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Journalism of Courage
Mamata didi or Rahul bhaiya? With many in the INDIA alliance asking if the West Bengal CM and Trinamool Congress (TMC) chairperson should lead the Opposition bloc, differences between these parties have come to fore and raised a few important questions: will it lead to a group functioning within the larger group; could it lead again to the rise of a third force as in the 1990s; will the Congress agree to play second fiddle to the regional parties as it did from 1996 to 1998, or will it decide to go it alone?
The Congress has not responded, except for its senior leader Manickam Tagore labelling Mamata’s offer to lead the alliance — made in the aftermath of the Maharashtra Assembly poll results in which the Opposition was swept away — a “good joke”. Though the INDIA alliance has been in existence for almost two years now, the leadership of the bloc has never been clinched even as it held four meetings in Patna, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi last year, followed by a virtual meeting this January that Banerjee incidentally did not attend.
At the virtual meeting, the group agreed to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge becoming its chairperson after Banerjee shot down the suggestion to make Bihar CM Nitish Kumar the INDIA bloc convener. Even though Kharge was accepted as the chairperson, Congress leaders say the arrangement was neither formalised nor announced. Yet, it was presumed that the Congress was the leader of the INDIA alliance, with the image taking root especially after the party won 99 Lok Sabha constituencies.
However, two factors have suddenly altered the situation. First, the bribery allegations against industrialist Gautam Adani, his indictment in the US, and the Congress’s insistence on raising the issue have divided the Opposition alliance right down the middle.
While the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, has focused primarily on the Adani issue, demanding that it be discussed in Parliament during the Winter Session and enquiries held, the regional parties have broken ranks over the issue, saying this was hampering discussions on other important matter. The Samajwadi Party (SP), Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), and TMC did not join the Congress’s protests when the ruling alliance did not agree to a discussion on Adani.
The second factor that spurred Mamata and the regional satraps to reseize the initiative was the weakening of the Congress. It failed to build on its Lok Sabha successes, leading to defeats in Haryana and Maharashtra that concerned its allies.
By making a bid for the INDIA bloc’s leadership, the regional satraps have expressed their dissatisfaction with the Congress and Gandhi, who is known to take the decisions in the party. They calculate that banding together will also enable them to bargain harder with the Congress, for seats and issues to flag, whenever the moment comes.
As far as they are concerned, there is also greater security in remaining together, “ek hain toh safe hain” if you will. Except for Mamata and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, others such as NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray, and even Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad have been weakened after the recent electoral battles.
Even AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal is feeling vulnerable enough to give tickets to people from other parties. While Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy is not part of the INDIA bloc, a senior leader from his party, V Vijaysai Reddy, has offered his support to Mamata to lead the INDIA bloc. The DMK and the Left are silent and clearly on the Congress’s side.
If the INDIA bloc is serious about battling the BJP in 2029, it has to do better than one virtual meeting a year. At the very least, it has to evolve a common minimum agenda. To have a leaderless INDIA for two long years shows a lack of seriousness about taking on the BJP.
More than any other leader, Mamata has fought back the BJP’s electoral machinery and kept the party at bay in West Bengal. A three-time CM and four-time Union Minister, she has both the political acumen as well as administrative experience to run the alliance.
Many of the regional satraps enjoy a comfort level with her and are rooting for her because she does not threaten them in their respective states, unlike the Congress. These parties grew at the expense of the Congress and a Congress revival now, they fear, will be at their expense. It is not without significance that Pawar, Akhilesh, Kejriwal, Lalu and now even Jammu and Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah have lost no time in backing Mamata. Abdullah recently asked the Congress to justify its leadership role in the alliance “instead of taking it for granted”.
Being a woman may also be an added advantage for Mamata at a time when women are emerging as a powerful political constituency everywhere. She may have problems in the Hindi belt but the primary task at the moment is to put in place the nuts and bolts of an effective mechanism to coordinate between the parties.
As for the Congress, it is not as if a decision on the leadership of the INDIA bloc today is equal to the projection of a prime ministerial face. That will be determined by the arithmetic the 2029 battle throws up. And the momentum for it will pick up only in 2027 after important state elections.
The Congress’s recent defeats have yet again underlined the need for it to knuckle down on rebuilding its organisational machinery, emaciated by decades of neglect. This requires hard, unglamorous, painstaking work that the Congress is unused to. Unlike the BJP, which is quick to course-correct in the face of a defeat, the Congress gets demoralised quickly.
Whoever takes on the role of leading INDIA will be wearing a crown of thorns. It has to transform from a loose entity to an effective electoral alliance that can come up with ideas that appeal.
If given the opportunity, can Mamata enable INDIA to do what V P Singh did in 1989? In 28 months, he managed to create a national alternative to the then-dominant Congress by bringing together centrist and regional forces, supported by the Left and the Right despite all their differences. At the ground level, he put in place one-on-one contests in UP against the Congress in all but four constituencies. That was the key to his success in replacing the Congress.
(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 11 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide)
