Warning signals for the Left

THE IMPRESSIVE PERFORMANCE by Ms. Mamata Banerjee's Trinamul Congress in the elections to the Calcutta Corporation and adjoining Salt Lake Municipality may not be a surprise. After all, the metropolis had never been a citadel of the ruling Left Front even in the past and Ms. Banerjee had only supplanted the Congress(I)'s base to a large extent. However, the ruling Left Front's base has shrunk this time and the very prospect that the CPI(M)-led combine may now have to depend on the Congress(I)'s corporators - 14 of them - in order to retain their control over the city's civic body cannot but be a signal of the times to come. The ruling combine's reverses are not just in terms of the number of seats; the defeat of the Mayor, Mr. Prasanta Chatterjee, a heavy-weight in the CPI(M) too, at the hands of the stormy petrel of the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), Mr. Subrata Mukherjee, now in the Trinamul Congress, cannot but be seen as significant. Mr. Mukherjee, for those familiar with the political scene in West Bengal, represented the Congress(I)'s response to the CPI(M)'s style of functioning - a down-to-earth approach to issues - in contrast to those Congress(I) leaders from West Bengal with moorings in quarters close to the party high command. Ms. Mamata Banerjee's role in West Bengal's political theatre is also the same.

It is in this context that the results of the polls to the city Corporation assume significance apart from the fact that the development has come close on the heels of the emphatic victory of the Trinamul Congress nominee in the byelections to the Panskura Lok Sabha constituency a fortnight ago. The gains by the Trinamul Congress, while the BJP, an ally of Ms. Banerjee, could not even register its presence, are not only an expression of popular resentment against the ruling Left combine but also a pointer to the consolidation of this mood behind Ms. Banerjee and her party. The leaders in the Left Front may gloss over the writing on the wall only at their peril. The charge that the Panskura polls were rigged - this is what the CPI(M)'s leaders in New Delhi had to say after the Panskura verdict was out - had not only exposed the party to some ridicule but was also indicative of the extent of alienation of such leaders from the ground reality. The results of the Corporation elections cannot but convey to these leaders in the CPI(M) that it is time now for ``rectification''. The developments in West Bengal since 1998 (after Ms. Banerjee floated her own regional outfit) will have to be acknowledged by the Left Front leaders as part of a process in the course of which their entrenchment in the State's political discourse is being challenged seriously. And any such introspection must involve an honest review of the Left Front's record of governance.

Be that as it may, the results have also exposed the Congress(I) as a party to a set of challenges. The Congress(I) corporators now hold the key in deciding which among the two big platforms - the Left Front or the Trinamul Congress - will control the Corporation. And this will require the party high command to decide once and for all on a question that has been nagging it in the past few months; the idea of a `mahajot' floated by Ms. Banerjee, the BJP and supported vehemently by the Congress(I)'s State unit president, Mr. A. B. A. Ghani Khan Choudhury. Any support to the Trinamul Congress in the present context will knock the bottom out of the Congress(I)'s claims to agitate against the ruling NDA at the Centre, while teaming up with the CPI(M)-led combine in the Calcutta Corporation could lead to further erosion of whatever support base the party has managed to retain in the State even now. The party high command has itself to blame for the situation; the crisis of sorts it faces now is only a fallout of its prevarication over the `mahajot' idea. One would expect the high command to wake up, at least now, and be guided by ideological convictions rather than short-term gains and decide as to what will be the role of the 14 elected members of the Congress(I) in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation.

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