Banerjee and Mukherjee

In the aftermath of the Mamata Banerjee fiasco and the all but anointment of Pranab Mukherjee as the next President of India, there are some who are sympathetic towards the Trinamul Congress chief.

Their anger is directed towards Mulayam Singh Yadav, the Samajwadi Party (SP) leader who first promised to back Ms Banerjee in her opposition to Mr Mukherjee’s candidature and then changed his mind.
As per a senior Opposition MP, Mr Yadav was vulnerable to the Congress and the Union government because of his disproportionate assets case, which is being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation. Ms Banerjee had no personal angularities to defend and so her revolt was more honest.
While there may be an element of truth to this hypothesis, it is only partially explanatory. Cynical as this may sound, in politics there is no morality bigger than victory. At the end of it all, the UPA government has lived to fight another day, Mr Mukherjee has emerged a winner and Mr Yadav has finished on the right side.
In her relative isolation, Ms Banerjee is attracting more smirks than sympathy. In the medium run Mr Yadav stands to lose in terms of credibility. Potential allies may not trust him to abide by an agreement. That is another story, for another day. Either way, it doesn’t help Ms Banerjee, who has come out looking like an amateur in the tactical manoeuvrings of the Capital.
She cannot possibly stay in the UPA now, except as a diminished partner. She will face a hostile national establishment. A day before Mr Mukherjee’s candidature was announced, the file to allot property for a new Trinamul Congress office in New Delhi reached the desk of the urban development minister. Clearance will certainly be delayed. Funding for projects in Kolkata and elsewhere in West Bengal will be that much harder to access.
If nothing else, Ms Banerjee has been made acutely aware of her lack of finesse and craft in negotiating the “system” in New Delhi. Mr Yadav did this with adeptness. He set her up, let her do the talking and then walked away. Such methods are not straightforward and transparent; Ms Banerjee was certainly more upfront. Nevertheless that is merely a relative proposition.
While politics is a hard game it also offers time and opportunity to recover. Ms Banerjee remains a popular leader in her home state. Even if she does the rather strange thing of opposing a Bengali candidate for the presidency without a viable alternative, it is not as if all of West Bengal will rise in rebellion against her. The Trinamul Congress is still the dominant force in the state.
The Congress scarcely counts — and will count even less with Mr Mukherjee out of active politics. The CPI(M) is still to overcome its defeatism. As such, if Ms Banerjee can weather the storm and sit out the rest of the UPA’s term, she may have the last laugh after the next Lok Sabha election. All that can be said is she will be more cautious in the future and think twice before taking an all-or-nothing gamble as she did in the past week.
If Ms Banerjee has lessons to absorb, it is not as if Mr Yadav and the Congress don’t. If the Mamata-Mulayam axis had stayed the course, an early election was upon us. Given the anti-incumbency mood in the country today, the momentum would then have been for a third-front alternative built around the SP and the Trinamul Congress.
Now, putting together this potential Third Front will be that much more difficult. It is not impossible, but Ms Banerjee will be wary of blindly trusting another such initiative and may prefer to stay unattached for some time. Mr Yadav, on his part, has created a trust deficit vis-a-vis fellow regional satraps. Other state strongmen will factor in his serial bailout of the Congress, whether transactional or otherwise.
For the UPA government itself, there is a profit-loss account to consider. Mr Mukherjee was his party’s best choice for the presidency, but not its first choice. The Congress chief seemed to agree to him only grudgingly. Ms Banerjee’s sudden move forced the Congress to put forward its best candidate and get other parties to back Mr Mukherjee. For all his faults, the man has enormous goodwill among the political class and has ended up getting more support than, say, an S.M. Krishna, would have.
The departure of its most astute Cabinet minister will not help the UPA. That aside, Ms Banerjee will probably be replaced by dependency on Mr Yadav and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati. This gives the Congress one less cushion. Also, the Trinamul leader was unpredictable and occasionally whimsical but not extortionate. The Uttar Pradesh twosome is very different.
Further, the Congress would be unwise to interpret the cross-party praise for Mr Mukherjee and the closing of ranks in the UPA and beyond as anything more than episodic. It reflected the desire of some regional parties to avoid an immediate election (as in one in 2012 itself) and it spoke of Mr Mukherjee’s appeal in the political class. It does not mean the Congress will sail through sessions of Parliament and automatically recover popular ground.
The politics of India requires votes and seats and a mandate from the people. The politics of New Delhi requires patience, and the ability to optimise backroom deal-making and game the “system”. Successful politicians can do both, and need to do both. It is no use pretending the first is good and virtuous and the second is evil and a betrayal of popular sentiment. This may be true, but it is still a reality.
In the past week, the Congress has used its prodigious capacities for that second, New Delhi-centric aspect of politics. Ms Banerjee, in contrast, has proved less than equal to the phenomenon. Even so, there are limitations to being a master of political management in the Capital if you don’t also win votes in real elections in the rest of the country. Given the Andhra Pradesh by-poll results — they coincided with Mr Mukherjee’s nomination — that is something for the Congress to ponder.