Political
Diary
New
Delhi, 4 May 2021
Regional Satraps Rise
WINNER TAKES ALL!
By Poonam I Kaushish
At
the end, it was all about feel good. A two month long, eight phase grueling
election which culminated in anointing Trinimool’s Mamata as Chief Minister
again. A 66-year old Bengal tigress who rewrote the rules of the political game
for the third time wining in a tough gladiatorial contest against Prime
Minister Modi and became a cause célèbre.
Mamata
showed remarkable political resilience with her clarion call of Khela Hobe, fully living up to her
reputation of being a redoubtable street fighter unafraid of taking on any
challenger. With her plastered foot,
on a wheelchair she single-handedly stalled the BJP juggernaut by dubbing it ‘bohiragoto’ (outsider) out to demolish the
home-grown beti. Possibly Modi's
mocking catcalls of ‘Didi-o-Didi’ also did not go down well with the hoi polloi culminating in its Khela
Sheesh.
True, for the BJP, Bengal was tough terrain
given its 27% Muslim electorate, alongside, its excessive incantation of Jai Shri Ram seems to have had a jarring
effect in a State where Durga and Kali are revered. That it catapulted from
three seats in 2016 to becoming the principal opposition with 77 MLAs is no
mean achievement,
notwithstanding disappointment of
not reaching the 200 seats ambitious target.
The State is now bipolar as the Left-led Third
Front comprising Congress and ISF banked heavily on small-time
cleric Abbas Siddique to draw away Muslim votes from Trinamool, came a cropper resulting in its total
route.
Expectedly, the BJP retained Assam, won Puducherry,
lost its lone seat in Kerala and was aligned with losers AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, yet
overall it is a net gainer thanks to arch-rival Congress’s lacklustre
performance in Assam, riding on Stalin’s DMK coattails in Tamil Nadu and blown
away by LDF’s Pinarayi in Kerala.
The
Party has only itself to blame for its mess. Rahul has totally failed again unmasking what seems to be an inexorable
slide into decline and irrelevance. Undeniably, he cannot be expected to lead
the charge against Modi as leader of an Opposition alliance at the national
level.
However,
the biggest takeaway of these polls is that stormy petrel Mamata is clearly
positioning herself for heading the Opposition against BJP. By presenting the battle as Modi-Shah vs Mamata, the Saffron Sangh has
inadvertently projected her as a larger-than-life figure who has the potential
of being Modi’s main competitor in 2024.
She
has not only emerged as a key strategist but also honed her political acumen.
NCP’s Sharad Pawar has a soft spot for her, she
has built an equation with Samajwadi’s Mulayam, AAP’s Kejriwal, Udav
Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and JD(U)’s Nitish. Mamata takes advantage of Sonia’s
fondness for her and regularly keeps in touch with erstwhile Congress cronies,
Clearly,
Bengal’s poll quake promises to have repercussions at the national level for
the BJP. It is early days but Mamata’s Partymen and grudging rivals have
nicknamed her the ‘She-Modi’. Mamata like her rival is single and perceived to
have the same skill set as Modi: Popular, great orator who ‘connects’ with
people, rabble rouser, persistent, appetite for risk and is Teflon-like whereby
no scandal or negative feature sticks to her.
With
Congress’s Rahul dismissed as a non-serious political player sans respect by
others, Mamata having halted the Modi juggernaut could emerge as the dark horse
to challenge RSS-BJP combine. But this could come unstuck as NCP’s Pawar too
has been biding his time for years to head Opposition unity against BJP. But
does not have age on his side.
Certainly,
States along the East Coast present an unbroken line of non-BJP, non-Congress
Parties who have successfully held office repeatedly winning elections. Be it
YSRC Jagan Reddy in Andhra, TRS’s Chandrashekar Rao in Telengana, BJD’s Naveen
Patnaik in Odisha and DMK’s Stalin in Tamil Nadu.
Against
this backdrop, questionably, is the BJP’s invincibility dying? How long can it
bank only on Modi as sole vote catcher? Is the Hindutva card past its expiry
date? Is a combination of gathering anti-incumbency and Opposition’s electoral
arithmetic putting brakes on BJP’s much vaunted electoral machine?
Or
has its perceived mismanagement of a virulent Covid tsunami alongside the false
mirage of achche din becoming the
Saffron Sangh’s nemesis? Modi’s Government has fallen short on promises:
Economy performed below expectations, rural belt is dissatisfied, there is
urban apathy, youth is angry at Government’s inability to generate jobs and
communal polarisation might not pay electoral dividends.
Boosted
by victory, regional satraps could harden their position against the Government
sparking off and weakening the Centre’s position in policy battles with it. Example:
Ongoing farmers’ agitation. Yet Opposition unity will not be easy, given the
disparate aims and agendas of various Parties that will have to pull together.
Certainly,
these reverses open up new options for BJP. They indicate it cannot take
regional satraps lightly and will
have to chalk out-of-the-box strategy for the Assembly battle next year in UP,
Uttarakhand, Goa, Punjab, Himachal and Gujarat. The Party is in a strong position,
Modi is unrivalled and Shah has turned BJP into an electoral machine which
reaps rich dividends, 21 States and counting. Add to this the TINA factor. With
a Government in power at the Centre it has a huge capacity to dole out
patronage, win over enemies and influence people.
What
next? It is too early to say whether regional leaders can bandy together. But
as polls conclusively prove, the Modi juggernaut can only be stopped if the Opposition
joins hands and replicates Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala by knitting alliances
in key States. For any credible and proper Opposition unity, if not perfect, to
survive and lead, it should be headed by the largest, second or major Party
leader. With Congress’s Rahul dismissed as a non-serious political player sans
respect by others, there could be a tussle for the top spot between Pawar and Mamata.
The
regional satraps know it’s only by
laying their differences aside and fight the BJP together that they stand even
a ghost of a chance. They would need astute political moves combined with election
management to counter BJP's superior war machinery. The elephant in the room is
whether the Congress is willing to reinvent itself and take this experiment, of
playing second fiddle to a regional Party. However, either which way it is good
for India’s democracy to have more regional satraps
finally coming in to their own: Constructive opposition with the winner taking
it all! ----- INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
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