Polarisation does worry some voters - Mom and son: Healthcare not a poll issue in pandemic?

Voters queue up outside a polling booth in Salt Lake on Saturday: Sanat Kr Sinha

Subhajoy Roy, Snehal Sengupta   |  TT  |  Calcutta   | 18.04.21: A mother and son who voted in Salt Lake lamented that issues like health, education and livelihood that bothered them found little or no mention in the political discourse, while religion and identities were being talked about in rally after rally.

Covid vaccine doses are in short supply and there are no vacant Covid beds in many hospitals but they are rarely spoken about, they said. “Instead, there are boasts about a Ram temple,” said Soma Ganguly, 55, a homemaker who voted in HA Block.

“I have grown up and lived in a Bengal where Sikhs were not touched during the 1984 riots, where Muslims did not feel insecure after the Babri Masjid demolition. The city and the state have always remained calm even when riots ravaged several parts of the country. But that peace and tranquillity is under threat now,” Soma said.

 “The election rallies now are a competition of who can speak more along religious lines,” she said.

Soma said she wanted to hear more on how the parties would solve the vaccine shortage problem, how many affordable hospitals they would build or how many jobs they would create.

Her son Somdeep, 29, said he “could not have imagined a few years back” that communal polarisation would drive the election campaign narrative in Bengal.

“The real issues that affect people have become secondary and it pains me,” said Somdeep, a junior research fellow at the Wildlife Institute of India at Dehradun.

“We want a peaceful society where people do not have to think about protecting themselves from mobs who target them for their identity,” he said.

Soma and Somdeep felt that the Covid-19 pandemic had once again shown the importance of affordable healthcare for people and the need for more health facilities. So many people had to spend lakhs to get treated at private hospitals, spending their savings of years for a few days’ of hospitalisation.

Covid vaccines are in short supply and there are no va-cant Covid beds in many hospitals.

“The population needs to be vaccinated very fast to outpace the rise in infections, but India does not have enough vaccines. There are no vacant beds for Covid treatment in hospitals. I have many doctor friends who warned me that getting a bed if one gets infected is almost impossible. Jobs are few and our children are forced to go out of the state. These are the primary issues,” Soma said.

She lamented that despite such a grim reality, “Ram temple and communal polarisation have become the biggest issue of this election”. 

The BJP, which has emerged as the principal challenger to the Trinamul Congress in the Assembly elections this time, has been accused by many of running a vicious communal campaign, pitting communities against each other.

Several residents of Salt Lake and New Town said the BJP’s star campaigners had often highlighted “infiltrators” and “Bangladeshis illegally crossing over and staying in Bengal” during their speeches.

Soma Ganguly with her son Somdeep outside a polling station in Salt Lake on Saturday:  Gautam Bose

AB Block resident Priti Kumar Sen said that earlier this week home minister Amit Shah had told a gathering of BJP supporters at the FD park that if the people of Bengal vote the BJP to power they would ensure that “not only Bangladeshi infiltrators but even birds will not be able to cross the borders and land in Bengal”.

“We have trade relations with Bangladesh that is a neighbouring country and this lambasting of people from there is not only uncalled for but in a way is also a tactic to divide people based on communal faultlines. Many residents of Salt Lake including myself trace their roots to Bangladesh,” said Sen.

New Town resident Ananya Choudhury, who works for a multinational company, said many of her neighbours in her housing complex who were not Hindu “happily participate in our festivals”.

“Politics based on religion and radicalism has no place in Bengal. It is sad that several political leaders have been trying to do the same thing that the British did to us,” saidChoudhury.

The divide along religious lines in society also pains Biswanath Biswas, who retired as a professor from Calcutta Medical College and Hospital.

Biswas said some of his closest friends were Muslims and he never felt he looked at them as Muslims and they never looked at him as a Hindu “ever”.

“We were all friends. That was our identity. I have eaten at their home on Id and they have eaten at my home during Puja. That is how things should be,” said Biswas, 68.

The unwillingness of political parties to stop large gath-erings at election rallies despite the rising Covid cases has also shocked the Gangulys. “We deserve more responsible political leaders,” said Somdeep.