Didi's national campaign is all about Bengal...for now

The romance of breaching the boundaries stimulates the bold to jump into frays that could lead to disaster. That would be the fate of an unknown Mamata Banerjee, thought the pundits, when in 1984 she dared Somnath Chatterjee in Jadavpur Lok Sabha constituency. Somnath, who became the Speaker of the Lok Sabha later, was already an emerging star of the mighty Left in Bengal, and nobody expected his rival to make a dent in his votes.

But, destiny had other plans for the young, 29-year-old challenger. She defeated Somnath, and turned into a star overnight. She too, however, lost the constituency in 1989, and in 1991 shifted to adjacent Calcutta South constituency. Once again the unpretentious challenger defeated another sitting MP, Biplab Dasgupta, of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI (M)), by a large margin. There was no looking back after that. She held the constituency till 2011, the year she became the chief minister of West Bengal.

Now eight years after that historic victory, is she eyeing another bigger prize that will install in the seat of power in Delhi? Or are her recent manoeuvrers that project her as a national leader – she has spoken of wanting to debate Prime Minister Narendra Modi and solve the Kashmir issue if given the charge, among other things -- more about strengthening her hold locally in the face of a strong challenge from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Bengal, rather than about actually catapulting her to the PM’s seat?

A leader is born

To understand where Mamata Banerjee stands today, it may be worthwhile to recount her spectacular rise.

The path Banerjee trod to success is strewn with blood. Not only were her supporters fired upon by the police or fell victim to the terror sponsored by the cadres, she herself was also attacked, at least once very badly with a stick. It hit her on the head, but failed to flog her spirit. She stood relentless and uncompromising, and in less than a decade the darling of South Calcutta emerged as the ‘didi’ of Bengal.

She formed her own party (Trinamool Congress, popularly TMC) in 1998, and usurped the space of Congress all over Bengal, except in two Muslim dominated districts of Malda and Murshidabad. She joined hands with the BJP, a natural ally for the cause she was espousing: Wiping out the Left. Later, she dumped the Saffron party for the Congress, to win over the Muslims, who constitute one-fourth of the voters in Bengal. When she succeeded in 2011, it overturned 34 years of uninterrupted CPI(M) rule.

New challenges, new strategies

Since then things have taken a dramatic turn. She decimated the Left, and now the BJP, an ‘upstart’ in Bengal politics, has come up as a strong challenger. In the years since she became CM, she played havoc with the Congress and the Left by snatching away their leaders, including MLAs and recently even an influential MP (Mausam Noor of legendary Ghani Khan Chowdhury family of Malda), all along hoping to garner the lion’s share of Muslim and ‘secular’ votes of Bengal. Her welfare programmes are still soaring. The economy has fared much, much better in these years compared to Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s time.

However, certain allegations have stuck, mainly the appeasement of the Muslims and a big chunk of her party being involved in chit fund scams. New worries have been added due to worsening law and order situation. A few small and localised riots have given additional ammunition to her opponents. Her plans to attract the Left vote too have backfired.

For long years, the Left has vitiated the minds of its supporters against her. Now, as the Left has become weak, those people are shifting towards the BJP. Her old lieutenant Mukul Roy, who built the organization of her party, has joined the BJP. Two of her 2014 MPs (Soumitra Khan and Anupam Hazra), and her four-time MLA (Arjun Singh), are in the fray in the 2019 polls as BJP candidates.

National campaign, regional success

The time has changed. The once-young, firebrand opposition leader is now a 64-year-old lady in the saddle. She has to defend her fort now. The political genius, however, made no mistake in realising what was coming. She knew the only way to stave it off was to challenge Narendra Modi all over India. She did so for the last three-four years with the tenacity of a tigress. She raised her voice on all available issues, from demonetisation and GST to post-Pulwama developments. She made best of her efforts to exhort all Opposition parties to unite. But now, nationally, all of it is falling apart. The Congress and the regional parties have locked horns in many states including Bengal.

The TMC leaders think if they can win 30 plus seats from Bengal (out of a total of 42), the party may emerge the largest non-BJP non-Congress party, and that may elevate Mamata to the chair of Prime Minister as the leader of the still-amorphous Federal Front. By propagating this in Bengal, they are trying hard to stoke Bengali sub-nationalism. To make it sound credible in Bengal or in Andhra, Mamata’s campaign everywhere is focused on the point that BJP has no chance of getting more than 100 seats! It may sound absurd, but she knows this is the only way to look invincible before the audience. As mentioned, she has dared Narendra Modi to debate with her and called Rahul Gandhi a kid. She is still trying to breach the boundaries, just like she did 35 years ago.

This time, the boundary though is too far. However, if she still manages to get about two-thirds of the LS seats of Bengal, her position as CM will remain fortified for the 2021 Assembly polls. It may give her a chance to vie for the top post another day.

(Diptendra Raychaudhuri is a Kolkata-based journalist and author of books including, 'A Naxal Story'. He is a deputy editor at the Bengali daily, Aajkal.)