Local corruption trumps ‘Vishwaguru’, ‘democracy in danger’ on Bengal poll street

Aparajita Ghosh, an HR professional in a French multinational firm, who shuttles between Kolkata and Bangalore, is back in Serampore to cast her vote. Sipping cold coffee at Danish Tavern, the neat little cafe perhaps the only reminder of this Bengal area’s old colonial links to Denmark, she hasn’t warmed up to the BJP’s Vishwaguru campaign. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign trips are a drain on the exchequer and don’t add to much, she says.

Her scepticism may strike a discordant note in what is largely seen as a successful BJP campaign projecting the PM as having given India pride of place at the global high table. But the campaign has found few echoes on the ground.

It has reached a farmer in Singur, Rabindra Sadra, who says “the world is looking at India because of PM Modi”. And Dipesh Dhar, who lives in Salt Lake City and deals with stocks trading, who says “there is a sense among some of us that India has arrived… But beyond that, not much.” Says Pawan Kumar Harijan, a lawyer practising in Purulia trial courts: “Pakistan ko tight kiya (Pakistan has been taught a lesson), that is something people here feel good about. Not much more.”

Nitya Gopal Bhattacharya, a retired government official who lives in Asansol’s Kalyanpur Housing Colony, differs: “As far as I understand, the Western countries don’t have a very positive view of India.”

Barrackpore-based Shirshendu Mondol, who deals with supply of tractors in rural Bengal, laughs when asked why Modi’s foreign policy is not a talking point. What people are concerned about is corruption, lack of jobs and “the politics of doles for women”, he says.

Arnab Roy Chowdhury, who leads the technical team at a Kolkata-based company dealing in heavy machinery at power plants, says: