Look, there’s Mahajot

That may seem rather a surprising conclusion to reach given the conventional wisdom in the media that Mamata Banerjee and her troops suffered a setback in the municipal elections. After all, is it not a fact that the combined forces of the Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party could win no more than seven of the 78 municipalities in West Bengal? And is it not the case that Sonia Gandhi succeeded in scuppering the proposed Mahajot, to the extent of forcing a Congressman to contest in Panskura?

It might be said of the truth, as of an iceberg, that what appears on the surface is only 10 per cent of the whole. What exactly are the facts in the case?

Let us go back five years, and see how all the parties concerned fared when the municipal elections were last held. In 1995, the Left Front won 45 municipalities out of the 78; today, they have only 32. In 1995, the Congress (I) had 32; today, the party controls only 13.

In other words, the Left Front has lost control of 13 local bodies and the Congress (I) has lost 19. Is this what they define as victory?

So where have all those municipalities gone? If the Congress (I) and the Left Front have lost 32, and the Trinamool Congress-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance could win only seven, who controls the 25 missing’ municipalities?This is where it begins to get interesting. Irrespective of what Sonia Gandhi says and does, an informal Mahajot is beginning to take shape on the ground. In 17 municipalities, this undeclared alliance has be-aten the combined for- ces of the Left Front. In eight others, this Mahajot and the Left Front are equally matched, and it may come down to wooing independents. (The last municipality, in case anyone is keeping count, went to the Gorkha National Liberation Front, in both 1995 and 2000).

Pause a moment and think about this: we are talking about West Bengal, a state that has been the bastion of the Left Front since 1977. Kerala may have swung between the Left Front and the Congress (I), but West Bengal has never wavered. (It would be more accurate to say that it has never been permitted to waver; incidents of electoral malpractice were captured on camera in the Lok Sabha polls, but nobody followed up on the story.)Four years ago, the CPM won a majority in the West Bengal Assembly; it could, at a pinch, rule without the aid of the smaller parties in the Left Front. Today, even the combined forces of the Left Front cannot claim a victory winning 32 out of the 78 is not enough to claim victory.

Why has this happened? I can only speculate possibly because of voter disaffection becoming apparent thanks to (relatively) ho-nest polls, possibly because the virus of dissidence has infected the CPM as well. Seven of the 13 municipalities lost by the Left Front fall in the North 24 Parganas district. This area is home to the rebellious CPM leader Subhas Chakraborty who reputedly reached a tacit understanding’ with Mamata Banerjee. Need one say more?

To digress a little, I understand that some elements in the Congress (I) are cock-a-hoop about becoming the major Opposition in West Bengal. That is as ephemeral a claim as any made by the Marxists. Sonia Gandhi’s party has lost 19 local bodies from its tally of 1995. Remember however that there are 17 municipalities where the undeclared Mahajot has more seats than the Left Front; to enjoy power in those seats, Congressmen have no choice but to join hands with the Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is no less relevant to note that in 14 of them the Trinamul Congress-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance outnumbers the Congress tally.

The simple fact is that the Mahajot is becoming a ground reality irrespective of what the powers-that-would-be at 10, Janpath think. And some Congress leaders such as A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chaudhary and Somen Mitra are honest enough to admit it. It is this evolving scenario that scares the Left Front.

In desperation, the leaders of the CPM have resorted to the old imperial principle of divide and rule’. (That isn’t surprising; the Communists and the British were buddies-in-arms in 1942.) In West Bengal, the Left Front’s aim is to drive a wedge in the Mahajot. In Kerala, the effort is to woo the Muslim League away from the Congress (I), a move supported by both Chief Minister E. K. Nayanar and his probable successor, Pinarai Vijayan. (Nayanar has such a glorious record that his own party isn’t prepared to project him as its candidate for Chief Minister in the Assembly polls due next year!)There is nothing wrong in that of course; forming new alliances at somebody else’s expense is part of the game. Nor can one blame the Muslim Lea-gue for leaving a sinking ship. But note that the mighty Left Front, after 23 years of domination in Calcutta, is forced to fall back on negative tactics.

And what if divide and rule’ fails? Well, then the CPM turns from British gurus to one across the border of West Bengal. Just as Laloo Prasad Yadav objects to innovations such as electronic voting machines and photo-identity cards, so does the Left. How else can you explain the fact that Kerala, the most literate state in India, is far from completing the process of making photo-identity cards?