When it comes to election violence, West Bengal tops the charts. It is disturbing that there is a part of India where the stakes for the ruling party and its henchmen are so high, that they will kill, burn and brutalize the voters who they think will oppose their writ. This has become endemic, and more violent as time goes by.
As Jay Bhattacharjee, my go to expert, on such matters, said on Door Darshan, that voting in West Bengal means voters have to deal with life threatening situations, including the candidates that stand with opposing parties. We saw Babul Supriyo’s car being vandalized and him getting roughed up by TMC goons.
Villagers are scared to go to the polls unless they are escorted from their villages to the poll booths. This is a disgrace for the Chief Minister, who should recall how when the Communists were in power, her people were also terrorized during elections. The stakes it seems for the rural youth are too high to let an opposition party come in. These are people who through four decades have seen their state deteriorate and most of the well-educated young people have left to get jobs in other parts of the country. This was a state that once was the headquarters of several British and Indian Companies.
Than the Naxal movement started and slowly corporates moved away. The Communist party came in and one would have thought that in the late 1990s they would have learnt from their mentors- the Chinese- and brought manufacturing and industry in; given jobs to their rural youth; and developed the state, which once was the pride of India. Instead, they let the rot sink in and then Mamata Banerjee and her party TMC won. Why would she repeat the mistakes of the past three decades? Unfortunately, it seems the people of the state merely exchanged one bad party with another totally as inadequate.
Mamata rules with an iron fist. The Police Commissioner of Kolkata has shown himself to be her pawn. Corruption is rife and local mafias are thriving, with their goons programmed to guard their territory and the benefits that filter down.
The world’s largest democracy, which has 900 million people registered to vote, has a state where people are scared to vote. Surely, every citizen should have the right to vote as they please. India’s Election Commission is the envy of every country and has a stellar record, but their writ runs in the polling booths and they cannot secure whole villages from local goons.
I do hope that in the last phases of the election, free and fair voting can be established in West Bengal, and all candidates in the fray respect the rule of law, especially the majority party, and reign in their party workers.