west bengal – OpenAxis

When the Election Commission of India first announced dates for elections to four major state assemblies in February 2021, the announcement caused quite the stir. While every other state went for a single-phase polling, West Bengal’s electoral contest was staggered into 8 phases, spanning 23 days. Moreover, several districts have been split into blocks, with voting occurring over multiple phases in the same district.

Several political leaders decried this decision. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee immediately came out to say that the ECI is trying to convert the state of West Bengal into a football ground, and it is a deliberate attempt to “upset communal harmony” and polarise the electorate.

Yet sidestepping the allegations of overt politicisation, there lies the question of what this means from the perspective of organising elections. For many years, the ECI has been heralded for its adeptness in the swift conduct of arguably the largest democratic exercise in the world. They have definitely come a long way – from the several months it took to conduct the first general election in 1951-52, to wrapping them up in a month. The 2019 general elections with more than 900 million voters, for instance, were held in 7 phases and took roughly close to a month. Moreover, even the 2017 state elections in much larger Uttar Pradesh were wrapped up in 7 phases.

What is also interesting is not just that larger and equally sensitive states wrapped up elections quicker, but also that the previous election in West Bengal itself needed only 6 phases. Therefore, the fact that the state of West Bengal requires 8 phases in the ongoing election begs the question: did the ECI not have the capability to complete the West Bengal elections in a shorter time frame?

Organisational Capabilities and Ambition

Several efforts are required to be undertaken to ensure the smooth conduct of the democratic process. From security deployments to requiring officers for managing booths in remote areas, the task is quite uphill. As Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora pointed out in his press conference, they had to accommodate not just for adequate force deployments, but also had to take into account the festival season and the COVID-19 pandemic, while scheduling the electoral calendar.

While these extra efforts do highlight the ECI’s commitment to peaceful and stable polls, there are questions to be raised. For one, as Indian Express points out, several districts, especially in South Bengal, have been split across phases – something that has never happened before. This implies that the sealing of inter-district borders (to prevent miscreants from other districts to disturb poll-bound districts) will be tough to execute. Even the fact that the polling dates in several Muslim-dominated districts coincide with Ramzan will prove to be a challenge for voters and polling officials in these areas. Moreover, parties are effectively required to campaign for longer because of the electoral schedule. Given the en-masse flouting of any sense of social distancing in political rallies, the increasing exposure of such a large congregation can be a genuine health hazard for the entire populace.

Even beyond the larger logistical challenges of this election alone, there is a larger principled challenge – that of the current government’s ambition to realise a vision of simultaneous elections in states and the centre (titled “one-nation, one-election”). Fundamentally, if the aim of the one-nation, one-election, as Prime Minister Modi says, is to reduce the amount of monetary and human resources spent on holding several elections, then such a prolonged contest goes precisely against the idea. Moreover, if one agrees to the logic that such a large election would need security force deployment to shift regions quickly with phases, then the staggered nature of the electoral contest as demonstrated by West Bengal (with the same district split across phases in some cases) is incompatible with realising this vision.

It is paradoxical to, therefore, try and advocate for “one-nation, one-election,” but at the same time consider the constraints of resource deployment as an explanation for prolonging elections. The fact that the ECI has conducted swifter elections in much larger states with equally (if not more) complicated situations, should refute any claims that they are not capable enough or do not possess the required resources. The fundamental question then is not that of the ECI’s capability, but of its prerogative.

Ultimately, it is the political parties, who are the main players spending their energy on the campaign trail. For some, this issue of electoral dates may just be parties crying foul when they are disadvantaged. There are, for instance, certain democracies such as the United Kingdom that formally gave the Prime Minister some form of power over calling for elections, until the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was passed in 2011. On the other end of the spectrum is the United States, where general election dates are constitutionally pre-determined. India however, has always sought a balance by reposing its faith in its Election Commission to conduct elections in consultation with all key political players.

It is in this light that accountability becomes necessary, and it is worth asking that despite its capability to conduct these elections swiftly, why would the Election Commission choose to have a prolonged election in West Bengal? Even if the answer is ensuring security and stability, the fact that several major parties, especially Trinamool, decried the ECI’s decisions so vociferously, makes one wonder whether a neutral body such as the ECI perceives a tradeoff between achieving security and stability and having a multi-party consensus? One wonders what that would mean for democracy.

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Vaibhav Parik is a fourth-year student at Ashoka University, majoring in Political Science and minoring in Economics. His interests range from electoral politics and foreign affairs to tennis and aviation.

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New Delhi: With 50 women candidates, or 17% of the 291 seats from where it is contesting a heated assembly election in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) has once again taken the lead amongst states that offer the largest space for women’s representation in politics.

In the outgoing assembly, 14% are women, well above the 8% national average across Vidhan Sabhas, though slightly below the 14.6% in Parliament and significantly below the 24% worldwide average presence of women in elected assemblies.

When Mamata declared ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections that 41% of her party’s tickets would be given to women candidates, she translated her commitment to women’s participation in politics into action. If the rationale behind the “magic figure” of 41% appears unclear, it could simply have been that the “percentage was based on the number of women already in her shortlist”, said Tara Krishnaswamy of Shakti, a non-profit organisation that works to enable and increase women’s participation in electoral politics.

Of the 23 women who ran on a TMC ticket, nine got elected—the second highest contingent of women parliamentarians in the Lok Sabha, after the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). That said, data suggest that while the TMC sails ahead of its opponents on this issue, the relatively higher participation of women in Bengal politics is part of a longer trend of gradual inclusion to which more than one party has contributed.

An examination of the profile of TMC women candidates over time also indicates that their inclusion in the party could well be the by-product of an instrumental approach to ticket distribution, rather than from the adhesion to a normative principle of equality that would prevail over electoral strategy.

TMC party members suggest that the inclusion of women in the party may be incidental to a selection strategy that does not consider gender to be either a particular advantage or an impediment to the party’s electoral prospect, even though Mamata has come out publicly in favour of women’s quotas.

“She is already committed to 33% reservation, but Mamata Banerjee has always tried to consider 50% women candidates,” said Dola Sen, the TMC MP in the Rajya Sabha, who has spent the last three decades as a trade union leader in West Bengal, and been a part of Mamata’s own efforts to develop and consolidate women’s solidarity into concrete electoral gains since the Nandigram and Singur movements.

Gradual Inclusion Of Women In State Politics

Since 1962, only 238 of the 4,119 individuals elected into the West Bengal State Assembly have been women.

Until the late 1980s, women barely made 2% of all legislators, a state of affairs to which both the Congress and the Left contributed equally. But starting in 1992 with the 73rd Amendment, which set up a three-tier panchayat system, women’s representation has risen steadily among candidates.

In the 2001 election, which took place after the split with the Congress and the formation of Mamata’s Trinamool Congress, women accounted for 9.5% of the members of the state assembly. From 1991 onwards, the percentage of women candidates has increased by about 1.5% in every election.

However, data gathered by the Trivedi Centre for Political Data shows that besides the TMC, other parties, especially the Left have also contributed to that rise.

For instance, even if the old generation of the CPM and its allies did not feel the need to extend their egalitarian views to women, the Left’s newer generation, led by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, was more inclined to include women among their candidates. In 2011, the state’s Left combine, including Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Forward Bloc and Socialist Unity Centre of India, gave 49 tickets to women candidates–higher than the 32 given by the TMC. And, significantly higher than the national parties: Congress has not given more than 10% of its tickets to women candidates to date, and the BJP, which has been fielding more women recently, increased its number of women candidates from 23 in 2011 to 32 in 2016.

Mamata Banerjee addressed a public meeting at Nandigram on 18 January 2021/ALL INDIA TRINAMOOL CONGRESS

As it opened the door to a greater inclusion of women in politics, the TMC took the lead in the past three elections. The party has also received considerable publicity for its inclusiveness–perhaps by virtue of getting many more women elected than its opponents. Sixty-two women from the TMC have been elected in the past 15 years; the Left has managed only 111 women in 54 years.

Profiles In Diversity

In the patriarchal world of politics, women politicians get easily stereotyped. While much of the media focus is on the five actresses fielded this year by the TMC, few are paying attention to the 46 other women contesting.

An examination of incumbency data reveals that men and women politicians in the TMC share the same turnover.

It is still early to make pronouncements about the 2021 candidates, but an examination of the 2016 women candidates reveals that the TMC recruits a diverse lot of women candidates. In 2016, only two of the party’s 45 women candidates were film or television stars; 17 belonged to political families (mostly wives of politicians); and 14 got elected.

In terms of occupation, 14 were self-declared housewives; the occupations of the rest were split between education (nine), social service (11) and business (six), among others.

That Banerjee consistently manages to identify such a large number of women candidates in the first place also must mean that she assiduously scouts for talent and sends out feelers to find the right women to offer tickets to, Krishnaswamy said.

As far as we could determine from the 2016 candidate list, only three of the women had any prior experience in local municipal bodies. A few others also seem to have emerged from the party’s organisation or familial connections while 18 ran for the first-time. Another 22 had already been elected twice or more times.

The TMC’s 2016 women candidates were also varied in terms of caste: 19 upper castes, 13 in SC-reserved seats and two in ST-reserved seats. There were only three women candidates from a backward class background, while nine were Muslims. It is worth noting that the TMC is probably the one party that offers the most representation to Muslim women in India. Like their male counterparts, most of the party’s women candidates were highly educated (24 graduates and above, while two were 8th pass candidates).

One cannot conclude that the TMC recruits “a certain type” of woman candidate, nor can we reduce their inclusion among the party’s candidates to a publicity stunt. But it is evident that the party chief believes that celebrity and star power help win seats.

Banerjee has “good equations with youngsters not only from film but also TV stars. She goes to their marriages and celebrations, spends time with them,” said political journalist Jayanta Ghosal. As a result, she has developed strong personal attachments with ‘Tollywood’, he said.

But could the candidature of these celebrities appear exploitative at times, especially in constituencies where strong local female politicians have been overlooked in spite of years of grassroots work?

While giving tickets to celebrities is a formula that has generally worked well for the TMC in the past (especially in heavily contested seats where inner party rivalries are at work) it also raises questions about whether this is a deliberate strategy to keep complacent old-timers on their toes and balance whatever power challenges they may throw her way with newcomers who will be loyal.

Like all political leaders, Mamata, too, puts a premium on personal loyalty. “People who are new, have the least expectations. Most candidates talk about the party, Mamata’s achievements and schemes. No one is campaigning on the strength of their own work,” said Krishnaswamy.

Compared to most other parties, the TMC stands out by making women political actors rather than mere figureheads for electoral mobilization. Unlike other women chief ministers who work in a quasi-exclusively male environment, Mamata has surrounded herself over time with women contributing to party work or to the cabinet.

Five of her 42 ministers are women, some holding several important portfolios or portfolios not immediately connected to women’s issues, like agriculture, fisheries, SMEs or land reforms.

Her party’s organisation includes large numbers of women office holders, and many women play a prominent role in campaigns.

That Mamata has consistently supported strong women in politics and led by example, is no secret. Nor is the fact that the TMC is one of the only parties on India’s political map that seeks to consolidate women as a powerful vote bank through political participation, rather than sops.

Her genuine desire for inclusion of women in politics is evident, and her supporters say a result of her own political struggles. “Unlike so many other Indian politicians who are women, Mamata Banerjee never had a man helping her – with due respect to others, she is no one’s daughter, wife, widow or girlfriend,” said Dola Sen.

“Look at me, for example,” she said, “We are independent, efficient and competent politicians with or without reservation!”

Gilles Verniers is assistant professor of Political Science at Ashoka University and Co-Director of the Trivedi Centre for Political Data.

Maya Mirchandani is assistant professor of Media Studies at Ashoka University and senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.

Niharika Mehrotra, an undergraduate student in the Political Science major, assisted with data collection

This piece was republished from Article 14 with permission of the author.