'Good Time For Us’: In Parts of Bengal, Murga-Bhaat Was The Real Vote Winner

In a common but secret ritual, political parties throw a feast in villages, mostly Dalit-dominated, to win votes.

For Sheba Rani Mondol, 35, and the women of this village in the South 24 Parganas, it was a special day. They did not have to cook breakfast or lunch. Just the basic cleaning and washing and they were done for the day.

The husbands have come back from Kolkata for a day. And the children were going to be happy. After all, voting day is around the corner and it was the day of the ‘bhoj’ (feast).

It’s an election ritual in the village dominated by Dalits.

Like in other parts of the country, one political party or another throws a multi-course feast for the entire village and their relatives. On the menu today - a template for all such feasts hosted by this political party*- was rice, chicken curry, daal, and potol-chingri (prawns with pointed gourd). In an area, where prawn rearing is one of the main forms of livelihood, the star attraction was the chicken.

It's a common but secret ritual. However, its impact on voters and its social ramifications tell an important story. Take the example of Sheba and the other women at the feast. A lunch taken care of means less time spent in cooking, washing dishes and doing household chores. Bhoj day is also rest day.

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“It’s probably twice-in-a-month that we can afford chicken. Sometimes not even that. We are poor people. We indulge when there’s a special occasion or when we have made something extra in the month”, says Sheba Rani, a mother of two, under the watchful eyes of the organisers.

“We have to give back to those giving us”, she says, as she and four other women wait for their husbands to finish eating.

As the organisers move away, she remarks that the daal was, in fact, better than the chicken. Sitting next to her, Laxmi Mondol agrees.

“None of us cooked at home today so it was a bit like a holiday for us. We too cannot afford chicken. It’s a once-in-a-while indulgence. Today the daal was better than the chicken, but the chicken wasn’t bad either”, she said.

The feast for roughly 200 people was being cooked by a catering company which was hired by the local party leader in the village. All four dishes were cooked and stored in large steel vessels and then poured into smaller steel pots to be served outside. The organisers tell The Quint that they cooked about 60 kgs of chicken and 40 kgs of rice for one such feast. The cost comes up to approximately 7-8 lakhs. The reason for such benevolence?

Well, party officials say that their pre-poll surveys showed them lagging in this specific area and this tactic is the best way to swing votes in impoverished places. But there’s a catch- while everyone coming to the feast knows which party is funding it, there can’t be any party logos or branding at the feast.

“The Election Commission of India (ECI) allows a candidate to only spend 80 lakh rupees on election expenses. If we advertise this as a party event, then all such expenses get added to the party expenditure and we exceed the limit. These must be out-of-book expenses”, said one of the organisers. Further, if the party funds one feast in one area, other localities might demand one too.

“That will be too expensive for the candidate and all candidates can also not afford such expenses. We do these in backward, impoverished areas where we are weak (electorally) to attract swing voters”, said the organiser.

As the storm clouds gathered over the village in the Sunderbans delta groups of villagers came in one after the other and seated themselves on six plastic tables with six chairs each. A cloth tarpaulin shielded them from the occasional drizzle. The weather and the location- snuggled in a small strip of land between multiple ponds- provided for an almost romantic setting if one were unaware of the vagaries of climate change that is part of life for those living in the Sunderbans.

A day after this feast, the area would be hit by supercyclone Remal, destroying homes and crop fields, leaving many with no shelter or livelihood. For about three hours, party workers served food to the villagers with respect- a privilege only accorded in wedding parties.

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Bribes for the backward

Across India, an unregulated system of such feasts and other handouts to voters by parties and candidates ahead of the election is a norm. Most such feasts are organised in impoverished localities where a party senses the opportunity of pulling voters of some social groups to their side.

 “This is sort of like a bribe that parties and candidates give to voters to win their vote. It is mostly done in the rural areas and in areas where the party feels it’s weak but can still swing a section of the voters. It’s not usually done in areas where the party is either strong or weak to a point such that they can’t win”, says Akhyaya Maharana, a journalist from Odisha.

Price rise, it seems, has also affected this custom. In Bihar,  journalists say that the murga-bhaat (chicken rice) in some areas has been replaced by the cheaper alternative of aloo-puri (potato and flatbread), sometimes packed in boxes so that one can’t take multiple helpings.

“On the nights right before polling when campaigning stops (called the ‘silent period’), cash and sometimes, alcohol is distributed too. The richer the candidate, the grander the feast”, said Vishal Jha, a journalist from Bihar’s Champaran.

A legislator from the state was recently booked for allegedly distributing cash during the poll campaign.

In the south India, votes are ostensibly more expensive. While locals suggest that most in West Bengal and Bihar would be given a maximum of 500 rupees in cash, in states like Andhra Pradesh, voters were reportedly given up to 6,000 rupees in cash, along with gifts like sarees and electronic gadgets. In some places, fearful of police vigilance, candidates distributed coupons that are redeemable in local shops. There were also reports of political parties distributing ‘gift boxes’ containing liquor and cash.

It's not just in the general elections that such handouts are made. In the state election for Karnataka held last year, some candidates spent upwards of a 100 crore rupees for one state assembly- roughly one-seventh the size of a Lok Sabha constituency. Here too, the handouts included everything from cash to sarees to pressure cookers and television sets.

‘Elections are a good time for us’

Back in the Sunderbans, both men and women talk about lack of job opportunities and high unemployment, on the sidelines of the feast. Most women and men commute to Kolkata daily to either work as daily wage labourers or house helps. The women who stay back in the village try to do odd jobs like stitching to earn some money on the side.

“I earn 400 rupees a month by hand stitching curtains and other such things. My husband earns around 600-700 hundred rupees by doing daily wage labour in Kolkata, about 45 kilometres away. He has to travel all the way and back every day. There is no work here, especially for women like us who must look after the children and household”, says Sheba Rani.

Laxmi, whose husband also works as a daily wage labourer, says that she wants a sewing machine so that she can stitch faster and increase the quantity of her production. She also wants her husband to work somewhere near the village.

Their vote, however, is not dependent on her immediate condition.

“In villages like ours, people vote for the party that everyone is voting for. We will vote for this party because they organised this feast for us and kept us happy. The other party hasn’t done any such thing yet”, she quips.

As The Quint spoke to multiple people attending the feast and those organising it, a party person remarked that probably one-fourth of those attending the feast are those who can’t vote- children. Like 11-year-old Ishaani Mondol who was tasked with babysitting her 8-year-old sister as her aunts who’d come from the neighbouring village finish their meal. But she’s not impressed with the arrangements today.

 “My father makes better chicken”, she says. “I only took one piece.” Like the rest of the village, she too liked the daal better.

“I was waiting a while for this. I wish the food was better”, she says in a matter-of-fact manner. Her sister was too shy to say anything else. But unlike Ishaani, she had treated herself to two pieces of chicken.

 As Ishaani waited, 16-year-old Abhijit Mondol cleaned his piece of chicken to the bone. Abhijit, a class 6 dropout, now does odd jobs like mending cycles and other things around the village. He came to the feast with his 24-year-old brother, Deep Mondol, who works as a shoe salesman in Kolkata and had taken leave to attend the event.

 “We vote for people who give us things”, says Deep. “This party has fed us so we will vote for them”, he says.

 But what happens if the other party also throws a feast?

 “We’ll see then”, he says.

 A man at the feast, who refused to be named, also spoke of distribution of cash and alcohol in the village on the night before polls.

 “All in all, elections are a good time for us”, he smiles.

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(*Name of party and constituency withheld to protect identity)