Trinamul Congress founder-chief Mamata Banerjee has had little difficulty demonstrating to the demoralised leaders of the Left Front that their day is done. This is the key lesson from the recent municipal elections in West Bengal. It is also now more than evident that Trinamul, which is a crucial ally of the Congress in the UPA at the Centre, will dictate partnership terms to the older but enfeebled party in the state when the Assembly elections are called next year. Ms Banerjee’s party is on a roll. In 2008 it had netted handsome dividends in the panchayat polls in the state and last May stunned the Left Front in the election for Parliament. In general, the story is both of the sharp decline of the CPI(M)-led Left, and of Trinamul’s steep rise. There is a caveat here, however. That rise is not commensurate with the rate of the Left’s fall in the municipal wards across West Bengal.
When Ms Banerjee pooled efforts with the Congress in last year’s Lok Sabha polls, it was able to throw the Left into the Hooghly. In the municipal election earlier this week, the UPA partners fought separately. Trinamul still did very well indeed but could not replicate the magic of its Lok Sabha performance when it won nearly half the Parliament seats in the state. Indeed, it could capture barely a third of the municipalities, although it took the prestigious Kolkata Municipal Corporation like a tidal wave. This would suggest that the Left parties are holding out for dear life in several districts, although they have taken a battering and indeed have surrendered some of their strongholds to Trinamul. More than anything else, the municipal polls, coming on the heels of the Lok Sabha and panchayat elections, indicate that the hegemony of the Left in the state has been badly dented after their 33-year-old rule, although they are holding on in terms of voting numbers in several areas. This casts the Left in poor light. It is to be seen if Trinamul and Congress together are able to seize the hegemony and the imagination of the people in the way that the Left had once done. This is not likely to be easy, given Ms Banerjee’s innately volatile temperament. Let’s face it, she is no Jyoti Basu or Bidhan Chandra Roy. The Trinamul Congress will have to employ responsibility and sobriety and the Congress will be required to abjure peevishness. They will have to enter the Assembly election fray without making a spectacle of themselves, and at all costs avoid the Bihar experience when Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD and the Congress made each other look boorish on the issue of seat distribution for the 2009 Lok Sabha election.
Ms Banerjee’s call for a “mahajot” (grand alliance) against the Left Front betrays a nervousness that she can afford to shed. Besides, it appears to be a false move, politically. If the call implies an invitation to the state BJP to join her front to take on the CPI(M) and its allies, Trinamul might not be expected to draw in the vote of the minorities in sufficiently large numbers. That could make it anybody’s game in the Assembly election. In any case, voters are expected to evaluate how Trinamul and Congress get on with one another and whether or not they show each other respect, as that might indicate whether or not they will be able to execute policy if they came to power together in Writers’ Buildings. Politically, Ms Banerjee cannot hurt herself by demanding Assembly elections before schedule even though there is a whole year to go. However, it might be counter-productive for her to unleash violent mobs on the streets in support of her strident demand. Political restraint is the need of the hour.