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2019 Lok Sabha poll has downsized Mamata and Mayawati

By Amulya Ganguli. Dated: 6/20/2019 12:58:33 PM

Priyanka has to work very hard to have relevance

"Although she never spelt out her real intentions for taking the initiative, her party members did not hesitate to say that it was time for India to have a Bengali PM, a position which might have been Jyoti Basu's if his Marxist comrade, Prakash Karat, did not commit the "historic blunder", in Basu's words, of putting up roadblocks."
The last general election has had one beneficial fallout. It has set at rest some myths and the unreal expectations of at least two political prima donnas. One fanciful idea that has been given a decent burial is that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra represents a new Indira Gandhi with her dazzling beauty and popular appeal.
Because of this long-prevalent perception among Congressmen and even others, she was touted as the brahmastra or the ultimate weapon which her party was keeping in reserve till the moment was deemed ripe for slaying the demon. In real life, however, when she finally emerged on the political battlefield, it appeared to be a truncated version, for she was appointed only the Congress's general secretary for one-half of U.P.
Even then, the crowds which Priyanka attracted seemed to suggest that a sheathed brahmastra can also cast a spell. The final test of her mythical prowess was supposed to be a confrontation with Narendra Modi in Varanasi. But the Congress chickened out, as one of its adversaries mockingly said, and the citizens were denied the mother of all political battles.
However, the Congress's retreat showed that it knew what the others didn't - that Priyanka wasn't really what the advertisers claimed. Now, the moment has passed so far as her political future is concerned. Five years later, it will no longer be possible to present her as the Congress's great white hope.
Nor will it be possible for Mayawati and Mamata Banerjee to nurture extravagant expectations about their career graph. The BSP czarina's ambitions were first aroused when the CPI(M) walked out of its alliance with the Congress in 2008 over the Indo-US nuclear deal and tried to set up a third front of sorts under Mayawati to replace both the Congress and the BJP.
Several commentators also wrote at the time about how the moment had arrived for India to have a Dalit prime minister. Their emphasis was more on her caste than on her political and administrative capabilities whose inadequacies were subsequently exposed when the U.P. voters showed that they were not impressed by her penchant as the chief minister for building statues of her election symbol - the elephant - as well as the Dalit icons.
But even after the third front made an ignominious exit from the election scene in 2009, Mayawati remained hopeful about her prime ministerial ambitions. These expectations were fuelled by her belief that the mahagathbandhan with the Samajwadi Party will fetch her enough seats in U.P. in 2019 for her to press her claim to be the prime minister. But like the third front, the grand alliance, too, has proved to be a mirage.
Even as Mayawati was constituting her caste-based alliance, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee was playing host to 18 non-BJP parties at a rally in Kolkata to set in motion the process of forming an alternative to the BJP at the centre.
Although she never spelt out her real intentions for taking the initiative, her party members did not hesitate to say that it was time for India to have a Bengali PM, a position which might have been Jyoti Basu's if his Marxist comrade, Prakash Karat, did not commit the "historic blunder", in Basu's words, of putting up roadblocks.
Mamata's subsequent travails have meant that her hopes with regard to playing a larger role at the national level have been dashed. She will be more interested from now on to save her party's position in West Bengal from the inroads which are being made by the BJP into her base of support.
In the cases of both Mayawati and Mamata, it is clear that they overestimated their political clout presumably because their influence in the limited sphere of their respective states gave them an inflated notion of their importance.
In reality, their aura and authority were always confined to U.P. and West Bengal and it was unrealistic of them to expect to move to a bigger stage. Their linguistic limitations - Mayawati and Mamata are fluent only in Hindi and Bengali, respectively - a seeming lack of a pan-Indian outlook along with little signs of an economic vision in sync with today's globalized world make them fit to be no more than provincial satraps.
It was the disarray among the opposition parties at the national level which made them believe that all that was needed to make a pitch for the PM's position was a stable base in the states. But while aiming high, both Mayawati and Mamata appear to have forgotten the need to safeguard their home front first, an aspect of politics of which Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik has shown greater awareness.
Even as Priyanka banks on her dynastic appeal to remain in the limelight, it may not be an overstatement to say that Mayawati and Mamata will find it difficult to emerge from the shadows of their present retreat.
—(IPA Service)