Mamata Banerjee is in the Left's thrall, her only mission is to out-Left the Left

No, says the Trinamool Congress, to almost any move to take the country forward. This habitual naysayer, therefore, reduces the ruling United Progressive Alliance, of which it is the second-largest constituent, to an effective minority within the Lok Sabha on all such reformist moves. This has to change. The Trinamool Congress has opposed the land acquisition Bill, locating a nuclear plant in West Bengal, opening up organised retail to foreign investment and, now, the Bill that had won the Opposition’s support to set up a regulator for pensions. In this, the Trinamool mirrors the stand of the Left, her nemesis in her primary theatre of operations, West Bengal. The Trinamool and its leader Mamata Banerjee’s biggest political achievement is to have ended the Left Front’s successful run of seven terms in office. But, in the process of opposing the Left, Ms Banerjee has herself been ideologically colonised and converted into a clone of the Left. The only political game she can think of is to be more Left than the Left itself. It might be interesting to consider this a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome, in which hostages begin to empathise with their captors. The basic conflict in the relationship between the two groups is apparently transmuted by the subjugated group assuming the values and objectives of the victor.

In the Trinamool’s case, for the bulk of its political career, it had been subjugated by the Left. Over this period, it seems to have imbibed the Left’s outdated worldview, namely, that nothing constructive is possible in this world and the only project worth pursuing is opposing any attempt to build prosperity, an activity that is, by definition, neoliberal and anti-people. Its political practice, too, mimics the Left’s violence. The Trinamool and its leader Ms Banerjee do not seem to have realised that they have vanquished the Left in the state and are not just free, but actually obliged, to think outside the Left framework. More than a special package for West Bengal, Ms Banerjee needs freedom from her opponents’ ideological thrall. She must set a new agenda, not be a more fervent champion of the Left’s agenda. The sooner she realises this, the better for her, West Bengal and the UPA.