The name Abhisek Banerjee featuring in the poll fray draws a smile because of the heavyweight namesake in Trinamul Congress. But the Left Front-supported Congress candidate in Bidhannagar refuses to accept that the recall value is an advantage. “He (Trinamul’s Abhishek) has no identity of his own. I am an information technologist and a self-made man,” he declares, dismissing parallels with the chief minister’s nephew.
An election debutant, Banerjee has quit his IT job to try his luck at the hustings. “It was one of my father’s last wishes. He passed away in January. He used to say: ‘You cannot play cricket from the commentary box.’” He believes he has the credentials to get another job if things do not work according to plan.
Banerjee is aware that the BJP’s rise has had to do with the failure of Left Front to retain their vote share. But he refuses to call them Left Front supporters. “Only the five to seven per cent party card-holders can be called committed supporters. The rest are floating voters who switch their loyalty according to the election context.”
He refuses to believe that the Bidhannagar seat will be a two-way fight between the TMC and the BJP. “If the educated electorate is lamenting about the uneducated running the administration, voters will not be honest to their feelings if despite having an educated candidate in the fray, they base their choice on their assumption of who will win rather than who is deserving.”
As his party’s local IT cell head, he is adept at coining catchy slogans — Sikshitora pele pawd, jochchoreder hobe bipod or Chit fund-o shilpo hetha, shilpo telebhaja/ Didi Modi-r nokol swarge manush pachchhe saja. Even his party’s theme song for the election is composed by him.
His biggest connect with the voters of Bidhannagar, he feels, would be his academic background, value system and culture. “Amake tolabaji kore khete hoy na,” he says acidly.
The Congress candiate challenges the BJP to prepare a mock cabinet of ministers from the candidates they have fielded. “They simply do not have efficient people to run the state even if they win.” Even the ruling party, he points out, has mostly fielded pure politicians or people from the show business. As an IT professional, he wonders why a good start-up like Byju’s has not come out of Bengal. “Before every election, we are shown Wipro and Infosys like the proverbial crocodile hatchlings. I know how to nurture offshore development of foreign banks or incubation centres or start-ups.”
Banerjee also has some ideas about starting a bike ambulance service, introducing cantilever parking in every block where space can be booked through an app and hawker rehabilitation.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day but at least I have a building plan,” he signs off.
