Contrarian Calcutta

Contrarian Calcutta

The Congress must choose between the BJP and the CPMMAMATA BANERJEE'S favourite response to queries is: we will do whatever the people want. Unfortunately, reading the minds of the people of Calcutta is proving very difficult. They have voted for change and voted for continuity. Not only have they spoken ambiguously in the municipal polls and produced a hung corporation. Their famous contrarian impulse consigns the Congress party to a poor third place while making it the final arbiter of power in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. The Congress' 14 seats are essential to put into business either the Left parties which have 61 seats or the Trinamool Congress-BJP combination which has 60. But the Congress does not know its own mind. Its dilemmas are acute and so it is unlikely to savour its brief moment of glory. At the national level the party has managed on the whole to decide that its main adversary is the BJP. That makes it permissible to work with the Left. Not so in West Bengal where, after all these decades of defining itself in contradistinction to theLeft, the Congress does not have the courage, confidence or imagination to fashion a new identity for itself.

The Congress rank and file will fight any move to support the Left and state leaders fear anything resembling support for the CPM would wipe out the last remnants of the party. But exercising the other option is not easy.First, there is the Trinamool Congress' alliance with the BJP which is also taboo. Second, there are anxieties about losing its separate identity in the shadow of the ascendant Trinamool Congress. Third, Congress leaders are aware that the BJP factor has led to the flight of many Muslim votes from the Trinamool Congress and that the Congress party has been the beneficiary. The pulls are as powerful as the pushes. The party lacks big ideas and strong leadership; morale is low. There is a strong urge, therefore, to join Mamata Banerjee and benefit from her winning streak. Given these contradictory trends, A B A Ghani Khan Chaudhury and company are likely to forgo the pleasure of playing kingmaker and in the interests of preventing a split in the party could choose to stay neutral for the time being.

If the Congress absents itself during the vote for mayor, six independents will be responsible for bringing in either the Left or the Trinmool Congress. The Congress may survive this test and stay in one piece but its viability will always be in question. Obviously, its corporators cannot leave the chamber every time a critical issue is put to vote. It could take the high ground and not side with the Left or the Trinamool Congress-BJP and offer instead principled support on a case by case basis. That would be the ideal posture but a hard one to maintain in a political culture in which what matters is power and pelf and not jobs that need doing and are worth doing. The conditions do not foretell stability for the CMC and the major infrastructure projects planned for the city may be jeopardised. Ironically, the circumstances in which stability could emerge involve the Congress throwing in its lot with one or the other dominant formation.