Sandeep Phukan: Waves of Trinamool green began pulsing through Kolkata on Wednesday morning, as the city proved it has unlatched itself from the traditional red of the Left.
By mid-morning, it was clear that Kolkata had picked Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the elections to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. A few hours later, the TMC had made huge gains in the rest of the state - of the 80 civic bodies outside Kolkata, the Trinamool won 30 municipalities on its own. "Let us hope these are run better than the Railways," said the CPM's Sitaram Yechury.
Banerjee, who is the Railways Minister, now stands primed as the centrifugal force in a state that will pick its next government in 2011.
As for the Left, it points out that while its results are worrying, the picture is not entirely bleak. "We have arrested the anti-Left vote but not been able to reverse the trend," said CPM leader Sitaram Yechury. In the general elections last year, Banerjee trounced the Left, winning 19 of the 42 seats. That result stunned the CPM, and it has been trying to reconnect better with its voters since then.
Which is why today's results beg the question - who should the CPI (M) appeal to? In 2006, the Left came to power for a record seventh term with its best-ever performance, winning 235 of the state's 294 assembly seats. The CPM alone won close to 170 seats. Urban voters were siding with the Left. Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's Kolkata saw Marxism flanked by multiplexes.
Now, those same urban voters have ignored the Left, swayed, perhaps, by the same issues that alienated the party's traditional voter base in rural Bengal. The CPM has been hit largely due to the twin disasters of Nandigram and Singur. Farmers and villagers, championed by Banerjee, launched massive resistance campaigns to attempts to set up a Special Economic Zone in Nandigram, and a Tata Nano factory in Singur. The demonstrations were punctuated with violence.
Yechury says, "These (civic poll areas) constitute 17% of the electorate... Efforts were being made to reconnect...but it was mostly done in rural areas."
That attempt to bond with its traditional base in rural Bengal hasn't delivered - not yet, anyway.
Over the weekend, the CPM's politburo will analyze the results of today's civic polls. With less than a year to go before the assembly elections, the Left has to decide on how it will convince West Bengal to give it another chance.