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Journalism of Courage
It may be an extremely prolonged silly season, but in their own quiet way Indian voters have once again let the nation’s political masters know that they are on trial. Results trickling in of the Uttar Pradesh panchayat election and the Calcutta municipal polls are unambiguously notices of dissatisfaction to the ruling parties in the two states. The regimes of the day will blissfully issue all-is-well declarations only at their own peril.
These are, after all, states that are heading for assembly elections next year. If the Left Front is seeing one red bastion after another in West Bengal slip away to Trinamool Congress-led fronts, in Uttar Pradesh the panchayat results can only reconfirm to the BJP that things are going horribly, horribly wrong in its traditional, and most critical, base. As for the Congress, eager to revive its old claim to being India’s natural party of governance, there are only depressing tidings: not only does it emerge as an also-ran, its dilemma on forging electoral alliances seems as acute as ever.
The local body election results will, no doubt, be subjected to post-mortems by all three political formations, for assembly elections in both Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal are just about a year away. The voter has made it abundantly clear that more than the customary anti-incumbency sentiment is at work. It thus hints at nerve-wracking days and months ahead for the ruling dispensations in the two state, ridden as they are with grave crises of leadership. Jyoti Basu’s evident yearning for retirement, and attendant questions which are being asked about whether he is in any case up to another five years in office, appears to have prematurely robbed the Left Front of its most appealing face. This has made Mamata Banerjee’s campaign against indifferent rule in the state that much easier. Indeed, in a virtual re-run of her Trinamool Congress’s Panskura victory, she has once again set the cat among the pigeons. Not only has she demolished the Left’s tight stranglehold on the Calcutta municipal board after 15 longyears, she has also managed to sow fresh seeds of doubt in the minds of Congress leaders. There are interesting days ahead: Mamata’s success or failure in eliciting support from Congressmen on the Calcutta municipal board could well shape the contours of the political battle for Writer’s Building next year.
If in West Bengal, the ruling party is having trouble finding a suitable enough replacement, in Uttar Pradesh the ruling BJP has clearly not succeeded in placing a suitably inspiring and politically deft man at the helm of affairs. The party is carrying far too much baggage: dubious coalition partners, factions unable to rise above petty bickering and indifferent administration. As a result, the BJP’s carefully carved social coalition in the Uttar Pradesh of the early 1990s is fast unravelling. If more proof than election reverses is required, it lies in the fact that this dispersal is not accruing to the Congress’s benefit but is being attracted by caste-based formations like the Samajwadi Party and the BSP. A social churning is in progress once again.
