Didi’s revenge

A week really is a long time in politics. Ask Mamata Banerjee. A few days ago she was cowering for a figleaf of dignity as her self-procla...

A week really is a long time in politics. Ask Mamata Banerjee. A few days ago she was cowering for a figleaf of dignity as her self-proclaimed plans of dislodging the Left Front bandwagon unraveled in the West Bengal municipal polls. But now that her Trinamool Congress candidate Bikram Sarkar has wiped the floor with veteran CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta in the Panskura Lok Sabha bye-election, obituaries for her Mahajot will instantly be transformed into reappraisals.

Whichever way one looks at it, Panskura is an extremely symbolic victory for Mamata’s sometimes precarious alliance. One, as already stated, it comes just days after her debacle in the municipal polls. Two, the fact that the site of defeat is Panskura, a seat held seven times in succession by the late CPI leader Gita Mukherjee, will be hugely disheartening for the Left.

Three, the Trinamool-BJP alliance’s discomfiture after their Mahajot was dubbed a thumping Mahajolt will be replaced by fresh rumblings of self-doubt in the Congress camp about going it alone. For, the jhola-toting Union railway minister and her allies are clearly very much in the reckoning.

Story continues below this ad

What the Panskura result has demonstrated, above all, is that old principles of political punditry are a trifle misplaced today. The Trinamool-BJP combine’s strength is the urban electorate, so the municipal elections are a damning verdict against their ability to take on the Left Front in assembly elections less than a year away. So goes conventional wisdom. But, by that logic, how does one interpret Panskura, which is far from urban and where Mukherjee’s untimely death should have conferred a sympathy wave for her party candidate? In times when voters are fickle, when personality scores over ideology, there should be nothing mystifying about this.

The Left Front should know this better than anyone else; indeed, worry lines are in all probability adorning the foreheads of their camp members. For, taller than thou leaders are a commodity in short supply in “proletarian” politics. For instance, Dasgupta himself stood considerably compromised when his party indulged in unseemly shenanigans when he was denied a Rajya Sabha re-nomination by big brother CPI(M). Power, went the message, was certainly not to be subjugated to principle.

These are difficult times for the Left, which has been making up for an eroding support base with the charisma of its leaders. But with Jyoti Basu having once again announced his intent to retire, the communists must wonder how they will compensate for his admittedly waning mystique. In fact, even their old favourite, Mulayam Singh Yadav, has taken to criticising them.

Still, the Left Front has the benefit of the TINA factor. Therein lies the challenge for the haphazardly positioned opposition in West Bengal. Votaries of the Mahajot have made their strategy clear; but in the Congress the Panskura mandate is bound to revive the suddenly silenced cries of “defeat the Left at all costs”, cries the high command in New Delhi can ill afford to acquiesce to. These are tough times for the grand old party, whose candidate forfeited his deposit in the bye-poll.