Why CPI(M) is cosying up to Congress in West Bengal
Social gatherings, for instance wedding receptions, or for that matter birthday parties and memorial prayer services, in Lutyens' Delhi are invariably power shows meant to demonstrate the clout of the host.
The higher the number of politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, fixers and Bollywood stars who put in a fleeting appearance before moving on to the next show, the greater the clout of the host.
Assessment
Hence, there is little social chit-chat among the guests, apart from exchanging unfelt pleasantries. The arrivistes chase the rich and famous for a selfie, politicians and fixers use the crowd cover to fix deals, journalists strain their ears to pick up chatter or simply chat up those in the know, hoping to grab a story. All the while tens of scores of eyes shiftily dart around, trying to find a pretty face to pose with, a power daddy to cut a deal, a politician game for a gossip session.
It was at one such gathering, ostensibly a wedding reception where the bride and the groom stood with plastic smiles on a red velvet-draped stage while the who's who of India's movers and shakers hugged and air-kissed each other in a swirling mass of designer apparel, that I ran into an old friend, once a student leader and now a CPI(M) MP.
Together we stood out like a pair of sore thumbs in our shabby clothes and scuffed shoes.
So we fled to a corner of the sprawling lawn, and had a delightful adda over piping hot kebabs served by liveried waiters who would look suspiciously at us before proffering the platter. Clearly we did not belong, but neither did we care.
To cut a long story short, he gave me a no-frills assessment of the coming Assembly election in West Bengal. The essence of what he told me can be summed up in one sentence: On its own, the Left did not have a ghost of a chance to win the election but if the Congress were not to join hands with the Trinamool Congress, the result could be disastrous for chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
The CPI(M)'s own assessment is that the TMC's assured vote-share at the moment hovers around 35 to 37 per cent. The bulk of this support comes from the state's Muslim voters who, after a free run for five years with no attempt by the administration to halt the rising tide of Islamism, are unlikely to break with Mamata. A third of West Bengal's voters are Muslims; in several constituencies they are way above the 33 per cent mark.
If the CPI(M) MP's assessment is to be believed, the Hindu voter has begun to drift away from the TMC: how far is a question to which he had no answer.
Alliance
To win the election Mamata needs an additional 10-12 per cent votes, and that could be ensured if the Congress were to ally with the TMC. In 2011, they contested the Assembly election as allies, sweeping the polls with 48.54 per cent vote-share.
The TMC won 184 seats, the Congress 42. The Left, with 41.12 per cent vote share, won 62 seats. In the Lok Sabha election of 2014, there was no TMC-Congress alliance. With 39 per cent vote-share, the TMC won 34 seats. The Left, with 29 per cent vote share, got two seats. A resurgent BJP's 16 per cent vote-share did the Left in.
It is anybody's guess as to where the BJP stands in West Bengal today. Between the summer of 2014 and that of 2016, the Modi wave has receded, though Narendra Modi's popularity ratings could still be higher than others.
In West Bengal, a listless state BJP leadership, widely perceived as "compromised", has clearly failed to maintain the surge of 2014, leave alone add to it. Local elections have seen the party decimated, including in Asansol, one of the two constituencies where the BJP won in 2014.
The Asansol MP, a minister in the Modi government, has been spotted singing at TMC events.
If the BJP were to return to its pre-2014 vote-share, the 2011 election would become the benchmark for projecting 2016 results. In any event Assembly polls follow a trajectory of their own, as Bihar (and before that Delhi) has shown. It is in this context that weaning the Congress away from the TMC becomes important for the CPI(M).
This would explain Mohammed Salim, MP and Politburo member, calling on the Congress to go with the Left. That was further elaborated by former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee: "Everyone has to stand up to the Trinamool. We are now asking the Congress too... Which side are you on?"
Bankruptcy
The answer cannot be an easy one. The Congress will be fighting the Left in Kerala where too, Assembly election is due this year. Foes in Kerala cannot be allies in West Bengal.
That's a no-brainer. What the Marxists are really appealing for is that the Congress should not join hands with the TMC. Meanwhile, Mamata, who dumped the Congress soon after the 2011 election and gambled on a four-way vote split in 2014, has initiated a rapprochement with the Congress. Her personal relations with Congress president Sonia Gandhi are excellent. So are relations between Sonia Gandhi and CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury. What happens next is Rahul Gandhi's guess.
Politics is a strange beast that devoured ideology long ago. Why else would the CPI(M) be knocking at the door of its "Enemy Number One" as a supplicant? In 1998 the CPI(M) had grandly declared: "The Congress party has degenerated both politically and organisationally. It is a party in decline." The wheel turned half circle when the CPI(M) collaborated with the Congress during the UPA-I years.
It has now turned full circle with an ideologically-bankrupt party pathetically appealing for help from a politically-bankrupt party. Politics is also a multiple-trick circus. We may yet witness two parties in terminal decline winning a three-legged race in West Bengal. After Bihar, everything is possible.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)