Author: T V R Shenoy
Publication: Rediff
Date: June 9, 2000
"Another such victory,"
the king of Epirus sighed after beating a Roman legion at horrendous cost,
"and we are totally undone."
His name was Pyrrhus,
and the quip has entered the English language; a 'Pyrrhic victory' is one
where winning is almost as bad as defeat.
The Left Front in West
Bengal is constituted of a thousand Pyrrhuses, the sole distinction being
none possess the Greek monarch's realism. This explains why the Communists
-- and not a few Congressmen -- are celebrating their victory in the recent
local-body elections in West Bengal. So let us look at what exactly they
are hailing.
The Left Front won thirty-two
municipalities, the Congress got thirteen, while the Trinamul Congress-Bharatiya
Janata Party combine manage seven. On the face of it, you would imagine
that the Marxists and the Congress (I) have reason to celebrate -- which
is precisely what most of my colleagues in the media have concluded. I
completely disagree.
Five years ago, the Left
Front won forty-five municipalities and the Congress had thirty-two. In
other words, the Left Front tally has slipped by thirteen, and that of
the Congress by nineteen. These are not reasons to celebrate, but to take
stock of what has gone wrong.
But where have all those
extra municipalities gone? If the Left Front and the Congress have lost
thirty-two municipalities between them, but the Trinamul Congress and the
Bharatiya Janata Party have just seven, where are the extra twenty-five?
The answer to this is the hidden story of the local-body elections in West
Bengal.
There are seventeen municipalities
where a Congress-Trinamul Congress-Bharatiya Janata Party Mahajot proved
successful, that is where the wards won by the Congress, the Trinamul Congress,
and the Bharatiya Janata Party outnumber those won by the Left Front. There
are a further eight municipalities where neither the Left Front nor the
Mahajot could manage an outright victory.
Look closer at the seventeen
municipalities won by the Mahajot. Who is the senior partner in these areas:
the Congress or the alliance led by Mamta Bannerjee? There was a decisive
swing in favour of the latter, with the alliance dominating fourteen of
the seventeen municipalities. Which are these seventeen municipalities?
There is one in Murshidabad (Kandi), five in 24 Parganas (Garulia, North
Barrackpore, Bongaon, Gobordanga, and Basirhat), five in Hooghly (Bansberia,
Bandyabati, Rishra, Champadani, and Chinsurah), three in Midnapore (Tamluk,
Ghatak, and Kharagpur), two in Bankura (Bankura and Sonamukhi), and one
in Burdwan (Dainhat).
It used to be said that
Mamta Bannerjee would never have any influence beyond Calcutta and its
hinterland. That is demonstrably incorrect. Murshidabad, for instance,
cannot be described as being in the vicinity of Calcutta by any stretch
of the imagination!
There is a second lesson:
for the first time in decades the Left Front has clearly lost an election
in its bastion of West Bengal. Five years ago, it won forty-five of the
seventy-eight municipalities, a clear majority. Today, forces opposed to
the Left Front -- call them Mahajot or whatever -- have control of at least
thirty-seven municipalities. (That number might go up once independents
are wooed in the eight hung municipalities.)
That is quite a fall.
In the assembly polls of 1996 the CPI-M won a simple majority; it can,
if necessary, rule without the support of the smaller parties in the Left
Front. Today, just four short years later, the combined forces of the Left
Front could not sweep even municipal polls in the face of a divided opposition;
in fact, the Left Front has been pushed back! What would have happened
had Sonia Gandhi given Ghani Khan Chaudhary and Mitra their heads, allowing
the proposed Mahajot to act freely and in the open? Is it too much to say
that the Left Front would have lost even more ground in its own bastion?
The Left Front is uncomfortably
aware of how rapidly its support base is dwindling. I hear that the smaller
parties in the Left Front are even more aware that most of this unpopularity
is directed at the Big Brother of the alliance -- the CPI-M. If they slip
out, it would give them the dual advantage of deflecting attention from
themselves and of (possibly) sharing power with a Mahajot.
All that lies in the
future. But one thing is clear: the Mahajot was created as an instrument
to halt the Left Front. It has succeeded. That, and not the performance
of Mamta Bannerjee's forces, is the story of the polls.
