sharing the dais with her archest rival, Mulayam Singh Yadav, with a namaskar. How is she and her gathbandhan with Mulayam’s son Akhilesh Yadav faring? If political watchers in UP are to be believed, the (admittedly messy and uneven) pooling of votes has given the BJP hard times in the first three phases. Little wonder Modi is scheduled to have his first ever public meeting in Ayodhya after arriving on the national stage. (While on Hindutva, the ‘blunderbuss’ Pragya Thakur’s Bhopal candidature has not quite transformed into a swing factor.) The consolidation of OBC-Muslim-Dalit votes is also proving a formidable wall for the Congress, Priyanka Gandhi’s presence notwithstanding.
How Mayawati’s BSP fares would be fascinating to watch—it’s a battle for parliamentary survival (remember her 2014 tally of zero, despite a healthy voteshare). But whether the SP-BSP coalition sticks together post-poll is the real question. The hypothetical scenario of Mayawati bolting from the alliance is also constrained by the next assembly polls in UP, where she has bigger stakes.
For a person of prime ministerial ambitions, Mayawati has never really been party to a government in the Centre—and has been on the wrong side of the equation there for a decade. By 2022, she would be out of power in UP too for a decade. Too long a dry patch. What would help her rise from this void? Mamata, on the other hand, is numero uno in Bengal, but her future equations aren’t very different. What can help her parlay off her national stature into retaining her pre-eminence in Bengal in 2021? Rosogollas for the right answer.
Santwana Bhattacharya
Resident Editor, Karnataka
Email: santwana@newindianexpress.com