Didi in high dudgeon

Like Jayalalitha's, Mamata Banerjee's politics is predicated on its unpredictability. This is what makes the behaviour of both these high pr...

Like Jayalalitha8217;s, Mamata Banerjee8217;s politics is predicated on its unpredictability. This is what makes the behaviour of both these high priestesses of contemporary coalition politics seem so similar. The similarity doesn8217;t end here. Both have built for themselves a strong base of supporters who repose blind trust in their patron saints, regardless of what they do or say.

Both women have ambitions to come to power in their respective states and know that the only way to do so in these days when regional forces hold the key to the future, is to influence politics at the Centre. Both of them have also fashioned for themselves formidable political enemies 8212; what the DMK is for Jayalalitha, the CPIM is for Mamata. Since, apart from a healthy sense of self-worth, neither woman is coloured by any deep ideological persuasion, politics for them is constantly being reinvented to suit the occasion.

Mamata is today in a prodigiously inventive phase. Sensing the popular disquiet over the Vajpayee government8217;shandling of the issue of rising prices, and aware that the CPIM can make considerable capital out of it, she quickly upped the ante and resigned from the coordination committee of the BJP-led coalition. This gives her the licence to make the rather outrageous claim that it was only after her resignation from the committee that the Centre took steps to bring the prices down, something that should prove politically useful in future electoral battles. Her use of the Ayodhya card is also driven by similar compulsions.

Commemorating December 6 as a black day is a useful mechanism to help distance her from the BJP, even as it contributes towards rehabilitating her with Muslim voters back home. But as she makes these moves, she is also careful to periodically give a clean chit to the Prime Minister. At a press conference yesterday, she described Atal Behari Vajpayee as a 8220;good man who has become victim of circumstances8221;. These attempts to blow hot and cold must remind the BJP leadership of those stormy summerdays when Jayalalitha kept them in perpetual fear of political oblivion.

But the BJP can derive some satisfaction from the fact that their temperamental partner from Calcutta has, at least for the moment, limited options. Mamata8217;s move to put together a rag-tag army of former Congress members 8212; some of them like UP8217;s Naresh Agarwal conspicuously lacking in credibility 8212; and christen it as the 8220;original Congress8221; is brave but destined to prove ineffectual.

The unexpected warmth that the Sonia Congress has suddenly displayed towards the CPIM cannot but be a disquieting development for Didi, who has all through her political career carried dark suspicions of her parent party doing a secret deal with her detractors 8212; after all in the past she has often likened local Congress leaders to a water melon, green on the outside and red inside. Her statement yesterday that the Congress has entered into a 8220;joint venture8221; with the CPIM reveals this familiar paranoia. Given the bipartisan nature of Indianpolitics, with the Congress arraigned against the BJP, Didi cannot as of now afford to burn her boats with the ruling coalition.