Thursday, Apr 10, 2014
Kolkata: As her black SUV made a pit stop at a roadside tea stall, the dust-bowl of a street corner was, within moments, transformed into an ‘aam darbar’ (commoners’ assembly) and holding court was Subhashini Ali, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) candidate in Barrackpore - a suburb in the northern fringes of Kolkata, known in the 1980s as the hotbed of militant trade unionism in Bengal.
Such was the CPM’s clout over voters in this part of the state for the later half of 1970 and all through the 1980s that any roadshow or procession by the ruling party would invariably bring Barrackpore to a grinding halt. But this Tuesday’s show was distinctly different from all those years of Left hegemony, when the CPM’s writ was law - one that would decimate the opposition even before the first ballot was cast.
So when Subhashini, seated in the front seat of her Mahindra Scorpio, complained to Gulf News about how ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) was coercing CPM supporters and party workers in certain pockets of her constituency, particularly Bijpur, it indeed seemed like life coming a full circle.
There was a point in time when, under the watch of the CPM, any election in this key industrial belt — particularly in Bijpur and Bhatpara — used to be transformed into a one-party affair with the opposition Congress finding it hard to even find a sufficient number of agents to man all the polling booths.
Tuesday’s roadshow by the CPM candidate was woefully low on hype and showmanship, but high on spontaneity and a sense of belonging — vital ingredients that had gone missing from the functional DNA of the CPM and its Left Front allies in the 34 years of unstinted power in the state.
As Subhashini’s procession — if one can call a motley crowd of followers a procession — snaked its way at snail-speed through the narrow lanes and by-lanes of Kakinada late on Tuesday evening, there were people from almost all age groups who came out of their homes to greet ‘Kanpur ki beti’ or the “daughter of Kanpur” — as Subhashini is affectionately known.
On being asked how confident she was of transforming such love and affection into votes, particularly in the presence of a heavyweight candidate like Dinesh Trivedi of TMC, the daughter of Colonel Prem Sehgal and Captain Lakshmi Sehgal of the Indian National Army, told Gulf News during her campaign: “These people hardly know me and yet if they can show such affection, then I have every reason to be hopeful about winning their votes as well. I mean, why should they come out of their homes if they don’t want to vote for me?”
Subhashini, a CPM central committee member, won the Kanpur seat in Uttar Pradesh in 1989, riding a grand alliance of secular, non-Congress, non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) entities that saw late Vishwanath Pratap Singh emerge as the prime minister.
It was Subhashini’s 1989 victory that catapulted her in her party and her charisma took on a whole new meaning, which was hitherto manifest only in her nimble dabbling with Bollywood.
She was formerly married to Hindi film director Muzaffar Ali and is the mother of Shaad Ali, also a Bollywood director. In fact, Subhashini earned quite a bit of fame as the costume designer for the Bollywood classic Umrao Jaan, directed by Muzaffar.
Former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s reluctance to field a candidate from outside Bengal was effectively overruled by the North 24-Parganas district unit of CPM, led by former state housing minister Gautam Deb, who wanted someone fluent in Hindi and Urdu, given that about 35 per cent of voters in Barrackpore comprises migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
And CPM’s game plan seems to have cut some ice with voters who have shown an extreme disinterest in Left politics over the last couple of years.
“Left ought to do well in Bengal and at the nation level too to keep forces like the Bharatiya Janata Party at bay. Look at what’s happening in Bengal today. It is because Left is in decline that BJP has got so much support even in a traditionally non-BJP state like Bengal. Moreover, lack of development in the state has only fed communal forces,” Subhashini said.
“Didi (elder sister), this way Didi, they all are here,” said a young woman, pointing to other women from her family huddled at the doorstep of their dilapidated house, even as Subhashini reached out through the open front-seat window and said: “Of course I know they are all there...It is for them that I am here.”
One only hopes CPM takes those words to heart if it is serious about a turnaround in Bengal.
By Sanjib Kumar Das Pages Editor
Gulf News 2014. All rights reserved.
