WEST Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Ms. Mamata Banerjee appears to have become extremely confident of her return to power in the ensuing legislative elections, but she has also declared that after winning her State again, she would head towards the national capital and capture it. This statement of Ms. Banerjee appears to have been a part of her election propaganda rather than planned move.

 

All she seems to want is to assure her West Bengal electorate that her victory is certain. Beyond that, the Delhi bravado makes little sense. At the most, the bravado appears to be an attempt to stake the claim of leadership of the Opposition parties whenever a possibility emerges. Otherwise, the lady stands no chance to expand the footprint of her TMC outside West Bengal. She may win a few seats here and there, but those would be awfully short of the number required on the national stage. Yet, Ms. Mamata Banerjee has stated emphatically that after West Bengal won once again, she would raid Delhi where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power -- both at the Centre and in the State. Even a street urchin anywhere in the country would mock at her assertion. For, if Ms. Mamata Banerjee wants to capture Delhi, she will have to fight two powerful forces -- the BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) of Mr. Arvind Kejriwal. But blinded as she is with her political bravado and over- confidence, Ms. Banerjee now wants to project herself as a leader of a true national status. Hence her new-found confidence.

 

Encouraged by his success in Delhi, Mr. Arvind Kejriwal, too, had made similar plans. He did succeed in Punjab, but his bid in Gujarat flopped miserably -- since his party could not create even a base-level presence for itself in the State where Mr. Narendra Modi and his successors have been in power for decades. This highlights another political reality of the country -- that except for the BJP and the Congress party, there is not any other political outfit with an all-India footprint at the grassroot level (from where electoral victories actually come). To have just a few seats in a scattered manner in a State actually makes no political sense. In order to create a national level grass-root organisation of dedicated workers, any aspiring party will have to work very hard and for decades -- so that it starts cutting ice at some stray places. The Congress has achieved that feat, all right, but that was mainly because it was the only party of true national consequence at the dawn of Independence. Later, the Akhil Bharatiya Jan Sangh -- the former self of the BJP -- started working seriously and systematically on such a project and achieved reasonable success after 30-plus years of relentless work among the grass-root masses of different States. In other words, creating such a nationwide footprint is not as easy as it may seem to some.

 

Yet, Ms. Mamata Banerjee is trying to nurse such ambitions -- for which she may not be prepared even partially to walk in that direction. Some political observers do feel that Ms. Banerjee’s so-called national ambition appears to have been triggered out of fear that she may not be able to return to power this time in West Bengal -- and therefore she must look for opportunity to have at least a toe-hold in other States. Hence Delhi. In West Bengal, Ms. Banerjee kept winning because she utilised the Government machinery in West Bengal to the hilt -- and encouraged shockingly high levels of infiltration from other countries (to prepare her voter-base). She also used violence as a political tool to intimidate the common people with dire consequences. That ploy helped her electorally, as the whole country knows. But all those tricks are least likely to work in Delhi and take her to sensible success elsewhere. She must know -- and she actually refuses to acknowledge -- that her West Bengal tactics would not work elsewhere in the country -- let alone Delhi. But, the woman is living in her own paradise.