The ‘daughter of Bengal’ taking on India’s PM

India’s PM: On a freezing afternoon, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is working for the crowd at a campaign meeting, some 160km south of the eastern city of Kolkata in West Bengal state. On the other side, you gave her an opportunity to work for 10 years. Now give us a chance, Mr. Modi says. The woman in question is Mamata Banerjee, the firebrand leader of Trinamool Congress (TMC), a regional party that has been ruling the state for a decade.

Currently, Mr. Modi, a folksy orator, slips into thickly accented Bengali, much of the amusement of many in the crowd. He launches into a broadside against Ms. Banerjee, who is better known in Bengal as an elder sister, a moniker invented by her supporters.

Ms. Banerjee has framed the challenge from Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as one between the insiders and the outsiders. She has also accused the Hindu nationalist party of trying to bring “narrow, discriminatory and divisive politics in Bengal”.

Rhetoric aside, the battle for West Bengal – where voting is staggered over eight phases and four weeks – promises to be intense. It is also the most significant state election in India in recent years. West Bengal, a state of 92 million people, has never been ruled by Mr. Modi’s party.

However, the feisty Ms. Banerjee stormed to power in 2011 after dislodging a Communist-led government that ruled the state for 34 years. Since then, she has ruled without a break, and her party currently holds 211 of 295 seats in the outgoing state assembly.

The Communists are struggling to regain political relevance in Bengal:

During the last assembly election in 2016, the BJP won a paltry three seats. In the parliamentary poll in 2019, it threw down the gauntlet, picking up 18 of the state’s 42 parliamentary seats and 40% of the popular vote. Ms. Banerjee’s party won 22 seats, down a dozen seats from the 2014 ballot, and was badly bruised.

Moreover, a win for the BJP in West Bengal will be a major boost to the party. Although Mr. Modi continues to be India’s most popular leader, his party has been struggling to win state elections. While it will almost extinguish any hope that India’s largely rag-tag opposition harbors to take on Mr. Modi’s well-oiled and richly funded party in 2024 general elections.

If Ms. Banerjee wins, she is likely to emerge as a national leader because she would have defeated a powerful incumbent national party. She is also likely to emerge as a consensus opposition leader in their fight against the BJP. Ms. Banerjee could be the answer, according to Neelanjan Sircar, a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi.

While it may not be easy. Everywhere you travel in West Bengal, people complain that have to pay bribes to local TMC leaders and workers to access welfare schemes – one person said the party workers even wait outside banks to demand a bribe from people withdrawing welfare money transfers.

More than seven million people have reportedly called a helping she set up to record people’s complaints. Nearly 30 million people have availed of an initiative called “government at the doorstep” since December to ease the delivery of a dozen welfare schemes. 

Bengal is India’s most significant state election in recent years:

In spite of the ailing Communists stitching up an alliance with a Muslim cleric and the enfeebled Congress to swing votes away from the main contestants, the battle for West Bengal is singularly bipolar. To win the state, a party has to pick up 45% of the popular votes in such a contest.

However, most believe it will be a closely fought election. Kolkata’s skyline is emblazoned with billboards of Ms. Banerjee’s smiling face. Describing her as the “daughter of Bengal”. It’s an appeal from a woman who says she is under siege from outsiders. While it is about telling the voters that she needs your support in this crucial battle, says Mr. Kishore.