If you compare the West Bengal of today to the West Bengal of the early 1960s, you will perceive the downward slide that the state has seen so far.

This has happened because of continuous povertarian, anti-development, anti-industry, anti-prosperity rule first by the Left Front government and then by the Trinamul Congress (TMC), led by Mamata Banerjee whom I call a medhabi chhatri or diligent pupil of the Leftists. During this process, there has been an exodus and closure of industries, climaxed by the driving out of the Nano factory from Singur.

The second aspect is infiltration — Bangladeshi infiltration and right now Rohingya infiltration — that has imposed a burden on this state.

Our state has been the receptacle of Hindus who have been driven out of East Bengal because of religious persecution. Now, we are getting the persecutors here and our governments have welcomed them with open arms because they vote in a block.

Third, because of Leftism pervading the entire body politic and the minds of the people, our value system has been warped. We have lost the common sense concept of good and bad.

On the other hand, we have concepts of good and bad based on what is good for the party, what is approved by the party. The CPM pushed it down our throats and thereafter, it became a part of our DNA. The TMC has simply followed it. I call Mamata Banerjee medhabi chaatri because she figured that if the Leftists could stay in power for 35 years this way, then so could she. All she had to do is copy them; she didn’t have to do any original thinking.

Now we have come to a stage that no industrialist will touch this state with a 10-foot pole. Yet manufacturing is what can create a large number of jobs. The service industry has enormous potential but manufacturing has to form the core. That is why manufacturing is necessary and Bengal was the hub of manufacturing. The communists have systematically driven them out.

But even at this stage, this advanced stage of decay, if proper political will is employed the state can turn around.

Only the BJP can do this because the party’s political idiom is diametrically opposite to this povertarianism, opposed to the anti-prosperity stance, opposed to Bangladeshi infiltration and, of course, minority appeasement. This is why the state needs the BJP; there is no alternative.

People are people, they have not lost track of their innate sense of good and bad. In spite of the communists teaching them the contrary. Which is why the communists have gone out of favour. That Mamata Banerjee is a communist in some other garb people will take some time to understand. But eventually they will understand.

There is a very famous saying attributed to Victor Hugo, “No one can stop the passage of something whose time has come.” The time for the BJP has come. Mamata, the communists, the “secularists” can do nothing against it. People have seen all these things, people have seen through them, now the time has come for the BJP, the only ones who can save this state.

Many say that the BJP has no roots in this state but that is wrong, its founder was from this state. Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which eventually metamorphosed into the BJP. The only thing is in the interregnum the BJP did not have an existence in the state because Mookerjee could not anoint a proper successor.

It is difficult to say how many seats we will win but I’m fairly sure — and my belief has hardened into conviction based on Mamata’s body language in Nandigram on polling day — that we will get the predicted 200 seats.

It is difficult to say how long it will take the BJP to get Bengal out of the financial mess, but I will say that we will have to do it within five years or perish. At least we will have to show tangible results and for that we will have to do surgical operations. Some very, very drastic measures will be necessary.

There is jute, there is tea, there is coal, there is steel and there is still an engineering industry, though a pale shadow of what it used to be.

Among agricultural products there is potato, which the state can export. Apart from that there is manpower; this state has exported quite a lot of manpower to all the states in the fields of IT, management, performing arts. All these are things that the state can monetise.

As for those who accuse the BJP of polarising the people, let me say that extreme polarisation has already been caused by Mamata’s antics. Ever since she has come to power there have been as many as five major communal riots — at Dhulagarh, Kaliachak, Naliakhali, Hazinagar and Baduria —and several minor ones.

And Gujarat, the state that is continuously bad mouthed by the “seculars”, has not seen a single communal riot since 2002 because the state has administered law and order without fear and favour and not pandered to certain sections of the population, which give birth to criminals.

(As told to The Telegraph)