Having won the last Assembly election in a hard-fought contest against the formidable duo of Modi and Shah, Mamata Banerjee has begun to eye the top political position of the country. Buoyed by her bye-election win, although it was almost certain, and being the chief minister for the third consecutive term in Bengal, it is natural for any aspiring and able politician to move to the centre. She has ambitions, abilities, and acumen to do so, unlike Nabin Patnaik of the neighbouring state who is running his fifth consecutive term. He is happily ensconced in Odisha, and does not seem to have the ambition beyond the state.

With general elections one two and half-years away, the time is quite adequate to build up the momentum. Harold Wilson, the former Labour prime minister had once said, ‘a week is a long time in politics. That was said in a particular context. The Indian culture also lets things happen at the last moment. There is a colloquial saying that “Jab Dulha aayega, Mandap saj Jayega “, when the bridegroom arrives, the marriage platform will come up. The point isthat things happen at the very last moment. When elections are announced political parties get into the act. That is too late unless you are a member of an established party. Even then, you will have to nourish your constituency. Politics is a process which must be gone through.
AITMC seems to have internalised the concept of time in politics. Hence, they are systematically building their bases beyond Bengal. They are bagging the leaders from other parties, mainly the Congress. In a leadership-based politics, that is a sound strategy. With the leaders, all their followers will troop in without question or discussion. The latest inductees- Ashok Tanwar from Haryana, Kirti Azad and Pawan Verma from Bihar- are a case in point. Kirti Azad comes from a political family, his father was the chief Minister of Bihar; he, himself, was a cricketer who became an instant hero for displaying an explosive batting in a one-day match against Pakistan in Delhi. He won the match single-handedly. Although he did not shine afterwards, that game was enough to make him popular. He was in BJP, switched to Congress, then to AITMC. Pawan Verma was in Rajya Sabha on a JD(U) ticket. A former Indian foreign service officer, an author and a writer, he has a name in Delhi discussion forums, and with odd articles in the newspapers. How much support they can garner in Bihar is a question that only time can answer, as none of them is a mass leader.
Dr. Ashok Tanwar, younger than both of them is a leader with a following. He has an impressive political track record. Beginning his career in student politics in JNU, the bastion of Communists, he rose to become the national president of student’s wing of INC, and then the youth wing of the party. He was also made the president of Haryana Congress at a young age, again in a Jat-dominated state. It is another matter that Bhupinder Hooda, the former CM of Haryana did not let Ashok Tanwar function as the latter refused to kowtow tohis political antics. Eventually, in exasperation without Tangible support from the central leadership, Tanwar left congress soon after a lethal physical attack on him by Hooda’s security guard. Ashok Tanwar in running the Congress party for about six years, made people-contact in the nook and corner of the state and has set up a huge following. That will swell by leaps and bounds, under the formidably combative leadership of Mamata Banerjee. Ashok Tanwar had also launched a platform called ‘Apna Bharat Morcha’ an interface between social movements, professional individuals and organisations, innovative social media groups, political activists, and intellectuals; all with a purpose of mainstreaming these groups into politics. In a democracy, each individual has to be politically conscious and active even without participating in elections. Ashok Tanwar will add electoral heft to AITMC. Beyond Haryana, Tanwar can rally his erstwhile supporters across the country into AITMC. So, a good catch indeed by AITMC. But, the thing to watch out is how AITMC is using Ashok Tanwar and indeed Pawan Verma and Kirti Azad in tapping their respective strengths.
Reportedly, TMC is planning to change the name, as the Chairperson Mamata Banerjee said after the core committee meeting of the party on 29thNovember that it may bring in some party-constitutional changes. It need not change the name, it is called All India Trinamool Congress- if Trinamool means grassroots, it is quite appealing. Trinamool is not a familiar word across the language spectrum, but TMC is quite popular and is a brand. But it should now be known as AITMC. Party leaders should begin to use AITMC as the actual name of the party, that evokes an all-India profile, not just Bengal where it is known as TMC.
In order to be national party, and win the parliamentary elections, TMC needs to have a base in each state of the country. The following strategy can be adopted to do so. The strategy will be incremental in nature, and the party must embrace the ratchet growth model.
States should be divided as soft states, hard states and medium. The first lot of states to target should be called the soft states which may include. Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Manipur, Arunachal, Odisha, Haryana, Delhi, Jharkhand, Goa, Nagaland. Medium states could be Himachal, Karnataka, Kerala, Punjab, J&K, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand. Hard states are Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra, Maharashtra.
The states should be classified by two factors: one, the language, states in the North East and those contiguous to Bengal have language affinity with Bengali, Second, replacing Congress, wherever Congress is strong BJP is strong. To defeat BJP, we have to replace Congress not the regional parties. Congress supporters and leaders should gradually merge into AITMC. That is the winning strategy. As long as the Congress is in the reckoning, no other party can emerge as the alternative to BJP. Even if Congress is not finished off, it should trail behind AITMC, then only AITMC will emerge as the single largest party and congress could be no 2 & 3.
Both the parties, INC and AITMC are in the race for the main opposition space. It is not unusual in competitive politics. It was noticed on the first day of the winter session of the parliament that Congress and TMC were demonstrating separately, not as a part of opposition unity. TMC has declared that it will have no truck with Congress in the Parliament or elsewhere. TMC is perhaps right for the time being in its strategy of overtaking Congress in the race for leadership of the opposition parties. Keep watching.

Email:----dr.dkgiri@gmail.com