Right now, the permanently agitated chief Minister of West Bengal is obsessed with her new vision of dominating the centre stage of national politics — and to hell with West Bengal! She is jostling for more space on the national centrestage seeing herself as the unchallenged leader of a new ‘Federal Front’, comprising her Trinamool Congress (TMC) and other regional parties. To achieve this end, she must spearhead the fight to defeat the ruling Congress, the BJP and the Left parties. Banerjee is convinced, as are her raucous bunch of Bengal-based supporters, that if anyone can perform this giant-killing feat, it is she alone.

Her problem is nobody seems to be seriously bothered about her latest crusade. Parties like the JD(U) or the BJD have not exactly warmed to her overtures regarding the formation of her proposed ‘anti-everybody’ Federal Front. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar avoided meeting her during a brief visit to Kolkata recently, much to the disappointment of TMC leaders. Nitish Kumar is not alone in maintaining his distance from TMC. When the TMC sponsored no-confidence motion against the UPA-II Ministry flopped pathetically in the Lok Sabha, only three BJP MPs lined up with TMC colleagues in support.

The problem with Banerjee is her obdurate refusal to appreciate that she cannot eternally expect her wish to be a command for every other party or leader, merely on the strength of her massive and impressive victory over the Marxists in 2011. People now expect her to deliver as a Chief Minister, to keep the scores of pre-election promises she made publicly. And on the evidence of her performance during the first 18 months of the TMC’s tenure, there is hardly any sign that she is really serious about governing West Bengal.

Consider for instance, the ever-growing gap between TMC-sponsored rhetoric and reality in West Bengal. The Chief Minister keeps on saying that she has “already fulfilled 90 percent of our pre-election promises within the first 18 months.” Partha Chatterjee, Minister for Industries, has been claiming that projects involving a proposed investment of Rs 200,000 crore are in the pipeline, over the last six months. The fact is, not one big or medium industry has come to West Bengal during the last 18 months!

Further, the Chief Minister claims to have provided jobs to 300,000 or 600,000 youths in the state already — a claim so palpably preposterous that not even her closest followers have dared to repeat it in their public speeches. While she keeps on mentioning such figures endlessly, she has not furnished a single detail so far about where, and when, all these jobs were created, unknown to the rest of the world! Most surprising of all, Banerjee also accuses the centre for trying to “make West Bengal starve” by not writing off its massive loans and strangling its economy, in the context of her claim of completing 90 percent of her pre-election pledges!

But it must be admitted, Banerjee is a woman of uncommon courage and patience. The pathetic record of non-performance in the state by her Government and the lack of any apparent relationship between her claims and reality, leave her unfazed. Her abysmal failure as an administrator has not prevented her from pursuing her grandiose pan-Indian political pipedreams.

It is by no means as though she has been proved any more successful in the national political sphere than as the Chief Minister of West Bengal, as a ruler or as Union Railways Minister. Her first foray into the choppy waters of national politics occurred over the Presidential election. The clumsy efforts made by her and her newly made MPs to play off the Samajwadi Party against the Congress backfired disastrously. Eventually, while all major parties, excepting the BJP and the BJD, supported Pranab Mukherjee in his campaign, the TMC, which was sworn to oppose him, suddenly did a U-turn, supporting him!

The TMC’s second effort, its decision to sponsor a no-confidence motion against the UPA-II, was another monumental blunder.

Given this backdrop, her latest initiative seeking to decimate the Congress, the BJP and the CPI(M) in West Bengal in the next round of Panchayat, Lok Sabha and Assembly polls scheduled to be held respectively in 2013, 2014 and 2016, seems to be foredoomed. Her political advisers have convinced her that in the rough and tumble of Indian national politics, the serried ranks of the Indian poor see her as their messiah and so do the Muslims. Therefore, who can stop the TMC juggernaut when it goes for it alone in West Bengal polls?

TMC leaders apparently forget that their party, which swept the state Assembly elections in 2011, won only 38 percent of the popular votes. The combined LF tally was just under 42 percent, even during its worst days. However, the TMC/Congress combine won over 48 percent of the votes, which meant that the Congress, contesting 62 out of 294 seats in alliance and winning 41, accounted for just under 10 percent of the total votes.

Clearly, in their decision to go for it alone in the next round of elections, the TMC leaders believe that the people will vote in massive numbers for their party and that anti-TMC votes would be divided three ways: among the Congress, the CPI(M) and the BJP. The evidence shows just the opposite. Two meetings organised by the TMC at Singur recently failed to generate much public response. It was no different for TMC sponsored meetings at Loba in Birbhum and Tehatta, in Nadia, where Banerjee herself was present. For all her reputed courage, she cancelled a scheduled public meeting at Singur, after a state Minister was heckled by local villagers. At Birbhum and Nadia, people refused to answer questions posed to them by Banerjee and they did not accept cheques presented by her to the families of those injured in an incident. Hardly the ideal build-up the TMC wanted prior to the panchayat polls, although the real campaign is yet to begin.

The TMC’s third shot at greater political glory saw it contest seats in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh during the past months. Its finest hour came in Arunachal Pradesh, where it won five seats. However, all five switched over to the Congress later, as the TMC quit UPA-II. As for UP, the party did win one seat, but the candidate has been winning consistently over the years, not necessarily staying in any one party for long. Undeterred, the TMC put up 25 candidates in the recent Himachal Pradesh polls. They all lost their deposits.

In sum, after being in power for 18 months in West Bengal, the TMC’s national and state prospects certainly do not look bright. If only, Banerjee would concentrate on her home turf instead of frenziedly eyeing the national spotlight. (IPA Service)