What went wrong: CPI(M) review says was wrong in equating Trinamool with BJP

A 'what went wrong' examination in West Bengal has led the CPI(M) to acknowledge that it was wrong in its assessment of equating the Trinamool Congress (TMC) with the BJP on a single plane and under-estimated the "growing hostility" between both the parties even as people chose the Mamata Banerjee-led party over them in tackling the saffron party.

The assessment is part of the 'Review of Assembly Elections in Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Assam', adopted at the Central Committee meeting held between August 6 and 8 in the national capital.

The CPI(M) had campaigned that TMC and BJP were two sides of the same coin and had formed Samjyukta Morcha through an electoral understanding with Congress and ISF, which the review said did not emerge cohesively with the Congress largely disowning the ISF.

It said ISF presence affected the cohesiveness of the Samyukta Morcha despite the secular nature of its programme and candidates from marginalised sections could not completely erase the image of it being a Muslim minority outfit.

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The review said that the CPI(M) or its allies were not seen as a "credible alternative" to the BJP while voters felt TMC was capable of defeating the BJP.

The results in these assembly elections in West Bengal were "devastating" for the CPI(M) as it did not win a single seat for the first time since 1946 and for the first time in independent India, no Communist was elected to the state assembly. Its vote-share declined from 19.75 per cent in the 2016 Assembly polls to 6.28 per cent in 2019 and further to 4.73 per cent in 2021 Assembly polls.

During this period, the review said the party and mass outfits organised many big protests and its Brigade rallies had a participation of more than 10 lakh people. "Yet the question remains why such mobilisations and actions have not translated into better electoral results or reversed the trend of the decline in our mass base," it said.

Referring to what went wrong in its strategy in Bengal, the CPI(M) said the political bipolarity in the state was strengthening for some years now and it sharpened during and after the 2019 elections.

While insisting that the BJP-TMC bipolar projection negating any other electoral alternative in the state was actively supported and abetted by the corporate media and influential sections of the ruling classes, the review was ready to acknowledge that it was "wrong to draw the conclusion that there was a collusion between the TMC and BJP to achieve such bipolarity".

The review referred to Trinamool Congress' alliance with BJP in A B Vajpayee era and said the party served as the piggyback for the RSS-BJP to get a foothold in Bengal but the BJP's rise countrywide and it seeking to gain control in all the states, created "new ruptures in this alliance".

The party accepted that it "wrongly assessed" that the large-scale defections from Trinamool to BJP and their return post-elections as a reflection of the collusion between the two in creating a bipolarity in the state.

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With the BJP eating up regional parties it aligned with, the review said the "consequent growing hostility" between the BJP and the Trinamool was "underestimated" by the party. This resulted in diluting sharpness of the anti-BJP campaign and often equating BJP and Trinamool Congress in practice, despite the statements that BJP was its principal target.

"The position of our party as an uncompromising defender of secular democracy opposing the BJP suffered," the review admitted.

It also said that they over-estimated the anti-incumbency against Trinamool Congress while under-estimating the efforts made by Mamata to overcome this. The CPI(M) mistakenly brushed aside these contemptuously as 'dole politics', leading to alienation of a section from the party and support Trinamool.

The personal tirade against Mamata by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah generated a degree of sympathy among the people for the Trinamool likening it to a David vs Goliath fight and the sympathy was further bolstered with the Chief Minister campaigning on a wheelchair.

"However exaggerated her injuries may have been, this generated empathy particularly among the women voters. Thirdly, they succeeded in a sort of social engineering targeting specific groups with specific concessions to earn their support. These factors, which can be clearly seen in retrospect, were not properly taken into account by us," the review said.

The party also said that the Nandigram episode and the slogan 'land as our basis and industrialisation as our future' raised then haunted its prospects as references to it during the poll campaign led people to view the CPI(M) as continuing land acquisition policy.

"Further, in the current situation of deep agrarian crisis and the ongoing farmers’ struggles for the repeal of the agri-laws and the legal right of MSP, any talk of acquiring land from the peasantry, particularly when they are subjected to the terror of the land mafia, only strengthened the alienation of the peasantry from us.