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India’s third smallest state, Tripura, has become the stage for a unique battle of ideologies. For the first time, the Right will take on the Left in a direct fight with the BJP emerging as the main challenger to the CPI(M) in the latter’s last remaining bastion.
After losing West Bengal to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) and forced to share power alternately with the Congress in Kerala, Tripura is the only state the Left can rightfully claim as a citadel, having ruled there for 25 long years.
A defeat for the CPI(M) in Tripura could well mean the extinction of Left politics in India, which is why the Assembly election on 18 February has assumed a significance far greater than the size of the state warrants.
The arsenal deployed by the BJP speaks of the importance the saffron party is attaching to the upcoming polls. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already addressed two rallies in Tripura last week and will address two more on the penultimate day of campaigning.
The party’s ‘rising star’ campaigner, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, has done two days of roadshows and BJP President Amit Shah has been spending all his free time in the state. A huge contingent of RSS cadre is hard at work, as is BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav who is the party’s spearhead in sensitive tribal and border areas.
The BJP convenor for the northeast, Himanta Biswa Sarma, considered one of architects of the BJP’s sweeping victory in Assam in 2016, has also been deployed.
No election is too small for Modi’s BJP. It has devoted all its energies and vast resources to win Tripura. But for the Left, it’s more than just an election. It’s turned into a battle for survival with Left leaders slowly comprehending the BJP’s all-consuming desire to stamp out an ideology it considers anathema to Hindutva interests. A senior Left leader speaking on condition of anonymity admitted:
Tripura is a border state, touching Bangladesh on three sides. The army and central security forces guard these areas. The state government has little or no control over them.
What is worrying the Left is the inroads the BJP through the RSS seems to have made into the tribal areas of the state. About one-third of the state’s population is tribal; the rest is Bengali. Although the Bengalis have been the hegemonic force, the Left managed the contradictions with the tribals by creating the Tribal Autonomous District Council in the 1970s to preserve the cultural identity of the indigenous population.
Riding on the back of the Sangh’s success in tribal areas, the BJP has struck an electoral alliance with the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT). It arranged a secret meeting for IPFT leaders with Rajnath Singh some weeks ago. According to highly placed sources in the Home Ministry, the tribal leaders were promised greater autonomy and more funds if the BJP came to power in Tripura.
But the BJP realises that tribal votes are not enough to help it win. It has a two-pronged strategy in place. One prong is the alliance with the IPFT. The other prong is to woo the youth by focusing on the Left’s poor development record in 25 years.
This is a sore point with youngsters who see the lack of road connectivity, water and electricity as signs of being left behind in the development race. In addition, the Left government in Tripura has not yet implemented the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations, keeping the huge state bureaucracy impoverished.
In fact, the BJP has not been able to throw up a leader to challenge Sarkar. As in all other states, it is depending on the ‘Modi charisma’ to defeat Sarkar’s popularity.
Modi’s rallies have undoubtedly been well-attended. For a party that used to draw barely a few hundreds to its rallies earlier, it is a massive leap forward to attract crowds of tens of thousands today.
The BJP hopes to fill the space vacated by the Congress and capture the anti-Left vote to buttress the social alliance of tribals and youth. Sensing the danger of losing the anti-Left vote to the BJP, the Congress has decided to send Rahul Gandhi to Tripura for a last minute campaign. He will address two rallies in the state the day after Modi tours Tripura.
It may be too little too late. It looks like the Left’s future rests entirely in Manik Sarkar’s hands. Can his personal appeal override the Modi brand?
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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