In West Bengal, anti-incumbency has kicked in with full force. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been compelled to change tack in her bid to retain power, going from confident – if not boastful – to pleading and penitent.

When she says, “Blame me. Bless my party” or “Kindly vote for Apu (Durgapur mayor Apurba Mukherjee). If you are unhappy, slap him,” the effect is shock, like a jolt from a high tension power line. It is meant to awe a public that is expected to view her appeal as a classic gesture of appeasement. The trick she hopes to pull off is stooping to reconquer.

It also implies that Mamata Banerjee’s enormous reserves of political capital are running out faster than she can replenish it. It means that she suspects that the six phases of polling are not going to be a walkover for her party, the Trinamool Congress. And there is reason enough for Mamata Banerjee’s strategic retreat.

Saving face

The tense silence of voters in West Bengal is beginning to break – not in words, but in public action. For the Trinamool Congress, this is an ominous signal from people who know that they have been cheated and looted.

Onda, an obscure constituency in Bankura, is the worst snub that the Trinamool Congress supremo has ever received. On April 6, Onda voters allowed her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, the star attraction at the rally, to get away after the election meeting. But they blocked the exit of Chandan Chakravarty, an official of the Pailan Group, which is currently investigation as part of the larger Saradha chit fund scam.

It was a clear and uncompromising message: the ruling party needs to clean up its act.

Mamata Banerjee has had to step forward to salvage the situation. In what looks like a final gamble, Mamata Banerjee is staking her image, her past and her popularity by resurrecting her “Didi” persona, the big sister who takes the knocks for her siblings’ pranks.

It is risky for Mamata Banerjee to project herself as a target of public discontent, because that is the last card in her pack. But her options are limited because the top leadership of the motley Trinamool Congress is besmirched by scandals that have unfortunately acquired a tactile life of their own after unverified videos of a sting operation by Narada News went viral.

Three factors

For Mamata Banerjee, the 2016 assembly elections were supposed to be an easy political battle against the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front’s legacy.

But three things changed and the Trinamool Congress supremo seems to have caught on rather belatedly that there is a political fight on her hands, instead of the walkover that she had anticipated.

First, the CPI(M)-Congress understanding over seats has blossomed into an alliance with growing grassroots support. Second, the Trinamool Congress is fighting without a partner that can help the party punch above its weight. Third, the anti-incumbency in this election is all about what the Trinamool Congress has done as a party since 2011, and how Mamata Banerjee has managed it all.

The apparent helplessness in her plea is a strategic retreat. Does it mean that Mamata Banerjee has a plan that, while risky, will salvage her eroding political capital?

As a shrewd politician with a phenomenal and virtually unmatched capacity to take risks, the Trinamool Congress chief must hope to pull off a spectacular turnaround by venturing into the battlefield alone. It revives memories of the 1990s, when she was the solitary crusader fighting against entrenched political interests, the Congress from the inside and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Left Front on the outside. It links Mamata Banerjee to the image of her younger self, when she quit the Congress to form the Trinamool Congress.

Onus on voters

Instead of the mock battle it had expected, the unprepared Trinamool Congress is facing a real political fight. And instead of a fractured opposition, there is a consolidated opposition. Mamata Banerjee can fire her guns at only a section of the opposition. She cannot afford to be vicious in her attacks on the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party – she was their ally in the past and may need them again in the future.

By taking the blame for every evil act of omission and commission, Mamata Banerjee is hoping to deflect public attention and regain popularity. The question is whether the public will believe her to be clean, or will they judge her to be no better than the rest?