By Swapan Dasgupta
Posterity tends to be excessively harsh on losers.
In the coming months, after the present political storm has either subsided or
transformed itself into a fierce cyclone, the Congress will no doubt reflect on
the course of events that led to Mamata Banerjee withdrawing her Trinamool
Congress (TMC) from the UPA-2. Will the Chief Minister of West Bengal continue
to be described as a maverick, unsuitable for the serious business of running
the Government of India? Alternatively, will she be regarded as a canny
politician who, despite her mercurial ways, had her finger firmly on the pulse
of the popular mood?
Amid the clutter of the hour-by-hour developments in
a Delhi that is salivating over the excitement provided by politics, it is
difficult to predict the judgment of history. However, certain things are
clear.
First, Mamata’s withdrawal from the UPA-2 last
Tuesday after a three hour-long meeting with her senior colleagues in Kolkata
was not an impulsive decision. For the past six months or so, the whisper from
knowledgeable political circles in Kolkata strongly suggested that Mamata was
convinced that the UPA-2 had run out of steam and that the Congress was heading
for a massive election defeat in the general election, regardless of its
timing. For Mamata, good politics dictated that she detach herself from the
burden of the Centre’s rising anti-incumbency and move to grab both the
regional party space and the terrain the Left threatened to occupy.
It wasn’t merely the opprobrium attached to being
part of a regime that was burdened by both economic mismanagement and
corruption that moved Mamata. What may have clinched her final decision was the
unease in the state’s large Muslim population over the belief that the Congress
Government in Assam shared the blame for the attacks on Muslim ‘immigrants’ in
Kokrajhar.
The extent to which the events in Assam and coloured
reports of an ethnic cleansing in Myanmar have contributed to Muslim anger all
over India has been insufficiently noticed. It is still too early to be sure
what political form these stirrings will take but Mamata has moved with great
speed to ensure that the Muslim sullenness against the Congress does not rub
off on her. By using both a regional and populist plank to justify her revolt
against the Congress, she may have ensured that the 27 per cent minority
votebank remains attached to her, but without any corresponding risk of playing
the “Muslim card’ overtly. Observers of Bihar politics may find strong traces
of Mamata’s approach in some of the recent moves of Nitish Kumar.
Many commentators mistook the 60 hours gap between
the announcement of her withdrawal and the formal resignation of her ministers
at the Centre as evidence that she was amenable to some last minute persuasion.
The symbolic significance of using the day of Friday prayers to mark her
go-it-alone strategy was not adequately understood.
Secondly, unlike the Left which chose the
ideological issue of anti-Americanism to walk out of the UPA-1 arrangement in
2008, Mamata was careful to choreograph her grandstanding around livelihood
issues. This has put the Congress in a serious quandary. Regardless of how much
the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister, the court economists and Corporate
India see the fuel and cooking gas price hikes and the qualified opening up of
the retail sector to foreign players as indicative of a fierce desire to usher
a new wave of reforms, the political class isn’t convinced that market
economics is electorally saleable. A section of the Congress may have taken
heart that at least Coalgate has been relegated to the inside pages, but this
is a small consolation prize. At the end of the day, the party knows that there
are ominous implications behind the grand show of political unity for the
largely successful Bharat Bandh.
In 2004, a copywriter in an advertising agency
borrowed the term ‘aam aadmi’ for the political use of the Congress. It worked,
beyond the party’s wildest expectations. Unfortunately, in the business of
selling reforms which involve pain, austerity and dislocation, it is the ‘aam
aadmi’ slogan that has become a millstone round the neck of the ruling party.
It is now being unceasingly taunted by what was once its most effective brand
positioning exercise.
Finally, even if Mamata’s exit fails to dislodge a
minority government from power, the TMC has more or less ensured that Manmohan
Singh and P.Chidambaram will no longer be able to muster the political strength
to push through another wave of reforms. Those who enthusiastically cheered the
diesel and cooking price hikes as being bold steps in the daunting battle
against a soaring fiscal deficit and a possible ratings downgrade by
international agencies, may find that the big bang has culminated in the
equally big whimper.
The full-page advertisements issued by the
beleaguered Ashok Gehlot Government of Rajasthan promising generous state
subsidies to mitigate the hardship caused by reforms tells the story of growing
panic. The Congress can’t disown its own Prime Minister and Finance Minister
but it can’t embrace their reformist zeal either. Therefore, since the
political costs of the ‘reforms’ became apparent, the Congress endeavour has
been to shift the burden of subsidies from the Centre to the states.
Deccan Chronicle/ Asian Age, September 21, 2012
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