The only Bengalis who remained blind were CPI(M) leaders. - This was the tale in 2011-May month when Exit Polls predicted the 'exit' of Marxists in West Bengal.
They had good reasons to believe only themselves and not trust any 'exit polls'. In 2026, the hands of clock have come back to the position (Ghari ki sui) from where it all started.
Now Mamata says the BJP has paid money to the TV channels to throw out such exit poll findings.
In 2011, Mamata was the would be victor and hence it was Biman Bose who sneered that the "contract media" (translation: journalists paid by the evil, bourgeois America-Congress-Mamata conspiracy) would have to lick the spit they spat at the Left once the results came in.
History or Her story is known to all.
See the paradox, M J Akbar wrote in 2011 for 'India Today' :
"Three decades ago (that is 1977), astonishingly, the CPI(M) was equally clueless about its epochal impending victory.
It had fought the post-Emergency general elections of 1977 in alliance with Morarji Desai’s Janata Party, and would have settled for a junior role in the Assembly elections with just 120 seats out of 294. An obstinately foolish Janata was not willing to give the Marxists even this many."
Akbar also wrote: "Thirty-four years of success have camouflaged the principal fault-line of Communist structure and thinking: that the party must always take precedence over the people.
The people became instruments of the party’s will. Reward and punishment were the party’s gift, as its rule seeped into every crack and crevice of Bengal’s social multiple pluralities."
Has anything changed in the last 15 years ? Now Mamata and her Bhaipo face an adverse Exit Poll findings and they want the rest of the world to disbelieve it. Heart in heart - they know. Mamata herself said during campaign -
"If TMC survives, we shall meet".
Prophecy comes to politician-turned-poetess !!
"Jabar Bela" is an extremely powerful phrase. Another Bengali phrase going round is "chapey achey (TMC is under pressure)".
An edit in 'The Statesman' (May 17, 2009) - the day Manmohan Singh was re-elected and TMC won 19 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal; --- remarked somewhat acidly:
"In the aftermath of the results, duties and responsibilities devolve on both sides. The CPI-M is known to derive lessons from a jolt...... Civil servants will have to abide by the concept of neutrality. For too long have they functioned as an adjunct of the party. This must end".
In 2026 too, we may write the same thing.
Take another pause.
M J Akbar's article (in 2011) also said :
"Mamata’s electoral success has been driven primarily by a pervasive disgust summed up in a simple phrase: enough is enough.
But it also owes much to the fact that the CPI(M)’s famed cadre cracked sometime between the general elections in 2009 and the following panchayat elections.
Some defected to Mamata, while others who kept their eyes open began to bargain for peace in a post-Left dispensation."
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Change, or poriborton, was visible long before it came.
The leftist cause, it will be surely argued, is too important to be left to leftists. Mamata mistook some wrong policies as the golden rule. One of them is being pro-Muslim.
Death is an essential necessity for rebirth, and the CPI (M) must first acknowledge that it is time to bury its past. It perhaps did but only partly.
Being thrown out of office has many virtues. You walk into sunlight, for instance. If the Left opened its eyes it would have found a way forward. If not, it will rest in peace for a decade.
Now, between 2011 and 2026 - it's decade and a half.
And here - the BJP has entered to occupy the vacant slot. Suddenly, Bengalis have not become communal. They have also become pragmatic and also pro-Hindutva school 'nationalists'.
'India Today', 2011 - May issue
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