One of the first things young journalists are taught when writing or editing a story is to look for the headline. Being able to give a good headline is a talent. Experience helps. But on Wednesday, after Union Home Minister Amit Shah delivered his 23-minute speech at the BJP’s Kolkata rally, journalists were left floundering for a headline that would encapsulate the impact of his message as well as the rally.
For me, it was a headless, beg your pardon, a headline-less event and, if I may quote Shakespeare as all Bengalis are wont to, full of sound and fury signifying…well, not nothing, but very little.
This is a far cry from ‘Bhag Mukul Bhag, Bhag Madan Bhag, Bhag Mamata Bhag’, the slogan that emerged from the BJP’s rally at the same spot nine years ago, on 30 November 2014—all thanks to Siddharth Nath Singh, the party’s acerbic Bengal minder then who is now out of favour, confined to Uttar Pradesh as a mere ex-minister and MLA from West Prayagraj.
‘BMB’, Singh had chanted, heckling the Trinamool Congress that was still flushed from its victory over the Left Front in 2011.
But it had just come under pressure those days with the Saradha chit fund scandal at its speak, a scam that did lakhs of people out of their life savings after promising huge returns on their investment. Top Trinamool leaders were under the agency scanner and when Singh told Mukul, Madan, and Mamata to make a run, he hit a jackpot – slogan-wise.
Ask anyone in West Bengal today. For most, BMB has carved a niche in the state’s political vocabulary.
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The missing punch
That punchline was missing on Wednesday. Amit Shah checked all the boxes in terms of issues on which to attack the TMC but the power of conviction was elusive, like he knew he was only making noises and Bengal, for the BJP, was still dur ast, far away.
He did set the Bengal unit of his party a steep target for 2024 – 35 Lok Sabha seats, 17 more than its current tally of MPs from the state. But each one of those 18 MPs today are on tenterhooks and will tell you privately that the target of 35 is like asking for the moon. Most generous estimates, if an election were to be held in Bengal today, say the BJP would be lucky to get 10 seats. Thirty-five is mere rhetoric.
In any case, Shah had been there and done that. So, the target, which he set on his previous visit, was not really headline material. Most newspapers picked up the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). It was something Shah warned/promised/threatened would be implemented by March 2024, ahead of the Lok Sabha election, to put an end to the “illegal migration from Bangladesh”. But there was no explanation on why it was taking so long, no reason forthcoming for people to be convinced that it wasn’t just a wormy carrot dangled before them for the past four years at least.
So, what’s the headline?
There was one, on the sidelines. Which is a lesson for all journalists — sometimes you can find a headline away from the centre stage. Half a kilometre from Shah’s meeting venue, on the grounds of the West Bengal assembly, at the foot of BR Ambedkar’s statue, sat a large number of TMC MLAs, most dressed in black, on a dharna demanding dues from the Centre: money for NREGA and other central programmes that they claimed is being denied. Mamata Banerjee, in her usual white saree, joined the protest. Then things took a ‘headliney’ turn.
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Chaos, police in assembly
BJP parliamentary party leader Suvendu Adhikari arrived at the assembly after Shah’s meeting and, just metres away from the TMC dharna, started shouting rude slogans at Banerjee. Other BJP MLAs joined in. TMC MLAs too started shouting slogans, resulting in a loud, slanging match between the two parties that hurled the same charge against each other: Chor. Thief.
Adhikari lost his voice on Wednesday and could barely speak at Shah’s rally. He has been crying hoarse about the TMC’s “theft” of jobs, coal, cows, and about the school recruitment ‘scam’. TMC accuses Adhikari of escaping the probe for accepting cash in the Narada sting operation along with several other TMC leaders by joining the BJP at the end of 2020.
Banerjee sat through the slanging match but later demanded the speaker take action against the BJP leaders who, the TMC accused, created a disruption when its MLAs were singing the national anthem. A police complaint was filed and the farce spilled over to Thursday when – quite unprecedentedly — police arrived on the grounds of the assembly.
Routine visit, the officer in charge of the visit said, as the TMC sat on dharna at the foot of Ambedkar’s statue and confronted, from a distance, BJP MLAs sitting on the assembly stairs.
Adhikari was present. Mercifully, Banerjee stayed away and was spared the ignominy of witnessing unprecedented scenes on the grounds of the assembly two days in a row.
Police presence in assembly is potentially headline-material but the entire fracas still isn’t. The political confrontation is too much like a ‘tu tu main main’ contest to merit serious attention. News anchors on Bengali channels use the word tarja to describe it — a folk tradition of poetry contests in Bengal full of wit and wisdom. In the political tarja in Kolkata, there was neither wit nor wisdom.
Nothing that will rock a government, nothing that will usher in Parivartan 2.0 in Bengal. No headline-making stuff. Just small sweat. Surely, Bengal deserves better.
The author is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)