West Bengal: The Political War Hots Up
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2020-12-19 01:35:07
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
Despite the brave front being put up by the Trinamool Congress, it is obvious that the party is rattled by the spate of resignations from MLAs. Within 24 hours, 4 of them have resigned from their seats. All of them are likely to join the BJP. It started with the Midnapore district strongman Suvendhu Adhikari. Since he was showing signs of rebellion for a long time and since he was a frontline leader, the others were waiting for a cue from him. They are now following his trail.
This seems to be the tip of the iceberg. It seems that the suppressed anger - mainly against the promotion of Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee at the cost of those leaders who have been with the party since its inception and the way political strategist Prashant Kishore has taken over the party apparatus in the run up to the state polls next year - will now manifest itself in many resignations from leaders in various districts.
But this has become the feature of almost all political parties in India. The Congress has always been a family firm. The Samajvadi Party in UP, Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar, DMK in Tamil Nadu, Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and the Biju Janata Dal in Odisha have all followed the same policy of promoting the family. Mamata Banerjee has just followed the trend. It seems in politics in India, blood runs thicker than comradeship.
But the difference lies in the struggle faced by the indomitable lady and the comrades who stood by her in those times. They will obviously feel let down when someone who was not even in the picture when they were plotting the downfall of the Left Front and who was not even heard of when they were standing beside Mamata Banerjee during her many dharnas against the tyranny of the Communists. They think that Abhishek Banerjee has had everything handed to him on a platter and is now telling them how to run the show in tandem with Prashant Kishore. Some of them are accepting it as Mamata has asked them to. But others who feel they are being sidelined will leave the party, as they have already started doing.
But does the TMC have an option? Bombarded from all sides by the BJP and seeing the saffron party make inroads in the state, the party has realized that old responses will not work. Hence, it has appointed Kishore as advisor. Since Kishore has an admirable track record (Mahagathbandhan in Bihar, Jagan Reddy in Telangana), and since his style of working is different, once the party decided to hire him they have decided to go the whole hog. Kishore's efforts are paying off. There has been a perceptible change in Mamata Banerjee's image. The government has seen to have become more responsive to the people. There have been many people-centric schemes that have been launched, like the Duare Sarkar (or the government at your door) whereby the benefits of government schemes are being delivered to the people almost at their doorstep.
It remains to be seen how the TMC is able to counter the BJP's blatantly divisive campaign with its governance record. The BJP has also unleashed all weapons, including browbeating the bureaucracy and creating divisions in the TMC, to win in West Bengal. One only hopes that all this does not translate into increasing violence (political violence has always been a fact of life in the state) in the 5 months or so that remain before elections are held in the state.
