Maha farce

The way pre-election politics is moving in West Bengal, two things are clear already. The conscientious and determined officer of the Election Commission will serve up a formidable challenge to the entrenched Left Front when the poll comes. And, the Left Front may have more to fear from the EC than from any 8212; or even all 8212; parties of the Opposition. The reasons are on the wall. The EC has been visibly on the job of weeding out names of bogus voters from the voters8217; lists, with K.J. Rao conducting a house-to-house check and the Commission announcing its intention to deploy for the first time a software programme designed to detect names that occur more than once in the state electoral rolls. But spare a glance for Her Majesty8217;s Opposition. Here, the old idea of Mahajot has returned amid the same confusions.

Mahajot always had the math right. To a large extent, Left Front dominance in West Bengal is underwritten by the logic of the first past the post system and a disunited opposition. Add up the vote percentages of the Trinamool, Congress and BJP 8212; and the Left Front has a real fight on its plate. But this is easier said than done. Given their disparate constituencies, the votes may not add up quite so neatly for Congress plus BJP. It can, arguably, still be done, but it requires at the very least a degree of honesty about the coupling from parties to voters that neither party looks capable of. In the Congress, for instance, the idea has again set off familiar tensions between central leadership and local unit. What will probably happen again, therefore, is this: Mahajot will be quietly replaced by a set of clandestine understandings between the three main parties that will again fail to convincingly rally the disaffected Left Front vote in the polls.

It8217;s ungainly, this Mahajot, in the absence of a minimal degree of self-conscious commitment by its members. It is so futile, in the absence of an outstanding leader or vision that can paper over its many cracks 8212; Mamata Banerjee lacks the credibility and her party lacks the substance to make the grade. As the wrangling continues in West Bengal, therefore, Buddha can keep smiling.