Great expectations

The immediate factor, to which it is attributed, is the impressive victory of a Trinamool Congress candidate in the latest round of Rajya ...

The immediate factor, to which it is attributed, is the impressive victory of a Trinamool Congress candidate in the latest round of Rajya Sabha elections. The margin of the victory, revealing cross-voting by at least 25 Congress legislators of West Bengal, is what is reported to have prompted Mamata Banerjee8217;s proposal for a maha alliance8217; against the CPIM in the state. On the face of it, this may appear undue optimism, unwarranted by the outcome of just a single, indirect election to the Upper House. But, there may be at least two other factors behind the hope of forging an effective anti-Marxist front.

An unacknowledged source of the new-found confidence may be the CPIM8217;s announcement that Jyoti Basu won8217;t contest the next Assembly elections due next year. No one has said that the end of the Basu decades will spell the speedy decline and fall of the Left Front regime, but there would seem to be no mistaking such an expectation in the call for the maha alliance8217;. The imminent departure from the scene of the chief minister is expected to mark the political arrival of his inveterate adversary. Some people see signs of the envisioned alliance expanding beyond a reunified Congress-Tr- inamool camp. This is expected to be joined not only by the Bharatiya Janata Party but even by quot;some left progressive forcesquot;. The allusion may sound less than cryptic to Left-watchers after the state CPIM8217;s recent moves to discipline leading dissenters and the CPI8217;s brief revolt against the Big Brother in the Left Front.

All this, however, may still not spell a mega alliance8217; ready to replace the Marxist-led front by next March. The Congress family reunion, in the first place, has yet to take place. PCC president A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhury has, of course, hastened to welcome the move, but vice-president Saugata Roy has come out stridently against a Trinamool still tainted by a tie-up with the BJP. The Congress has, certainly, had no qualms about tacit understanding and covert compacts with the BJP against the CPIM-led Left Democratic Front in Kerala, but an open alliance may be a different matter.

The Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party have, in fact, forged an utterly implausible alliance in Maharashtra only on a common anti-BJP-Shiv Sena ground. It may take a while to work out the logic of the maha alliance8217; line, though nothing must be put past the ingenuity of politicians choosing between pretence to principles and the possible prospect of power. As for the chances of the maha alliance8217; luring significant sections away from within the Left Front, these must be considered slender and remote.The personality factor does not promise instant success for the proposed alliance, either. True, Mamata Banerjee is a household name in much of West Bengal, and has been a colourful campaigner against the CPIM.

A crowd-puller and a vote-catcher as she is, the Trinamool leader is unlikely to be perceived as a substitute as yet for Basu. It would be ludicrous, anyway, to see his charisma as the sole explanation for the Left Front rule8217;s longevity. The maha alliance8217; of Mamata8217;s dreams will have to measure its strength against the organised mass base of the Marxist-led camp built over long years.