PM stuck with the wrong ally

Mail Today edit page January 5, 2012
MAMATA Banerjee is teaching Congress some coalition etiquette it badly needed to learn. 10 Janpath had grown used to political giants being wheeled in for an audience
with the Congress president. The so-called ‘coalition dharma’ was only applicable to Congress’ allies which brought it to power, with the ruling party treating them with
undeserved feudal disdain.
But the Congress bosses forgot that Mamata Banerjee was schooled by the same Congress courtiers. Apart from the political embarrassment that she has caused by blocking Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s face saving Lokpal legislation and reform measures like foreign direct investment in retail and the pension bill, she had shamed the Union government by derailing the Teesta water deal with Bangladesh.
However much the Congress leaders would want to read political upstartism, oneupmanship and cussedness into these acts, the fact remains that Trinamool Congress
(TMC), the most important ally of the Congress, was not really taken into confidence on any of these crucial issues. The Congress thought that it could treat TMC the way it has been treating the DMK, another equally important ally with just one member less than TMC’s tally of 19 in the Lok Sabha.
Right or wrong, even in the last government the DMK had no role in policy formulation. It was not even party to the UPA government’s policy to destroy LTTE and finish off Sri Lankan Tamil insurgency, despite Eelam being an emotive issue
in Tamil Nadu.
Alliances
Worse, DMK is being treated by the Congress as if it invented corruption in Indian politics, conveniently forgetting that the original telecom scam and stock scam were Congress’ contributions. But Mamata is of the same Congress stock and would not just want her share of the power pie, but also have it served with deference.
Political alliances are essentially of two kinds: opportunistic electoral tie-ups and cohesive ideological groupings. The Congress, apart from the United Democratic Front experiment in Kerala, is not known to have struck long lasting ideological associations. Probably, it has a lot to do with the Congress’ ideological
flexibility. It is a party of governance, an instrument for ambitious individuals without a baggage of ideas to achieve power.
For the Congress, every election throws up an opportunity to grab power without a cohesive social or political agenda. Those aggrieved against a particular government or its policies could come together and help the Congress gain power. This could be
a gang-up of parties or just the voters trooping into the voting booth to bring a party down. This was probably best illustrated with the results of the 2004 elections, when a myriad group of political formations came together with and without
a pre-poll understanding with the Congress, just to bring the NDA government down.
In the same elections, from the Marxists to the Maoists, Telangana Rashtra Samiti to the local Muslim outfit, parties closed ranks just to pull Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP down in Andhra Pradesh. The collateral beneficiary was the Congress.
The Congress’ alliance with Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal was a similar exercise. The only short term objective was to bring the Marxists down and reduce their influence in national politics. It didn’t even require a calculator to add up Congress’ and TMC’s vote share and the votes polled by the candidates coming second or third to assess the potential of a Congress- TMC tie up. West Bengal was waiting for change. And Mamata promised it abundantly with the Maoists helping to erase her saffron past and create a new pro-poor radical image.
Mistakes
But the cardinal mistake for the Congress was that this was not even an alliance of convenience for the party. It actually helped its biggest competitor grow in its backyard at its own cost. Something similar to what Manmohan Singh’s mentor
Narasimha Rao ensured in Uttar Pradesh by aligning with the BSP. The Dalit party grew
from strength to strength after the tie-up, but the Congress never regained its lost glory.
All along Mamata had tried to convince the electorate that she was the real Congress in Bengal. Even while aligning with the BJP and becoming the railway minister, her only attempt was to straddle the Opposition space in the state and take on the Marxists. Her attire, her attitude, her image, in short her political persona itself was shaped by Left politics. It didn’t take much effort for her students’ union political mate Priya Ranjan Das Munshi to turn up in suit and tie in Parliament, but Mamata could never leave her slippers back in her bathroom, where they belonged. She was somehow convinced that the poor rural Bengal would only accept a leader with Left radical credentials. She is probably right, but the Congress was wrong in choosing her as its ally.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has made a series of political blunders, from Sharmel-
Sheikh to fielding smug lawyers to take on Anna Hazare. But his biggest blunder was
to throw former Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to the wolves and
bring Mamata Banerjee into the UPA. The PM’s blind hatred for CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat and the latter’s opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal made Manmohan commit a serious error in making a political assessment of an alliance with Mamata.
Manmohan sure is not bothered about the erosion of Congress organisation in its north
Bengal citadel or the migration of its local leaders to Mamata’s fold, but he ought to have known who suited him better, Mamata or Buddadeb.
Left
The latter believed in Manmohanomics, foreign direct investment in industry, privatisation of public sector companies including the Great Eastern Hotel of Kolkata, and was in a hurry to acquire agricultural land and give it to the private
sector. Most important of all, Buddhadeb never accepted Karat’s leadership and was
actively plotting with a key central leader to get Karat removed in the next party Congress.
Yet, Manmohan’s limited political assessment did not allow him to make the right
choice. He backed Mamata, only to expose Buddhadeb for what he really was: an apparatchik who couldn’t even win his assembly constituency; the leader of a moth-eaten party that survived only in the disunity of the Opposition; a chief
minister who squandered the legacy of Operation Barga and took the Bengal countryside
into a downhill spiral, making it resemble the worst villages of Bihar and Jharkhand.
Manmohan and to a large extent Sonia Gandhi should rue their choice, for had they betted on Buddha instead of Mamata, the FDI in retail, pension bill and Lokpal would have been in place and Manmohan’s great dream of a nuclear plant in Haripur would have already been materialised. Enemies often make better bedfellows than competitors, particularly for those without an ideological baggage.
rajesh.ramachandran@mailtoday.in