There are no shortcuts to political success, especially outside one’s political bastion. The Trinamool Congress may be claiming ‘moral victory’ in the Tripura civic polls saying it has occupied the lead opposition space in no time, but the clean sweep for the BJP must come as a reality check for the TMC that has developed national ambitions.
To be fair, the TMC think-tank never thought it would win the civic polls, but this was more to set up ground in a new state. However, the party has set itself an ambitious target to dislodge the Congress as the lead opposition party to the BJP come 2024 and is foraying into various states with that mindset.
But the TMC has to be realistic and realise that such success won’t come from merely noise and hype in an effort to capture the public’s imagination or getting spent forces from parties that have themselves been on the decline. Such tactics rarely do translate into electoral success.
Be it Tripura, Goa or even Meghalaya, where Congress leaders have jumped ship to the TMC, there is simply no substitute for serious ground-work and building an organisation first. Without that or a vote-base that gets convinced to overthrow the government in favour of a new entrant, rarely has a party succeeded outside its bastion. Take the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for example which has been trying a foray into Punjab since 2014. It got good success then, peaked in the run-up to the 2017 Assembly elections only to collapse and flop in the state in 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The TMC and AAP are cut from similar cloth as mercurial leaders Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal are street-fighters who have fought off the BJP’s charge in their states. But Kejriwal’s ‘magic’ has not worked so far outside Delhi even after efforts over seven years. The party’s long political effort outside Delhi may finally bring it some positive results this time in Punjab and Goa — the latter is a state where the AAP in fact is a more serious challenger to the BJP than the TMC in these elections. The TMC may claim that it will win Goa but would do well to rather learn from AAP.
The constant ridiculing of the Congress by TMC leaders may also be a miscalculation. Weakened for sure, the Congress, however, still remains the biggest pan-India opposition party with a 20% national vote share and governments in three states. The Congress snatched three states from the BJP in the 2018 Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. It has an organisational strength in many states unlike TMC, especially the Hindi heartland. If the Congress gets its act together organisationally, it will certainly be in a better position to challenge the BJP in 2024.
TMC’s latest acquisitions, Kirti Azad, Ashok Tanwar or Pavan Varma, may bring little dividend to the party in their states as they failed to do the same for the parties they were with. Tanwar, in fact, is held responsible by many in the Congress for running the party to the ground in Haryana, before the Hoodas tried in vain to resurrect it at the last minute before state elections. Azad last won an election seven years ago from Bihar and has switched three parties since. Varma, a Rajya Sabha MP from JD-U, was expelled along with Prashant Kishor by Nitish Kumar.
Sushmita Dev is one leader who came on board with the TMC with an electoral base in Assam and may help the party get a foray into some northeastern states as well. But the TMC needs many more stronger leaders in other states, as well as disciplined ground-work for long, to make a mark.
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