Yet long before May 13, when the results will be declared, it may be said that several things have “changed” already, in important ways. And much to the chagrin of hard core supporters of both the ruling Left front and the Trinamool Congress, the process of change, as inevitably as night following day, has by no means favoured any one side over the other. If certain “changes” have favoured one side, others have not.

Take the biggest change of them all, this business of having elections to 294 seats in West Bengal in six phases. The simplistic argument is that this will help ensure a fair and free election, with more armed guards to the square kilometer to make sure that armed goons (read CPI-M cadres!) do not monopolise the election machinery as they allegedly do in parts of Midnapore, Hooghly, Burdwan …. The decision to have a prolonged poll in West Bengal naturally made the opposition camp gung ho and parts of the media, even more so. And from all accounts so far, the “goons” have not been able to do any major mischief, this year. Therefore, it’s advantage to the Trinamool Congress (TMC), right?

Wrong. Fact is, the TMC has all along been pressing for an early election, not without reason, It wanted to capitalise on the pro-change wind blowing in its favour in gale force, right after the Lok Sabha polls in 2009. TMC leader Mamata Banerjee did her best to make this happen, but failed. The opposition alliance had to face a more prolonged elections instead. The wind behind its sails was all but gone.

If anything, it was the CPI(M) that rallied during the long phase of polling. Second rank leaders like Gautam Deb and Abdur Rezzak Mollah, with their earthy, unorthodox ways and colourful language and diction, matched Mamata Banerjee almost word for word, gesture for gesture. They struck a responsive chord among people, including even TMC supporters who lent them their ear, amused. They were a refreshing contrast from the far more respectable and staid Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee or Biman Bose, who with all due respect, were no patch on the sheer energy and earthiness of Ms Banerjee herself.

As days passed, more and more people were found watching Deb’s shows on the electronic media, or attending his mass meetings. It remains to be seen how far such efforts will translate in terms of votes. Left insiders admit that Deb was thrown into the deep end of the pool too late to matter. Indeed, he did not, like to be shifted from his Basirhat constituency to Dum Dum. He had not been allowed to speak at the party’s biggest rally on Brigade Parade Ground with which the LF started off its campaign in 2011.

Yet, wherever he went Deb drew larger crowds than others, including Bhattacharjee. District party units requested the state leaders to send him as much as possible! Rezzak, with his sharply acerbic comments was equally effective on TV, with the added advantage that he was even more pithy and concise than Deb.

That these little behind the scene developments had something to do with the patterns of voting cannot be denied, although no one claims that it will help the LF to win the polls. But it did help the Left recover some lost ground.

For instance, after the third phase of polls, when 179 seats had been covered out of 294, Ms Banerjee promptly went on record claiming that her party had won a least 160 of the seats. Yet after the fourth round a few days later, her optimism was all but gone. “It is not yet time to make such claims,” was her careful response when newsmen asked whether the opposition alliance would form the new Ministry. By this time, quite apart from being needled by Deb’s calculated histrionics, she was getting reports of the damage caused by “independents” sponsored by Congress leaders like Adhir Choudhury and Shankar Singh in Murshidabad and Malda districts. She also had TMC dissidents to contend with who rebelled against “outsider” candidates imposed on rural constituencies.

Even so, the prolonged elections favoured the alliance more than the ruling left coalition. True, there were even in 2011 electoral rolls some mysterious “omissions” of genuine voters who had voted earlier. Presiding officers who contacted left leaders while on duty or tried to influence voters were thrown out , hooligans generally kept a long distance away from polling stations, when not arrested. For the first time in years, anti socials were actually arrested in thousands before the polls began.

These were major gains for the alliance. In Hooghly, Nadia and Howrah, there were many voters in the 35-55 age group, who openly expressed their satisfaction at having voted “the first time” or “after many years”. Clearly, these were people who felt intimidated by left cadres earlier and had now become bolder. They were not likely to vote “Left”, ever.

And this is where men like Deb or Rezzak Mollah lost the game. Try all they might, they could not stem the tide of the general anti-left feeling that was very much the part of the political ambience of south Bengal districts. As one observer pointed out, “Ultimately, it was the sheer failure of governance that undid the Left cause, or seemed to. People wanted no more from the left government than the rule of law. And the government, especially between 2007 and 2011, failed miserably to deliver on any front.”

Thus Deb’s tall claim that the alliance would never form the government and the eighth Left front Ministry was a matter of time, lacked conviction. Towards the end, he seemed to have lost much of his steam, as Rezzak, too, faded. They had done their best for the CPI(M). Most probably, it would not prove enough. (IPA Service)