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The maverick Mamata Banerjee has compelled the Congress to undo its decision to bring 51% FDI in multi-brand retail.

The Congress wanted to implement this decision during the United Progressive Alliance’s first term, but was reined in by the Left parties.

In the end, it was Mamata’s unyielding opposition that made the government beat a hasty retreat. It did not want to risk a defeat on the floor of the house in an adjournment motion because of opposition from one of its own allies, which would have raised serious questions about the government’s majority and its credibility to bring in policy measures.

The government could not risk letting the winter session of Parliament go for a six.

With the majority of the political spectrum opposed to the decision — it brought adversaries like Mamata and the Left on the same page, as also the DMK and the AIDMK, and the SP and the BSP — there was nothing to stop the trouble from spilling onto the budget session. And no government can face the budget session with an opposition on the warpath.

The government had learnt from its mistake last year when it opposed the constitution of a Joint Parliamentary Committee to investigate the 2G scam, which reduced the winter session to a non-event.

The government gave in at the beginning of the budget session.

There was a strong view within the Congress — significantly, Sonia Gandhi has maintained a studied silence on the issue — that the time was not right to take the decision and it could affect the party’s chances in the forthcoming state polls.

As far as FDI in retail is concerned, for all practical purposes, the decision has been undone, though the government has not used the word “rollback”, for no government can bind future governments to a rollback for all time to come.

And that helped to end the impasse.

To suspend the decision till the government has developed a consensus with stakeholders, including chief ministers and political parties, means the decision has been put in cold storage, certainly till the end of the forthcoming assembly elections.

Even if the government wants to go for it again, it will have to start the consultative process de novo, tweak the present policy, and maybe try with a lower percentage of FDI.

The whole affair has dented the authority of the government and the image of the prime minister, who had repeatedly ruled out a rollback. And this is a story that has international ramifications.

But it may also have consequences for other reform measures, including the Pension Regulatory and Development Authority Bill slated to come up in the winter session. There are indications that Mamata may not support the Pension Bill.

The government has turned down the standing committee’s recommendations to specify the 26% FDI cap, instead of retaining the right to change it through an executive order, and to ensure minimum assured returns on the investment of the pension funds.

Mamata’s run-in with the Congress goes beyond the brush Pranab Mukherjee had with the Trinamool Congress representative in the Union cabinet — railway minister Dinesh Trivedi — at the meeting that finalised the FDI decision and this annoyed the Trinamool chief.

A rattled Mukherjee is believed to have dismissed Trivedi’s opposition to FDI by reminding him that this was his first stint as a minister. At some point the finance minister was so angry that he used words to the effect that if the government fell (on the issue), so be it!

Mamata’s volatile ways apart, she knows she will have to out-left the Left in West Bengal if she has to survive and deliver on her promises.

West Bengal remains a poor state with shocking social indices, and the appeal of the Leftist ideology is embedded deep into the state’s psyche.

Though she faces the challenge of industrialising the state — as were her CPM predecessors — and will need to invite capital, she cannot afford to have an anti-poor image. This is the compulsion of West Bengal’s politics.

By first announcing the suspension of the FDI-in-retail decision in Kolkata before Mukherjee could get to it, Mamata jumped the gun and took credit for the turnaround.

In the process, she also upstaged the opposition parties, which would have otherwise hogged all the credit.

One reason why the BJP could not pose a real challenge to UPA I was that the Left parties had usurped the space of the main opposition force. And now to the UPA II, Mamata is trying to be what the Left was to the UPA I.