At 86, Ashok Kumar Mullick, popularly known as “Mastermoshai”, still treads the political lane that he began walking over six decades ago with a rally at Subodh Mullick Square in central Calcutta.

The south Calcutta resident has participated in countless Left movements, including the food movement of 1959.

Round the year, Mullick can be seen visiting homes in his area, climbing floors, stopping occasionally to catch a breath and walking up again to knock at the doors of CPM supporters and sympathisers to hand over magazines, leaflets and newspapers or collect funds.

“Age is an issue no doubt but someone needs to pitch in when the going gets tough. Things will change in the state and the country,” says the retired high school teacher with the conviction of a man who recalls the defeat of Indira Gandhi and reminds this correspondent that at one point even she had looked invincible.

“If Mrs Gandhi could face defeat, the minions (Narendra Modi and his ilk) who have been blown big by corporate power will be pulled down one day by people’s power,” he says as he rolls up the sleeves of his white kurta.

If that was 1977, Mullick is quick to remind himself that was also the year when his leader Jyoti Basu led the Left Front to defeat the Congress to become chief minister. A Left Front run that took 34 years and a Mamata Banerjee to halt in 2011. And Mullick makes no bones of the fact that the protagonist to dethrone the Left Front regime remains the biggest enemy for Left supporters in Bengal although the BJP is a foe of the same standing.

“The 2021 fight in Bengal is as much against the Narendra Modi-led BJP as it is against Mamata Banerjee and her party Trinamul. Mamata’s party is bereft of any ideology and so they micro-manage politics through local-level hooliganism,” says the CPM supporter who never became a party cardholder and is worried that a BJP victory will inject communalism into Bengal.

While Mastermoshai finds no fault with the Left’s policy of equi-distance from Modi and Mamata, many are asking whether the Left has missed out on an opportunity that history brought before it and when CPIML-Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya had laid out the pitch by publicly giving a call to defeat the BJP.

“May 2 will be a day when I expect answers to two queries. One, will the BJP taste defeat? And two, whether the Left took the right call in equating its two enemies? As a Left supporter, I want the BJP to be defeated and wish the Left to perform well. But ground realities as I see is far from what I wish happens on May 2,” says another CPM supporter and also a votary of the “No vote to BJP” campaign.

“It is good to aspire that the Left will claw back to power even if it is with the help of the Congress and Abbas Siddiqui’s ISF but the turf is still underprepared for a comeback. Even the Congress stand will get tested in its strongholds, which are largely minority-dominated districts,” he says.

Mullick, however, thinks Bhattacharya is undermining the Bengal reality. When reminded that a consolidation of Opposition forces under the leadership of Jayprakash Narayan led to Mrs Gandhi’s defeat in 1977 and Bhattacharya was not even suggesting an alliance, Mullick for once takes time to come up with a reply.

Ashok Kumar Mullick, Left supporters from different generations

After a brief pause, Mullick says: “Circumstances then and now are not the same. There has been an enormous spurt in RSS shakhas during Mamata Banerjee’s regime. The desire to finish off the Left has proved to be detrimental and helped the BJP fill in the vacuum. Not going all out against Mamata would have led to a consolidation of anti-Trinamul votes in the BJP’s kitty.”

Sixty-five years younger to Mullick and living on the northern fringes of Calcutta, a student of St. Stephen’s College in Delhi has been actively campaigning for the Left as he believes that the “battle against the fascists need to be won decisively”.

Ananyo Chakraborty, 21, has been writing poll songs, performing at meetings and taking part in CPM rallies as he believes that the political battle is important for democracy to survive in Bengal. Chakraborty represents the young force that the Left has unleashed in this election to reverse its downward slide.

The young Left activist has a different take on Bhattacharya’s tactical proposition to identify the BJP as the main enemy.

“The anger of youths, who have been deprived of jobs in the past 10 years largely due to Trinamul’s corruption, against Mamata Banerjee is an everyday experience. I am aware that several Left sympathisers feel that the BJP should have been marked out in this electoral battle but that would have further polarised votes in the BJP’s favour,” he says.

Both Mullick and Chakraborty agree that losing Left supporters to the BJP has been a real worry but they feel the trend, even if by a bit, is reversing.

The Left has suffered organisationally since 2011 and the party leadership has not been able to deal with the challenges. But the two concur that the role of the Left during the pandemic and the lockdown has prompted many of those who had left to return.

“They are slowly realising that the economic policies of the BJP are hurting their interests. The Hindu-Muslim divide will break the social fabric. The lockdown has exposed the BJP’s pro-poor narrative. This election will also be about votes returning to the Left,” Mullick says.

Drawing on his experience at St. Stephen’s and during the poll campaigns, Chakraborty says: “After the attacks on JNU and Jamia, college mates who used to find us too political began to turn up at our protest shows. The high point of our rallies, including the one at Brigade, has been the presence of youths. Even if a section of Left voters did switch sides, the gathering of youths and their active participation is reason enough to hope for change.”

Even though the two CPM supporters have an age gap of 65 years, which almost reflects the generation gap between Biman Bose and Minakshi Mukherjee, both say that the infusion of youth in the leadership should have happened years ago.

“This should have happened long back. Imagine the gap between Pramod Dasgupta’s protégé Biman Bose and Minakshi. After leaders like Md Salim and Sujan Chakraborty, there has been a huge gap. Since 2011, the number of young legs on the ground has dropped. Though of late, the induction of young leaders gives me hope that things will change,” Chakraborty says.

He credits the change in the party’s campaign style to the strategy of ushering in leaders like Minakshi, Srijan Bhattacharya, Dipsita Dhar and Aishee Ghosh.

When told that there were many who felt the use of popular songs like Tumpa Sona was “unbecoming of the Left”, Chakraborty retorts: “I have composed a campaign song while at the same time I am singing popular IPTA numbers at rallies. The huge popularity of the new campaign songs goes to show they have struck a chord with the masses. If that has happened, the purpose is served.”

Economist and political analyst Indraneel Dasgupta almost echoes Chakraborty.

Lauding the campaign, Dasgupta, who teaches at the Indian Statistical Institute, says: “I have been an avid watcher of elections in Bengal, at various degrees of separation and engagement, for about four decades now. The hippest and most creative one, in terms of the campaign material generated, is by far the current one. How much of this will get translated to booth-level campaigns or will find reflection in electoral outcomes remains to be seen. But a lot of spontaneous creative energy, of edgy out-of-the-box thinking, has already been harnessed.”

If one looks beyond peppy numbers, the campaign of the Left in this election has been to harness the discontent of youths against the Trinamul government’s inability to generate enough jobs and the allegations of corruption in the recruitment process.

The Left understands the need to create jobs but many think it is short of ideas as it still upholds the model that the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government had proposed for Singur and Nandigram.

“Singur had been a setback for the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government but the CPM still wants to stick to the old formula. The party should break out of its old shell and re-assess the mood of the farming community before deciding which course to take on industrialisation,” says a businessman who runs a small shop in Hooghly’s Pandua and has two jobless sons.

Chakraborty, who aspires to get a job in a few years, feels industry is the only answer and youths in Bengal need jobs and not doles that the Mamata government has faith in.

But the moot question remains whether the Left with all its intent — starting with strategic alliance with the ISF where it had to shed its inhibitions about identity politics to overhauling its candidates’ list — will be able to undo the setback it has been suffering since 2011.

A senior CPM leader said: “The battle has just begun and will continue to be waged beyond May 2, whatever be the outcome.”