In Trinamool Congress implosion, a broader warning

Sometimes, the numbers don’t tell the story. Even after its defeat at the hands of the BJP in the West Bengal assembly elections last month, the Trinamool Congress’s voteshare stands at a respectable 40.80 per cent. It still has 80 legislators in the state assembly and 29 MPs in the Lok Sabha, making it the fourth-largest party in Parliament. In defeat, though, the party seems to be facing an existential crisis in both Kolkata and Delhi.

An exodus of leaders to the BJP from other parties, before and after elections, has been seen across states. In fact, some of the BJP’s most prominent regional leaders — be it Suvendu Adhikari in West Bengal or Himanta Biswa Sarma in Assam — have migrated from other parties. Amid the long decline of Congress, regional parties had more space to grow, and the opportunity to provide a bulwark against the flattening of the political landscape under the electoral juggernaut of the BJP. They have, by and large, fallen short of doing so. Parties have split, and rebel factions have joined the NDA, as with the Shiv Sena and NCP in Maharashtra. The Opposition has a point when it says that constitutional offices such as the Speaker and central investigative agencies have appeared to bend to the will of an aggressive BJP that wants to dominate all spaces. But the lament about the ruling party’s voracious political appetite elides more fundamental questions. Why are some of India’s most prominent regional parties such easy prey? Out of power, why can’t Banerjee keep her flock together?

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The BJP is now the centrepiece of an era of renewed one-party dominance, but regional forces have not stepped up to meet the challenges. The first problem is structural. Congress offshoots like the TMC and NCP are mass parties, without a formal cadre base. In West Bengal, the TMC merely occupied the Left’s structures and relied on state patronage and power as the primary instruments of building political loyalty. The second, related factor is the oft-repeated charge of “dynastic politics”. From Maharashtra to Kashmir, Tamil Nadu to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, parties that were once built around social movements and progressive ideologies narrowed into family firms. Having the leadership of a party reserved for members of the first family tells talented, ambitious politicians that they must look elsewhere for upward mobility. Finally, a question opposition parties have struggled to answer with conviction since 2014: What do you stand for? Welfarism is not distinctive, secularism has a scarred history, and cries of Constitution-in-danger don’t strike sparks on the ground. Until they can answer these questions, the TMC, and other parties like it, may end up as spectators to their own shrinking.