Trinamul Congress: Moving From One Crisis To Another

B Prasant

WHEN a bourgeois political party starts to lose its organisational base and popular support, especially at the same time, the initial result is principally the growth of a client structure, mainly based on family persons.  In other words, the political elite in control of the organisation starts to depend on family connections to implement ways and means of achieving its political goals and/or gets round to developing a network of area-based clients who depend on the largesse of the central political patrons to work towards implementation of the political programme by whatever means available.

The trouble with the Trinamul Congress is when it is in deep crisis and even as its popular base is dwindling rapidly, both in urban and rural areas, it stands bereft of any political programme other than that of berating the Left Front government.  The other, supplemental, plan is to make desperate efforts to try to ensure that the democratically elected state government is ejected by the union government using Articles 355 and 356 of the Indian Constitution, articles that call for the imposition of central rule in the state.

Towards the fructification of these, shall we say, one-and-a-half political goals, the Trinamul Congress did at one point of time enthuse the anti-Left, especially anti-Communists interests and their corporate backers enough to rely on that party to see the quick ouster of the Left Front government (a “CPI-M government” in their hateful outlook). 

The expected friendly noises that the US embassy officials in Kolkata, in particular, made in favour of the Trinamul Congress and its lackeys in the lunatic fringes on the Left and the Right, certainly acted as a booster to the extent that the Trinamul Congress activists started to indulge in rural and urban violence culminating in the mayhem and murder of CPI(M) workers in the countryside during the late 1990’s and the early years of the new century.  The game plan was to draw the attention of a willing union government to interfere with the situation in the state towards dismissal of the state government.

The ploys failed, and abjectly.

A burgeoning and Left-led popular resistance challenged and defeated the ill-gotten attempts by the Trinamul Congress to disrupt the amity and peace and political stability of the state.  The crime the Trinamul Congress committed in providing political space to the religious fundamentalists of the BJP proved largely fruitless.  In election after election, between 2000 and 2003, to the Lok Sabha, the Assembly, the Panchayats, and the urban local bodies, the ranks of the Trinamul Congress hopeful were decimated rapidly by the popular electoral verdict.

Recriminations started to fulminate and old rivalries were rekindled in the Trinamul Congress.  As its anti-Left and anti-Communist popular base started to wither away, the corporate backers did a double take and started to first damn the party with feint praise, and then went on to frankly ridicule its goings on.  The Trinamul Congress and its leadership was no longer the darling of the corporate media having lost their USP of being able to dislodge the Left Front government by means fair and foul.

Following the drubbing the Trinamul Congress received at the Panchayat polls of late, succeeding waves of crises have overwhelmed the party. First, there was a revolt against Trinamul Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee over her decision to crawl back to the fold of the BJP-led central coalition after having come out of the coalition some time back and tied knots of friendship with the Pradesh Congress.  Then there was pungent criticism of Banerjee’s style of functioning (or lack thereof) that, it was alleged, must have caused the enormous debacle of the party at the rural polls.  Currently there is a big infighting going on in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation unit of the Trinamul Congress where the mayor, the guru-turned-follower of Banerjee, and willing political turncoat of the first water, is seeking to shelter behind grandiose building projects to ensure safety from the constant sniping he has had to face after being accused of being a saboteur of Banerjee’s reputation as the ‘only able leader’ of the Trinamul Congress.

Lately, the Trinamul Congress has chosen to boycott the assembly sessions citing the massive defeat in the rural polls they had suffered, which they attribute to ‘silent, scientific, and suppressed rigging’ (whatever those might connote) organised by the Left Front.  The question to ask is: why are the Panchayat members elected on the Trinamul Congress ticket refusing to boycott the three-tier Panchayat bodies anywhere in Bengal?  Has Banerjee’s commands been reduced to the extent that they are seen as tantrums alone?  In the meanwhile, the Trinamul Congress MLA’s, unable to collect the daily attendance allowance from the assembly have lined up to submit ‘arrear bills’ of the past three yeas in the hope that somewhere somebody will have made a clerical error or two.