Wednesday, November 13, 2024
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No erosion in prime support base

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Method in Mamata’s ‘madness’

By Nitya Chakraborty

 

Mamata Banerjee is a maverick. She is unpredictable, she is emotional, she lacks manners and sophistication. She is not savvy with the chattering Bengalee middle class bhadralok. But she has her own identity and there is a method in her so called madness. Mamata’s Trinamool Congress is the single largest ally of the UPA-2 Government with 19 seats in the Lok Sabha but she spurned the invitation for the dinner party at the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s house on May 22 on the occasion of the third anniversary of the UPA-2 Government and sent her Party’s junior MPs to represent Trinamool. She says that Trinamool Congress will go by UPA choice on Presidential nominee and the Congress should officially mention its candidate. But at the same time, she informs her advance choice of Meira Kumar, Gopal Krishna Gandhi and Abdul Kalam ruling out Pranab Mukherjee from her preferences.

UPA-2 leadership is having a tough time in dealing with Mamata and they seem to have no clue in keeping her in good humour on a permanent basis. That way, the Congress response has also been adhoc on the basis of Mamata blowing hot and cold. In order to understand Mamata and her Trinamool Congress, some basic facts about Bengal politics have to be kept in mind and then one can go into the future political game plan of Mamata. Mamata has just completed one year in office. The West Bengal assembly results were announced on May 13, 2011 and she took oath as Chief Minister on May 20, 2011. She has come out with official publication on her government’s achievements in the last one year and she has given the performance marks herself- some times 90 out of 100. The media and the educated middle class are making fun about such achievements, but Mamata has bulls eye on her target beneficiaries. They are the tribals, the Muslims and the farmers, especially the poor farmers. There has been some advance in dealing with some of the basic issues connected to farming. The farm credits are being made more available to the farmers in an easier manner and this is having its impact on the rural poor who are the supporting base of Mamata. The Muslims, who constitute 26 per cent of the population, are getting lot of facilities which were promised earlier but were not implemented.

An analysis of the performance of the Mamata Government will show that in a deliberate plan to erode the base of the CPI-M, she has given focus on the five districts in South Bengal where the CPI-M and the Left got some seats in the last elections. The Left has got a total of only 61 seats out of 294 seats and the CPI-M’s share is 39. Mamata’s target is to bring down the CPI-M seats to an abysmally low level in both the next assembly and the Lok Sabha elections. Out of the 42 seats in Lok Sabha from Bengal,, the Left Front got 15 seats in 2009 out of which CPI-M’s share was 9.Mamata is working with vengeance in these nine constituencies to ensure that the CPI-M fails to maintain its strength in the next elections. She is chalking out the government programmes to take away whatever support base the CPI-M has still there in those areas having their Lok Sabha members.

Similarly, Mamata is following a blow hot blow cold policy to the Congress both in the state and the centre. At the state level, the Congress has got 6 seats in the Lok Sabha out of 15 seats, the Party contested in the 2009 elections. Mamata wants to contest in more seats in the next Lok Sabha elections and accordingly she has organized the Trinamool organization at the base level in the nine seats which the Congress contested and lost last time. The strategy is carrot and stick. The weak and self seeking Congress supporters are being enticed to leave the Congress while the militants among the Congress workers are being terrorized. The state Congress leadership is too weak to withstand the onslaught of Mamata at the moment. At base level, Trinamool is getting strengthened with the entry of the Congress workers.

As regards the relationship with the UPA-2 and the Congress Party, Mamata has her plans which are meant to weaken the Congress and make it more dependent on Trinamool. Mamata does not mind early Lok Sabha elections, possibly in 2013. She is confident that her strength will substantially go up from Bengal reducing the Left strength further and she will be in a position to influence the developments at the centre more effectively. She will not work for instability as that does not suit her plans for rejuvenation of Bengal’s economy. She is firm on that and the Congress’s final response to her demand for three year moratorium on debts, will determine her further course of action in relation to the centre.

At the moment, her target is two fold- to fight the Left in its own base by projecting her government as more poor friendly compared to the Left and delinking from the central policies which are not pro people thereby giving the impression that Trinamool is not a party to the anti people policies of the Congress led centre.

So far so good for Mamata. There is no real threat to her power at the moment in the state and she will continue to enjoy her importance in the national politics. But the real problem is that Trinamool is only Mamata. Nobody has any guts to point out if she commits any mistake. She thinks that she knows everything from singing to painting to treating patients apart from running administration single-handedly. Her authoritarian streak is evident on a number of times. This has not adversely affected her real support base as of now, but the situation may turn different in later years. In politics, five years is too long a period. (IPA Service)

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