In West Bengal, if the sun suddenly decides to shine on a chilly morning or clouds gather on a scorching day, it won’t sound odd if such pleasant changes are attributed to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Ms. Banerjee has been in power for nearly a decade now and people’s eyes, by now, are long used to hoardings and posters that credit her with every celebration or celebration-worth event that takes place in the State. From handicrafts fairs to food festivals to business summits — almost everything happens with the ‘anuprerana’, or inspiration, of the Chief Minister.
Ms. Banerjee, a street fighter who has risen through the ranks, may not have the persona of Jayalalithaa, but just like Jayalalithaa when she was in power, she is present nearly everywhere: outside airports and railway stations and on bus stands and roads and flyovers. People, not even for a moment, are allowed to forget who’s in charge.
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In such a scenario, when her presence already occupies a lot of public space and mindscape, fresh billboards have now sprung up all over Kolkata, hailing Ms. Banerjee as Banglar gorbo — Bengal’s pride. The golden billboards are minimalist. They bear no distracting slogans or images: only the face of Ms. Banerjee and the words ‘Banglar gorbo.’ The logo of her party, the Trinamool Congress, is in one corner, trying to make itself as inconspicuous as possible. These hoardings are the war cry — the beginning of a fierce campaign that’s going to unfold over the next 12 months.
The overnight mushrooming of the hoardings comes at a time when the country is in the grip of the fear of COVID-19 and Ms. Banerjee herself has ordered the shutting down of all educational institutions till March 31.
“They [the hoardings] have Prashant Kishor written all over them,” a top bureaucrat told The Hindu, referring to the election strategist who had earlier devised the Didi Ke Bolo (Tell Didi) campaign which never quite took off.
“I think they are trying to capitalise on the fact that the BJP, in spite of its popularity, does not have a popular face in West Bengal. That is why they are again projecting Mamata as their face — this time as the pride of Bengal,” the bureaucrat said on condition of anonymity.
Even well-known political analyst Biswanath Chakraborty is of the opinion that the strategy is to tell voters to choose between her and the unknown. “Projecting her as a face creates a huge gap between the ruling party [Trinamool] and the Opposition,” he said.
Mr. Chakraborty, in fact, sees the hoardings as an attempt to reconstruct the old image of Ms. Banerjee. She first stormed to power in 2011, defeating the Left Front that had been in power for far too long and had seen a decline in its popularity for reasons that included forced acquisition of land in the village of Singur for building a car factory.
But ever since then, a lot of water has flowed under the Howrah Bridge. Her party machinery, over the years, has been afflicted with serious allegations of misrule, corruption and undemocratic practices. “Therefore she wants to rebuild her old image,” said Mr. Chakraborty.
The BJP, in spite of its unexpected and impressive performance in West Bengal in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, still does not have a charismatic and credible face locally. It is led in the State by Dilip Ghosh, who is in the news more often for making controversial statements, such as cow’s milk containing gold.
