Wake up Derek, and smell the coffee

The TMC is non-existent in the Hindi heartland, the south and western India, but wants to become the alternative to the BJP

Trinamool Congress’ Derek O’Brien, the former quiz master and the party’s intellectual, recently called on Congress leaders to “wake up and smell the coffee”, hoping that the strong brew would alert them that the ground is fast shifting under their feet.

For the last couple of months, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), led by Mamata Banerjee, goaded by her election strategist Prashant Kishor, has been poaching Congress deadwood in various parts of the country, from Goa to Meghalaya to Tripura. On December 1, in Mumbai, standing next to NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, Mamata said, “Where is the UPA now? It’s history”, a sentiment that was obviously not shared by Pawar. Her hubris and belief in her own charisma was truly astounding. It cannot be dismissed as arrogance, for she has proved beyond doubt her enormous influence over the Bengali voters who, on her word, routed the two most powerful manipulators of the Indian electorate in the present decade, who also enjoy full access to central government machinery and thousands of crores in anonymous donations in their war-chest.

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Surely, Mamata knows better than anyone that winning in Bengal is very different from winning at the national level. Hence, she is tying up with fellow regional parties such as the NCP and the Shiv Sena, though the latter is yet to commit support to her. Let us examine the standing of TMC, region-wise. In UP, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand — the Hindi heartland — the TMC has no presence whatsoever. In the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, again the TMC has no presence. Nor is the TMC present in Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Can a party that hopes to be a national alternative to the BJP be absent in 16 major states of the country? And how can they forget that Congress got 19.5% vote share in the 2019 national elections, to that of 4.1% for the TMC? Does the TMC really have a national standing? Wake up, Derek, and smell the coffee.

Prashant Kishor is right in saying that “the idea and space that the Congress represents is vital for a strong Opposition. But Congress’ leadership is not the divine right of an individual, especially when the party has lost more than 90% of elections in the last 10 years.”

But the question is, Prashant ji, why has no other party been able to capture that idea and space and secure the people’s mandate? How has the BJP, with a perverse idea of religion and false nationalism, captured the mindscape of our country?

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Of course, Congress is a sad mess today. It is nobody’s case that Rahul Gandhi can take on Narendra Modi, nor is the Congress alone sufficient and adequate as an Opposition force. It must tie up alliances at the regional level and those regions include areas dominated by Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav, Uddhav Thackery, Sharad Pawar, M K Stalin, Jagan Reddy, Pinyari Vijayan, and possibly Kejriwal, too. And who will they choose between Mamata and Sonia Gandhi?

Mamata Banerjee, like Sonia Gandhi, is not the leader of any caste group, so she must position herself as a pan-caste leader, with a regional identity that is at once a cultural and linguistic identity – Bengali culture in Bengali land. And that very strength that protected her from the marauding Gujarati duo, limits her appeal. Whatever appeal Sonia Gandhi has is not limited to a caste or region.

A united front must be based on certain foundational consensus. First is that the chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) should not be a contestant for the top job. And Sonia Gandhi has a track record of refusing the crown twice, in 2004 and 2009. Will she ask Rahul Gandhi not to aspire to it if the party were to emerge as the single largest party in 2024? Knowing how hysterical she was about protecting her family from entering politics after the assassinations of her mother-in-law and her husband, she may well prevail on Rahul Gandhi to refuse the crown. And besides, Rahul Gandhi has himself always been a reluctant leader, accustomed to power rather than accountability. He may, in fact, refuse the top job. Who knows who will emerge as the dark horse, as Manmohan Singh did in 2004?

Secondly, the leader of such a united front should have a clear and proven track record of consistently opposing the BJP ideologically and organisationally. Sadly, Mamata Banerjee doesn’t fit the bill here, having been a cabinet minister twice in the BJP cabinet, even after the Gujarat carnage.

Thirdly, with the Sarada and Narada scams behind her and the excessive affection for her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, Mamata has perhaps inherited more scams and infirmities than Sonia Gandhi, whose singular weakness of putra-moh may be stifling the Congress. The voters, indeed, have a devil’s choice.

Since Derek O’Brien comes from the land of revolutionaries, he must be familiar with Chairman Mao. And Mao said, “In politics, you should recognise the primary contradiction or antagonism first, and then the secondary contradictions”. Here, the primary antagonism is between secular and communal forces, and the latter must be defeated first. Instead, if you focus on secondary contradictions, you may win smaller battles, but you will lose the war. He should tell his leader that the Congress is not the main enemy here. And that following the strategy of Prashant Kishor, the spurned ‘Chanakya’ who is out to destroy the Congress, will only end up strengthening the BJP.

Or better still, please advise Mamata Banerjee to contest in Uttar Pradesh and test the waters. There, it must be said, Priyanka Gandhi is at least fighting the big battle, unlike others who are buying up MPs with lost causes.

(The writer is a former Cabinet Secretariat official)