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End of the party

The word 'brand' includes not only soft drinks or refrigerators but also political parties. Any advertising agency that picks up the account of one of these parties has my sympathy. In an age when Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya sings the praises of the infotech industry and woos industrialists, how much actual difference is there between two political organisations?

After the last round of assembly elections, two parties should have learned that lesson. Deprived of their USP, they are in danger of being wiped out altogether. I refer here to the Tamil Maanila Congress and the Trinamul Congress.

Does anyone remember what happened five years ago in 1996 that led the Tamil Maanila Congress to leave Narasimha Rao's Congress? The specific point that led to the breaking of ways was the proposed alliance with Jayalalitha in the eleventh general election.

Narasimha Rao thought it was the only way to ensure that the Congress got a few seats. G K Moopanar, P Chidambaram, and their fellows believed that the flamboyant corruption of the Jayalalitha regime had alienated the voters of Tamil Nadu; they preferred a tie-up with Karunanidhi.

There was no policy difference, no great divide over ideology with Narasimha Rao. The sole USP of the newly created Tamil Maanila Congress was 'We are not with Jayalalitha!'

In the five years since that time, the party has not been able to come up with any coherent programme that would set it apart from the rest of the pack in Tamil Nadu. So what becomes of it today?

Moopanar, having alienated the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, was left with no option but to return to Jayalalitha. In effect, after five years, the Tamil Maanila Congress has come full circle -- accepting that it is part of the Congress family and that it is Jayalalitha's junior partner in Tamil Nadu. Its USP has been destroyed and there is nothing else left to take its place.

The time has come for the Tamil Maanila Congress to lower its eyes meekly and then seek re-admission into the parent party. That will not satisfy the ambitions of the Tamil Maanila Congress cadres -- who now find themselves out of power both in Delhi and in Chennai -- but there is no other way to avoid political oblivion. After all, Jayalalitha has made it amply clear that there is no place for the Tamil Maanila Congress in her scheme of things.

How about the Trinamul Congress? Well, here again I believe it is only a matter of time before this outfit is dissolved. The only difference is that nobody seems particularly keen to take in the mercurial Mamata Banerjee. The resemblance, in other crucial areas, is quite astounding.

Mamata Banerjee broke away from the Congress -- then officially led by Sitaram Kesri -- because she felt that the parent party was nothing more than "the B-team of the CPI-M". It was an accurate judgment; both Kesri and his successor Sonia Gandhi knew that the support of the Left Front was essential if the Congress was to form a ministry in Delhi. The idea was to put up a semblance of a fight in West Bengal in exchange for a "secular" front in Delhi.

This was unacceptable to Mamata Banerjee, a woman whose sights were set firmly on Writers' Building. She broke away and took the Congress's votes with her. (I think her judgment that people wanted an alternative to the Jyoti Basu regime was correct.) Once again, look what has happened!

By walking away from the alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, Mamata Banerjee alienated a small but significant chunk of voters. She already had the bulk of the old Congress vote -- there was really no point in rebuilding that alliance. And then the CPI-M replaced the aged Jyoti Basu, thus taking away the lady's USP. She had offered herself as an alternative -- fresh and relatively youthful -- to the octogenarian chief minister. Faced with Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, she really had nothing left to say.

It was the same problem as with the Tamil Maanila Congress in Chennai. What was the Trinamul Congress's programme? How and where would it differ on economic policies? Did it have a blueprint to lift West Bengal out of the industrial quagmire? Mamata Banerjee had no response to any of these queries. (Or, which comes to the same thing in the end, she failed to make her views known on these and other important issues.)

What are the options before her? The Bharatiya Janata Party is in no mood to take her back. Sections of her own party are very vocal in their dislike for her tactics. (And her antics!) The Congress tolerated her as long as it was felt that she might lead them out of the wilderness in West Bengal; once she proved a failure, the knives are out. She is, like Moopanar, shut out of the corridors of power both in Delhi and the state capital.

There is, however, an additional complication. The Congress and the Tamil Maanila Congress accept, reluctantly, that Tamil Nadu is Jayalalitha's territory. Mamata Banerjee, on the other hand, is still determined to carry on her campaign against the Marxists. But Sonia Gandhi knows she requires their support. Put simply, the Congress boss will be asked to choose between Mamata Banerjee and the Marxists.

We all know which way she has swung. Asked to comment on allegations of electoral corruption in West Bengal, the Congress spokesman admitted he didn't want to antagonise the Left.

It will be relatively easy for the Tamil Maanila Congress to rejoin the Congress. It will take time for the Trinamul Congress to do so. But sooner or later, both parties are destined to vanish.

T V R Shenoy