Muslims split over electoral choice, give a breather to CPI(M)-Congress

Heatwave and elections have been a double whammy, hitting hard the already precarious financial condition of Pintu Sheikh, an electric rickshaw driver in Murshidabad. The twin phenomena have thinned the tourist flow in the historic town and severely impacted his already meagre earnings, said Sheikh, pointing to the lack of tourists at the Sadar (Lalbag) Ghat near Motijheel.

Crumbling Murshidabd

The decaying town was once the capital of undivided Bengal and a global trade centre, contributing around five per cent to the world’s GDP in the 18th century. Its past glory is still the only source of sustenance for many like Sheikh, whose life in a way is the story of the district and to a large extent even Muslims of Bengal -- a ‘vote bank’ that has been playing a decisive role in influencing election results for decades.

Migrating for work

Sheikh (29), with an ever-dwindling income -- like most people of his age group in the district -- is struggling to stay put in his hometown.

About 70 per cent of working-age male villagers, including Sheikh’s two elder brothers in his Sabjikatra village, have moved to other cities or states in search of better earning avenues. Emptying out of villages is a generic situation across Murshidabad, a major pocket of outmigration and even human trafficking.

“Outmigration has spiked further after the Central government stopped MGNREGA funding in December 2021. On average, I used to do MGNREGA work for around 90 days a year. That gave me an assured annual earning of Rs 21,330 at the rate of Rs 237 per day,” said Atikul Mondal (55) of Garaimari village in Domkal sub-division. The termination of MGNREGA work has pushed his family into financial distress.

Similar grievances are echoed by residents The Federal spoke to in Garaimari, Aminabad and Jhaubaria among others.

People’s misery

Pintu Sheikh said his father Montu Sheikh (50) did not even get wages for the 50 days of work under the MGNREGA, which added to their family’s financial crisis.

“To support the family, I went to work at a construction site in Chennai. Working there I could save around Rs 50 thousand in nine months. I came back in November last year with the savings to start afresh. I used the amount to make a down payment on this electric rickshaw (popularly called toto) that I purchased on a loan of Rs 1.43 lakh,” Sheikh said.

Chennai again?

To repay the loan, he is paying an equated monthly instalment of Rs 9,200, which is to be paid for 18 months.

“During the tourist season (November to February), I could earn Rs 500-600 daily, almost equivalent to my earnings in Chennai. So, repaying the loan was not a problem. But these days the daily earning has dipped to around Rs 200 as electioneering and the scorching heat are driving away tourists,” he said, wondering how he would pay this month’s EMI.

Sheikh is now staring at the prospect of leaving home again for employment, thrusting him into a vicious cycle of migration like thousands of others.

Massive migration

According to the 2011 census, West Bengal ranked fourth among states in sending out migrant workers. Murshidabad accounts for the highest migration among all districts in West Bengal.

Over 14 lakh people from the district (out of its total population of over 70 lakh) are migrant labourers, according to data from the West Bengal Migrant Labourers’ Union.

Endemic poverty

Poverty and a dearth of round-the-year employment opportunities are forcing young people to move out of the district, plagued by low agricultural output, lack of industrialization and stagnation in all other economic sectors.

Far from its Nawabi splendour, Murshidabad has grown into an overpopulated impoverished district over the years. According to Niti Ayog’s multidimensional poverty index, 16.55 per cent of its population is multi-dimensionally poor.

Muslim voters

Muslims constitute 66.27 per cent of the district’s population, making it a critical example of the socio-economic condition of the minorities in West Bengal.

Since independence, the ruling parties of the state have invariably enjoyed the overwhelming support of Muslim voters. The state’s 30 percent Muslim votes are said to be the mainstay of the Trinamool Congress’s electoral successes in the past over a decade.

Left to TMC

Traditionally, Muslim voters weighed a wide range of socio-economic issues while making their electoral choices. For instance, the community shifted its loyalty from the Left Front to the TMC in 2011 as Mamata Banerjee promised to pull them out of the socio-economic distress that had been pointed out by the Sachar Committee.

True to her promise, the TMC government included 95 per cent of the state’s Muslim population in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category. The percentage of Muslims in government jobs too increased from 3.4 per cent in 2011 to 5.73 per cent in 2021.

Soaring poor

These initiatives proved to be too little compared to their deprivation as Niti Aayog’s multi-dimensional poverty index of 2023 shows that the percentage of multi-dimensionally poor is very high in all the three districts: Murshidabad (16.55 per cent), Malda (15.57 per cent) and North Dinajpur (21.65 per cent), where Muslims form the majority.

Due to corruption in the delivery system, the TMC government’s welfare benefits are not reaching all the targeted people, the villagers alleged.

Government schemes

“After much running around my mother has been getting monthly financial assistance under Lakshmir Bhandar scheme from this year. Barring that none in our family has benefitted from any of the TMC government’s welfare schemes. Even we are not getting enough ration,” Sheikh added.

Despite the deprivations, the TMC got around five per cent more Muslim votes in the 2021 Assembly elections than what it had secured in 2016.

This consolidation of Muslim votes was largely due to the emergence of the BJP as a principal opposition in the state in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, said Israrul Mondal of the Bengal Madrasah Education Forum.

BJP politics

The BJP’s right-wing politics centered around CAA-NRC and a strong Hindutva push overshadowed other socio-economic issues among the minorities, fortifying their support for the TMC.

This time around, in the absence of any overriding communal issue in the electioneering so far, minority votes are likely to be divided between the two perceived secular formations -- the TMC and the Left Front-Congress combine -- as the community is giving more emphasis on livelihood issues.

Divided sentiments

This is the impression The Federal got while interacting with several Muslim voters in the Murshidabad, Baharampur, and Krishnanagar Lok Sabha constituencies.

“There is no denying that during TMC rule we received benefits from welfare schemes such as Krishak Bandhu, Swasthya Sathi, and Lakshmir Bhandar for womenfolk. But corruption, intimidation and syndicate raj outweigh the good works,” said septuagenarian Fazlul Mallick of Gongra village in Nadia district’s Krishnanagar LAC.

Muslims split

His grandson, however, is a staunch TMC supporter, who believes that Mamata Banerjee’s government is trying its best to uplift the poor through a slew of populist schemes.

The president of the West Bengal Imam Association, Mohammed Yahya admitted that this time minorities might find it a tough choice to pick between the TMC and Left-Congress candidates.

Advantage BJP?

A similar division of votes in 2019 helped BJP win one seat in minority-dominated districts of Maldah and North Dinajpur.

“This time we expect to gain from the division of Muslim votes between the TMC and the CPI(M) in Krishnanagar,” claimed BJP’s Nadia district secretary Pradip Ghosh.

Marxist calculation

A CPI (M) leader in Murshidabad’s Domkol claimed that even if the Left-Congress joint front “ultimately does not end up winning seats, its vote share will significantly increase, giving the combine enough oxygen for political resurgence in the state”.

Many TMC leaders too, in private, expressed apprehension that this time the Congress-Left combine could make a dent in minority votes. They fear this could eventually help the BJP.

TMC’s fears, hope

“Congress candidate Ali Imran Ramz appears to have chipped away with a large chunk of minority votes in Raiganj (in Muslim majority North Dinajpur district), making our prospect of winning there a little tougher,” said a TMC leader after the second-phase elections.

The TMC, however, can draw some comfort from how Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised the pitch of minority vilification during the second leg of his campaigns in Bengal. The TMC leaders feel that the state’s polity could soon be polarised. That will push minorities back to the TMC fold.