#dnaEdit: All is not well

On the face of it, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose party is eyeing West Bengal as its next potential conquest appeared to have made a peace offering to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at the Monday meeting. That four top cabinet ministers — Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Piyush Goyal and Prakash Javadekar — were on hand to greet Banerjee, signalled the importance of the dialogue between the two leaders. Some political analysts interpret the meeting to signal a melting of frost — however temporarily — that had built up between the two leaders over the last nine months. At a broader level however, the exchanges between the two leaders can be read as a tactical move, driven by sheer political and legislative compulsions. It would be naïve to imagine that the tensions lodged within the BJP-TMC relations, with the former in an expansionist mode in West Bengal and the latter facing the heat of the Saradha scam, are going to disappear any time soon. 

Monday’s meeting, if anything, reiterated the political compulsions faced by both parties and their leaders in their respective political domains. For the sake of legislative progress, Modi needs to make up for the shortfall of numbers in the Rajya Sabha. And this necessitates strategic manoeuvrings. As we have noticed, the recent imbroglio over the land acquisition bill and other legislative stand-offs have driven Modi to engage more and more with other regional parties. For instance, though not publicised, Modi held a meeting with the Odisha Chief Minister, Naveen Patnaik, the same day that he met Banerjee. Patnaik, reportedly, made it clear that the central government would have to address the concerns raised by the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in the Bill for the party to endorse the Coal and Mines and Minerals Bills in Parliament. Or consider that last month Modi landed in Baramati in Maharashtra to attend an event organised by the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Next, the Prime Minister attended Saifai in Uttar Pradesh, the home turf of the Samajwadi Party leader, Mulayam Singh Yadav.  

It is equally important to read the Prime Minister’s moves at rapprochement in the context of the various regional parties attempting to cobble together a front to take the BJP on — within and outside Parliament. The tactic of dividing and ruling in Rajya Sabha could well appear tempting to the BJP at this juncture when it is running into hurdles every day in the Upper House. However, the political and electoral contradictions integral to the relations between the BJP and other regional parties could well make Modi’s task of rapprochement, difficult. 

For instance, the Modi-Banerjee meeting, despite the positive signals, did not yield any tangible results. The Prime Minister complimented Banerjee on her performance and assured co-operation by the central government in the development of West Bengal. But he stood firm on not yielding to Banerjee’s request for a moratorium on the over Rs3 lakh crore loan on West Bengal. And that could hardly have pleased Banerjee who earlier knocked on the doors of the UPA government with the same request. To Banerjee’s complaint of having inherited the debt from the Left Front government, Modi replied he, too, is saddled with huge debts bequeathed to his government by his Congress predecessor. Besides, the Prime Minister underlined that a loan waiver for West Bengal would open the floodgates for other regional parties to make similar demands on the central exchequer. 

At the end, let’s consider the Trinamool Congress’s situation. Despite managing to win local elections, the Saradha scam is an albatross around the party’s neck. With an eye on the assembly elections next year, Trinamool’s principal adversary, the BJP, would undoubtedly use Banerjee’s discomfiture to strike deeper roots in West Bengal. So any suspension of hostility between the two warring parties — at this juncture — can only be temporary.