Mamata Banerjee's national political dreams are on a bumpy path. But there’s a bigger worry too

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. (File image)

Nothing is going right for West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress party. About two years ago, Banerjee became one of the most powerful leaders of the opposition. She stopped the Bharatiya Janata Party from taking Bengal by winning 215 of the state's 293 seats. The BJP was halted at 77 votes.

But since then, Banerjee, the undisputed street fighter who ended 34 years of Left rule in Bengal, has been getting her politics all wrong. This is mostly because TMC is too ambitious, doesn't have a plan, relies too much on election management agencies, and Banerjee can't stop her party leaders in Bengal from being corrupt.

Even though most people in Tripura speak Bengali, the TMC was unable to win any seats in the Tripura assembly elections last week. Despite the hyped campaign in Meghalaya, Banerjee's party won just five seats, and the TMC lost the Sagardighi assembly constituency in a bypoll after three successive victories there. Banerjee's aspiration to become the unifying face of the opposition is a pipe dream at this time. And it is unclear whether she will have any influence in the general elections in 2024.

Irrational Political Strategy

Congress’s decline has left a big void in the opposition. And Banerjee is not the first leader to use this void to make her party stronger. But she had no rational or organic strategy for expansion. After she won the assembly elections in 2021, she suddenly said that the TMC would contest the Goa assembly elections. The party lacked a voter base, a history, a cultural connection, and a ground-level understanding of that state.

With the assistance of Prashant Kishor's I-PAC, it poached some Congress leaders, recruited a few more Goan netas, and started an enormously noisy campaign. The TMC couldn't open its electoral account, but it hurt the chances of the Congress and other opposition parties like the Aam Aadmi Party by taking away votes.

Again in Tripura, the TMC repeated the same actions. It attempted to steal local leaders from other parties and appointed Bengal and Assam leaders like Sushmita Dev with little ground connection to manage the show. In the end, TMC received a drubbing, although Banerjee did reduce the Left-Congress alliance's support in several areas.

This foolish political strategy is not serving Banerjee's interests. Two years ago, the BJP tried to break up the TMC in Bengal and poach its leaders, but it failed very badly. Banerjee was against poaching politics at the time, but she later followed the same policy with no better luck. People in one state after another are rejecting the TMC. It is time a veteran like Banerjee realised that her party won't influence voters without a credible organisation, grassroots workers, and a good understanding of the local culture and population.

Weakening The Opposition

For all the noise and hype when TMC entered Meghalaya in a big way, all her party managed was to undermine the Congress. Even though the TMC, led by former Meghalaya CM Mukul Sangma destroyed the Congress in a planned way during the overnight coup last year, the Congress still won 5 seats this election. Congress lost ground in Meghalaya as the TMC grew, and Congress also lost 14% of the votes that went to the TMC.

But the TMC was unable to steal a single vote from the ruling NPP or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Mamata isn’t realising that with this style of politics her quest to unite opposition parties and become their national face is unlikely to find takers. In Goa, Meghalaya and Tripura, the TMC has weakened the principal opposition parties without taking a single seat from the BJP.

Corruption, Violence, Minority Discontent

Almost 22 months ago, TMC leader Subrata Saha won the Sagardighi assembly seat by over 50,000 votes. But the political scene has dramatically changed with the Congress candidate winning the bypoll by 23,000 votes. In Bengal, more and more people agree that this by-election was a vote on what people think of Mamata Banerjee's poor governance.

The TMC government has experienced significant setbacks over the past year as a result of the central agencies’ arrests of several of its top leaders on corruption-related charges. Hundreds of teachers have taken to the streets to ask the state government to give them jobs through a proper recruitment process. The Calcutta High Court has already decided that there has been a lot of corruption in the hiring of elementary teachers, secondary teachers, and instructors by the School Service Commission. The recruitment scam has harmed many middle- and lower-class Bengali families.

The numerous large-scale acts of violence in the past year has also endeared Mamata to no one. Starting with reports of violence against BJP members after the 2021 elections, incidents of violence between different groups continue to be reported with regular frequency. The bypoll loss also demonstrates that Bengali Muslims are extremely dissatisfied with Mamata Banerjee; in Sagardighi Muslims made up almost 64 percent of the population. The result indicates that these votes have shifted towards Congress. Since 2011, most of Banerjee's supporters have been Muslims, but there could be a movement happening back to the Left now.

Mamata In Trouble?

Nothing is going well for Banerjee, as evident from the entire situation. It is now time for the TMC to realise that national ambitions are meaningless until West Bengal is brought into order. The situation in Bengal is damaging Mamata Banerjee's reputation and popularity.

The Opposition once accused Banerjee of minority appeasement politics. But the Bagtui massacre in Birbhum, in which four houses were torched and ten members of the minority community were burned to death, is a prime example of Banerjee's failure to defend her base. While minorities feel uncomfortable under TMC’s muscular leadership, the majority is harbouring doubts about Banerjee’s stewardship, due to her inability to manage corruption inside the party and take a strong stand against corruption.

Banerjee has no alternative but to devote her full attention to Bengal at this time. Her popularity and reputation in politics at the national level are not in question, but they were built by what she did in West Bengal. If Mamata Banerjee is unable to improve her image in Bengal, she will be unable to succeed in politics in other states and nationally.

Sayantan Ghosh is a Columnist and Doctoral Research Scholar In Media & Politics. He tweets @sayantan_gh. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.