The Hindu : Second from Left

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, May 17, 2003

Opinion

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Second from Left

MORE SIGNIFICANT THAN the victory of the Left Front in the panchayat poll in West Bengal is the third-place finish of the Trinamool Congress-BJP alliance with the Congress re-emerging as the principal Opposition party of the State. While the sweep of the Left Front was expected in the three-tier poll, the point of interest was whether the Trinamool Congress would be able to smother the challenge from the Congress in the rural panchayats. In the event, the Congress re-surfaced as the alternative to the Left Front in time for the Lok Sabha election next year. The Left coalition won 15 of the 17 zilla parishads, and the Congress the remaining two. In terms of panchayat samitis and gram panchayat seats too, the pattern was the same: the Left a clear winner, the Congress a distant second, and the Trinamool Congress a poor third. As polarisation is more likely in a Lok Sabha election than in a local bodies poll, the implications for the future are not difficult to foresee. The Congress can hope to gain at the expense of the Trinamool Congress. Although the party still has a lot of catching up to do with the Left Front, it could shut out the BJP by occupying the anti-Left space in West Bengal.

The lessons for the Trinamool Congress, and its firebrand leader, Mamata Banerjee, are clear: shortsighted political strategies and opportunistic alliances would not work. In her attempt to build a viable alternative to the Left Front, Ms. Banerjee moved from the BJP to the Congress and back to the BJP. But, finally, confrontational politics and hot rhetoric were no substitute for organisational strength and ideological clarity. While Ms. Banerjee sees a contradiction between the friendship of the Congress and the Left at the national level and the rivalry of the two parties in West Bengal, she does not see any inconsistency in the Trinamool Congress hopping from one alliance to another. Although the Trinamool Congress managed to win more Lok Sabha seats than the Congress in the previous two elections from West Bengal, the support-base was limited mostly to Kolkata and a few other urban seats. Ms. Banerjee was unable to break the organisational structure of the Congress in rural Bengal, even while becoming a front-runner in Kolkata. In such a situation, the Trinamool Congress can never expect to be a serious contender for power in the State. It might beat both the Left and the Congress in Kolkata, and yet end up as an irrelevant third in the rest of Bengal.

Interestingly, the Congress did exceptionally well in Murshidabad, where CPI(M) and Congress workers were involved in violence. Not surprisingly, the Congress explanation is that the party performed better wherever it could counter the violence of the CPI(M) cadre. But the real task for the State Congress leaders is to look beyond the panchayat poll and woo back the Trinamool Congress from the BJP fold, or better, force a merger of the two parties. Ms. Banerjee might want to run her own outfit, and not like to surrender her freedom to a Delhi-centric high command. But, surely, she would realise the need for closer coordination between the Trinamool Congress and the parent Congress. If the alliance failed to click in the Assembly election, then the self-evident political opportunism of the Trinamool Congress in walking out of the National Democratic Alliance at the last moment must take most of the blame. In any case, the panchayat poll has shown that there is little benefit for the Trinamool Congress in continuing the alliance with the BJP except for the "influence" with the NDA Government at the Centre. In the long run, it is the BJP that would benefit from the alliance, and not the Trinamool Congress.

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