'Vote on Tinder, governance home-delivered' Left-Cong-ISF attempt to catch the youth’s imagination

Posters displaying a promise of a ride from a 'Useless Government' to a 'Sangjukta Morcha Government' and others were created on a Facebook page

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Arkamoy Datta Majumdar   |   TT   |   Calcutta   |   23.03.21: He promises food and security, is open to lending a sympathetic ear to stories about your cheating ex, and is willing to wait a while for that first date.

Interested? But don’t rush in to get a “match” just yet. For what the suitor is out to win is not your heart or your hand but your vote.

The Left-Congress-ISF is trying to catch the youth’s imagination with a virtual poster of its alliance, the Sanjukta Morcha, that consciously resembles profiles on the dating app Tinder.

The Sanjukta Morcha profile, created on a Left-leaning Facebook page titled “Propaganda: Let the voices be heard”, offers you a date on May 2, the day the Bengal Assembly poll results will be announced.

It paints Sanjukta Morcha as one who shuns bigotry and promises “food, jobs and security for all”. In a dig at the epidemic of defections in poll season, the profile says: “Changing sides is a big turn off.”

It also skewers the Left’s two rivals just by being “open to listening to how that toxic ex cheated with the new perverted boss”.

The same page has come up with two more imaginative posters. One of these mimics a transport aggregator app and promises a ride from a “Useless Government” to a “Sangjukta Morcha Government”. The other resembles a food delivery app and pledges the home delivery of good governance.

“The young faces on the Left list of candidates pushed me to come up with something unique,” said Arijit Mondal, who designed the posters with friend Mousumi Nandi, activist of CPM student wing SFI.

“But I had no clue that so many people would like the campaign.”

A CPM leader said these posters mirrored a drive to communicate the Left’s “vision for Bengal” to the youth in an eye-catching way.

“If we have to gain the youth’s trust, they need to feel connected to us first,” a CPM state committee member said, adding that the party was keen to shed its tag of a “house of elders”.

Which is why the CPM has also come up with a raft of peppy parodies, flash mobs and fluorescent posters as part of its poll campaign.

The focus on the youth had already become evident by February 28 when, at the Brigade Parade Grounds, the Left veterans left the front stage to the young faces. When the candidate list came out later, it featured more people under 40 than above.

“The peppy songs are being played alongside Tagore and IPTA songs,” said Srijan Bhattacharya, state SFI secretary and CPM candidate from Singur. “But the content is always about the people’s daily struggles.”

So far, the CPM has released about a half-dozen songs on social media.

Two of these draw their inspiration from Tumpa Sona, a popular independent song released last October. First came a parody on February 20 that went Tumpa tokey niye Brigade jabo.

After CPM state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra posted it on his Facebook page, the video was shared around 3,400 times and received over 10,000 reactions. It has close to 1.5 crore hits on YouTube.

The Sanjukta Morcha poster inspired by Justice League

The poster that mimics a profile on Tinder

The promise of home delivery of good governance

The CPM has borrowed the tune of Lungi Dance, from the 2013 Hindi film Chennai Express, for the song Haal Pherao, Laal Pherao, whose title exhorts people to bring the Left back to turn Bengal’s fortunes around.

Written and sung by SFI members Rahul Paul and Nilabja Niyogi, both songs deal with the topics of jobs and industrialisation and build up the Left-Congress-ISF alliance.

On March 17, Left-leaning theatre artist Saurav Palodhi revisited the Tumpa song with new lyrics that urge voters to back the Left. Released on Wednesday morning, the video of Tumpa 2.0 has so far attracted over 15,000 reactions, 166,000 views and nearly 5,000 shares on Facebook.

CPM veteran and Raidighi candidate Kanti Ganguly had taken to Facebook on March 15 to seek “a few young people with digital knowledge” who could help his campaign.

Within 24 hours, Rahul and Nilabja had come up with a song highlighting Ganguly’s work in his coastal constituency after the Amphan rampage.

The latest song, released Sunday night, is a parody of the popular Usha Uthup number Uri Uri Baba from the 1990s and equates the BJP and Trinamul. It’s written and composed by Rahul and Nilabja.

Pro-Left singer Arko Mukhaerjee too had composed a song, Brigade Chalo, before the February 28 rally.

A dance that actor Joyraj Bhattacharya has choreographed on this song has been performed in flash mobs across Calcutta. Palodhi too is organising flash mobs across the city to campaign for alliance candidates.

The CPM released six flashy posters in fluorescent orange, violet, red, yellow, blue and green on social media a few days ago. While resembling the cheap posters frequented on suburban trains, they speak of issues such as communalism, price hike, joblessness, political turncoats, industrialisation and bribery.