Railway Budget that makes Mamata Banerjee see red

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There’s something about the railway budget that makes Mamata Banerjee see red! Or should that be any of the portfolios that she has held before in her previous avatars as the Congress’ rising star and thereafter, the NDA’s nightmare ally — be it sports, youth affairs, women and child development.

Few remember that as far back as February 1997, Mamata threw her shawl at then railway minister Ram Vilas Paswan when he was presenting the railway budget because he had ignored West Bengal.

The black shawl had surfaced before — tied like a noose around her neck at a rally in Kolkata, where she threatened to hang herself! And in a further connection to necks, she had even launched herself at the hapless Amar Singh, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck while inside parliament.

Mamata’s politics of dissent is legendary. But while West Bengal’s celebrated firebrand may have won her spurs running interference with the Left in Bengal’s backyard — egged on for some time by the Congress — the spitfire populist’s espousal of the same brand of politics threatens to derail — by accident or design — her already strained relationship with UPA-II. Which, given the calculated snubs she has delivered to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, show how fast the alliance is close to unravelling.

For Mamata, all politics is local. Inured to oppose, she has disposed of most reforms that the UPA II has proposed. And that would be the FDI, the petroleum price hike and now, of course, the two paise hike in rail fares which has tested and strained Congress-Trinamul ties to breaking point in Budget week.

This is a politician who revels in the politics of grievance and opposition, whose much vaunted slogan of ‘poriborton’ as her Trinamul government marks 306 days in power, may now be more than just about dislodging the Reds. She could be widening it to weaken the Congress-led UPA at the Centre, with many of the firm belief that Mamata is a Trojan horse in the UPA, trying to force a mid-term poll.

The government’s weak showing in recent assembly polls has seen Mamata with 19 MPs in parliament go for broke in the belief, as a senior Trinamul functionary pointed out, “a strong Congress at the Centre is bad news for Trinamul in West Bengal.”

Her hounding of her own minister, Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi, whom she believes is “playing the Congress game,” and has acted against her express wishes, is of a piece with the belief that given an opportunity, the Congress will try to break her party in Bengal, even as the partnership is tested in the state over backing for a Congress nominee for the Rajya Sabha.

In one of her recent public meetings, she declared: “In West Bengal, the CPI(M) and the Congress are working together. Our partymen are being attacked by them.”

But it is in her deliberate wooing of a possible Third Front alliance, as in the Akalis and the Samajwadi party by sending high profile representatives to the swearing-in in Chandigarh and Lucknow, while rattling the Congress cage over NCTC and the rail hikes that her real intent can be seen.

That neither Mulayam Singh Yadav nor his son Akhilesh (UP chief minister) who are close to CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat pay heed is interesting. More so, after the Samajwadi Party decided to give one of its Rajya Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh to Kiranmoy Nanda, a former Left Front minister from West Bengal who has close links with Mulayam Singh. The SP will get six seats in the Rajya Sabha. Clearly, Ms Banerjee cannot ignore SP support, if she wants to stitch up a Third Front.

Sensing that Congress could also swing towards the Left, if needed, she is likely to contest the forthcoming panchayat polls on her own.

“The game is on. And Mamata knows, she cannot allow Congress to grow powerful at the national level. The fact remains, Trinamul is just a breakaway faction of Congress. Trinamul leaders could swtich allegiance to Congress anytime in the blink of an eyelid,” a senior Trinamul functionary pointed out.

Couple that with the brinkmanship of the two main Dravidian parties, the DMK and the AIADMK, who are insisting on India taking a tough stand at the Geneva UNHCR meet on March 23, when a report will be tabled on the Sri Lankan Army’s alleged human rights violations against an unarmed populace during the death throes of the Tamil Tigers, and you can see why the UPA at the Centre is in overdrive.

Insiders say both Tamil parties are primarily addressing a domestic audience, to revive their sagging political fortunes or as in the case of the ruling party, divert attention from its own running of affairs.

The DMK, lying low ever since its crushing defeat in last year’s assembly polls, has a convenient issue through which it could retrieve lost political ground in the full knowledge that even if the party were to walk out of the coalition, the government has the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for support.

Hence, the veiled threats. Unconfirmed reports, strongly denied by the Congress, say that the UP’s most successful comeback man Mulayam Singh Yadav is the Congress’ counter to Mamatadi and the DMK – who cannot afford to walk out, given that their leader Kanimozhi still faces charges in the 2G scam.

Mamata, eternally in the opposition, even when in government, is a sign of the times as power shifts inexorably, away from Delhi to the regional satraps.