As I step into Tripura chief minister (CM) Biplab Kumar Deb's office, I expect to witness a few foot-in-the-mouth moments. I am at the Secretariat in Agartala. Deb, however, disappoints me. He is extraordinarily reticent. His eyes look tired, sleep-deprived. Indeed, there is lot of work ahead for Deb, who has just completed six months in office.

The biggest challenge of all is to "fix" everything that he claims the CPI(M) has destroyed. Deb tells me: "When I say everything, it means everything - economy, agriculture, employment, education and corruption."

It's a brand new Tripura Deb wants to build. And, he claims, small changes are already visible. "Earlier, when I'd meet people, they were mostly poker-faced. Now, when I go around, I see only happy faces," he says with pride.

I get a different picture though during my conversations with various sections of society - drivers, rickshaw-pullers, artistes, government officials, teachers - as I traipse around Agartala. People have already started questioning Deb's governance. There are murmurs of discontent. Some of the things one gets to hear often are - "We didn't expect this", "BJP has changed Tripura in no time, and all for worse" and "It was a mistake to have elected the BJP".

Breaking the 25-year reign of CPI(M) in March this year, BJP won 35 seats; its partner, the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura, which has a substantial base among the tribals, won eight. Their combined strength is 43 in the 60-seat Assembly. Upon winning the Assam Assembly elections in 2016, Tripura was BJP's next target in the Northeast. A band of 52 Union ministers was sent to campaign to overthrow the Left. Big BJP men made big promises.

The party promised to change people's fortunes by giving free education to the girl child right up to graduation, pay parity for 2.15 lakh state government officials courtesy the Seventh Pay Commission, one job for every family, free smartphones for the youth, housing for all, regularisation of services of contractual government employees, doubling of farmers' incomes in the next five years, enhanced minimum wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), enhancement of social security pension to Rs 2,000, a whole range of things.

The daily wagers under MGNREGA allege that they barely got 10 days of work in the past five months and the wages haven't gone up either. No new jobs have been created, but there has been another promise to "streamline the recruitment process" for unemployed youth. Those joining government service in Tripura on or after July 1 this year have been told that they will not be entitled to the general provident fund. The Seventh Pay Commission is yet to be implemented, though Deb says, "The P.P. Verma Committee is looking into it."

Deb also shares his grand plans to promote Tripura. He will be setting up a rubber industry - the annual rubber production in the state is 50,000-plus tonnes; Tripura tea will be branded and sold outside the state; bamboo and green pineapple, the indigenous produce of the state, will get a fresh market impetus.

All of six feet and three inches - at some point he had wanted to join the police force - Deb sits straight in his chair, unperturbed by the list of complaints. I ask him about the three people who were lynched to death in July over a rumour about "child-lifting" and allegations about his education minister Ratan Lal Nath instigating the masses. He replies, "The Communists have coined the word, mob lynching. The biggest insurgency in Tripura was in the late 1980s, 1990s and 2000s when the Communists were in power."

That's Deb's way of convincing me that Tripura was more violent during the Left rule. Deb, like Mamata Banerjee, tends to blame the Left for everything. When I ask him what the logic is behind blaming the Left always, his answer is prompt and vague: "Manik Sarkar (his predecessor) encouraged people to grow marijuana. We have arrested over 200 people dealing with marijuana, most of them turned out to be CPI(M) men."

The week before, Tripura police claimed they had seized over 2,100 kilos of marijuana worth Rs 1.5 crore from an oil tanker at Dharamnagar in the northern parts. Over the past six months, the police have seized over 20,000 kilograms of marijuana. Most of these seizures have taken place from the Sepahijala district, the constituency of the former CM. But these arrests over drugs are mostly political, Left leaders allege. The CPI(M) also alleges that government officials have been bulldozing their office-buildings on the outskirts of Agartala. The government, however, maintains that these offices were built on government-owned land and must be taken over.

Deb's other attack on the Left is through textbooks. Despite having a literacy rate of 94.65 per cent, the quality of education in the state has been poor, he claims. So he doesn't want children in Tripura to study the Russian revolution, Lenin and Karl Marx anymore. He wants NCERT textbooks to reach state-run schools from next year. "The Communists have highlighted only people they hail as heroes, what about our heroes - Ashoka, Syama Prasad Mookherjee, Mahatma Gandhi. Are they not great enough?" he asks.

We are a good way into the interview, and he is keen to talk some more. The conversation that started in Hindi has long moved to Bengali. But there hasn't been any foot-in-the-mouth moment as yet. Nothing in the league of what he said about Internet existing during the times of the Mahabharata or that Civil Engineering students should opt for the Civil Services.

I ask him why he courts controversy so often and he shows me his "cultural" and "intellectual" side by invoking Tagore. He says, "When you and I look at dew drops, we would just find them mundane and ordinary, but when Tagore looked at them, he was moved to compose poems. What people make out of what I say is up to them."

But Deb has tripped on his general knowledge about Tagore in the past. Earlier this year, he spoke about how Tagore rejected the Nobel Prize in protest against the British government and got the Biswasrestho or the world's best award for Gitanjali. Tagore had renounced his knighthood and got the Nobel Prize for Gitanjali. The CM's words interrupt my flashback. He is saying, "Every other community knows, Bengalis dimaag ka khata hai. Amader kachhe achhe... Bengalis have great intellect. We Bengalis have it."

Deb is dressed in a white kurta and pyjama with a red-and-white Manipuri risa or scarf. He tells me he has a huge collection of risas representing the various tribes of the state. "My concern for tribals is not mere posturing, I take everyone along. This is an inclusive government," he says.

During election rallies, he spoke in Kokborok, the state's second official language. But after he assumed power he proposed to ban its use on all news channels and introduce Hindi instead. As in most BJP-ruled states, Hindi supremacy continues here too. At the time of this interview, Tripura University, a central varsity, is observing the Hindi Fortnight.

Deb is an obedient foot soldier of the BJP. But his views on implementation of National Register of Citizens (NRC) is different from his party's. He says, "There isn't any need for NRC here, we don't have the problem of infiltration."

Could it be that being from Bangladesh himself, Deb has a soft corner for the people of opar Bangla or the other side? His defences are up almost immediately. "But I was born here. Yes, my father came from Chandpur in Chittagong in 1967 and my mother in 1971."

His detractors, however, are not having any of this. They have already labelled him a Bangladeshi for not implementing the NRC in the state. After the interview, his aide, a former journalist, calls me to say, "Mother wala point thoda downplay kijiyega..." A day before the interview, the same man tells me over phone, "Positive likhiyega." Clearly, there is worry within the BJP camp that the Bangladeshi tag should not stick or the outsider label for that matter. Deb spent over a decade in Delhi after finishing his graduation from Udaipur College in Tripura; returned only in 2015.

By way of changing perceptions, Deb has now gone and done the ultimate. He has pulled his children out from their Delhi schools and has had them join schools in Agartala. He can't emphasise this enough: "If the children of the CM don't study in the state, why would anyone want their children to study here?"

Point. Deb, it seems, wants to lead by example. But one must be careful before taking cue. Remember, he tends to put his foot in his mouth much too often.