City blight on Trinamool

City-centric politics has proved disastrous for the party. Its base outside Kolkata is shrinking rapidly and in surprisingly sharp contrast, Congress is retaining its base in its traditional strongholds.

Journalists covering the 1997 AICC plenary session in Kolkata remember that day all too well. Ajit Panja got off his car and proudly announced to his AICC comrades at the Netaji Indoor Stadium: “It will be called Trinamool Congress. Unlike the Congress, we will spread to the grassroots.” He explained to the non-Bengali AICC members what the word ‘trinamool’ meant and how the CPI(M) would be taught a lesson.

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A few hundred metres from where Panja was standing, Mamata Banerjee announced the formation of the Trinamool Congress at a rally overwhelmingly attended by Congress workers who believed in her. At that time, Mamata’s objective was clear — she believed the Congress would not survive if it continued with the brand of politics pursued by Pradesh Congress leaders.

As the most sincere and passionate Congress worker, she did not hide her hatred towards Somen Mitra, who refused to give her an inch to lead Congress workers. “You just can’t defeat the CPI(M) sitting at the PCC office. We need to go to the villages and stand by party workers tormented by CPI(M),” she would say.

She did what she said. She was like a tornado unleashed on rural Bengal, giving new hope to people who wanted to oppose the Left but didn’t know how. And the people of Bengal showered their blessings on her — within months after she formally launched the Trinamool in January 1998, people gifted her seven MPs. There was another election the next year. She increased the tally by another MP.

Cut to 2004. It’s election time once again, but things have dramatically changed for the party. There are question marks on several seats — like Panskura, Serampore, Contai and even Ajit Panja’s Kolkata North-east, which were once considered Trinamool bastion — that the CPI(M) now sees as vulnerable. There are too many questions doing the rounds within the Trinamool headquarters at Tiljala.

The workers are downbeat, their feelings best exemplified by a worker from Tollygunge who says: “We left the Congress and joined Trinamool to oust the CPI(M). We couldn’t. Why did we leave the Congress then?”

There is a growing frustration among senior leaders (most of them learnt about the merger with P.A. Sangma’s party from television the next morning). An MLA vented his frustration: “Our party has become a forum for 10-odd Kolkata-based leaders. TMC is now a south Bengal party restricted within 150 sq miles of Kolkata. Go beyond Farakka and you won’t find any trace of it.”

The state council session of the party in Digha in 2000 adopted two very important resolutions — there would be whole-timers for the party and regular classes would be taken to educate the workers, who would fan out to the districts. Till date, nothing of the sort has happened and Trinamool leaders, just like their Congress opposite numbers, refuse to step out of the cosy confines of city limits. Keshpur had once become the mascot of Mamata’s counter-offensive against the CPI(M) ‘terror’. For three years now, she hasn’t cared to visit the place, leaving her workers at the mercy of their opponents.

The last panchayat elections saw Trinamool crying itself hoarse on how the state machinery was preventing it from fielding candidates. In private, leaders confide that in many areas they were complaining about, the party just couldn’t find suitable candidates.

Come every election, Trinamool candidates have to be sent from Kolkata. A host of MLAs in the districts are city-based leaders and this time too will see them flocking the districts in search of a seat — Nitish Sengupta in Contai, Bikram Sarkar deserting the Panskura seat and moving closer to How-rah, Nirmal Maji in Bolpur, Sujit Basu in Basirhat, Sultan Ahmed in Katwa and Parash Datta in Jalpaiguri. Madan Mitra was sent to Jangipur, but ran off when he heard his opponent would be Pranab Mukherjee.

City-centric politics has proved disastrous for the party. Its base outside Kolkata is shrinking rapidly and in surprisingly sharp contrast, Congress is not only retaining its base in its traditional strongholds but has been recording impressive gains in the recent past.