Dear Congress, Your Stockholm Syndrome Is Showing

"They have changed their history because of me ... I can fight alone, but they cannot. All of them have come together to fight Mamata ..."

On Saturday, as I sat watching the live telecast of Mamata Banerjee's public meeting in Barjora, Bankura, her words and mannerisms struck me. When you have worked with a person and a political leader for so long, you learn to read between the lines and anticipate emotions. As she spoke the words I have quoted above, I could sense a variety of feelings - anger, anguish, combativeness, the old willingness and courage to fight alone, and vindication.

The alliance between the Congress and the CPI(M) has evoked all of these emotions in Mamata Banerjee. Please note that I have not used the word "worried", because she is not worried - and we in the Trinamool Congress are not worried - by the coming together of these parties. Our record in government over the past five years speaks for itself. We remain confident that the people will bless us with a second term and a large, large majority in the assembly election.

Why then have I used all those words? I will take you back to the mid-1990s, when Mamata Banerjee was fighting a lone battle against the CPI(M)-led government and being consistently sabotaged by her then colleagues in the Congress, many of whom are in the same clique that has pushed the Congress into alliance with the CPI(M). These political operators (I refuse to grace them by calling them "political leaders") were virtually on the payroll of CPI(M) party bosses. Their politics was based on the blood of innocent party workers. From the 1950s to 2011, mostly after the CPI(M) came to power in 1977, the Communists are estimated to have killed some 55,000 Congress and later Trinamool activists.
 But all this made no difference to the brokers and middlemen in the Congress, who refused to take on the CPI(M) and refused to let Mamata Banerjee do so. Distraught, she had to leave the party and found Trinamool in 1998. Gradually, the majority of Congress workers came to join her, and the old party was left a caricature. Today, that caricature party has "forgotten its history" (Mamata Banerjee's words to me, a few days ago) and tied up with the CPI(M) in an alliance minus ideology or principle.

In 1989, in an election Mamata Banerjee remembers very well, the CPI(M) ran a nasty campaign in West Bengal, coining slogans such as "Gali gali mein shor hai, Rajiv Gandhi chor hai...(There's a cry on the streets, Rajiv Gandhi is a thief ...)" Where has all that gone now? She shrugged her shoulders, confident that the people of Bengal would indicate what they thought of this desperate alliance, born of nothing but hate and hostility for one individual - Mamata Banerjee.

A rootless Congress leadership has surrendered what remains of the party in West Bengal to the CPI(M). To my mind, this is the political equivalent of the Stockholm syndrome: where the hijacked willingly gives in to and embraces the cause of the hijacker. This unreal mindset is matched by the BJP, which has no leaders and faces of consequence in West Bengal. It has not just imported workers and campaign crew, but also sought to transplant its politics of religious animosity to our state. Trinamool will not let it succeed.

In contrast to the abuse and vilification that the CPI(M) and the Congress - or the Comrades and the Cong-rades, as I put it - as well as the BJP have made their stock-in-trade, Trinamool is running a positive, optimistic campaign, focusing on our achievements and on what remains to be done. Our issue is simply this: "Development. Development. Development." Trinamool inherited a debt-ridden state and a brutalised economy from the Communists; in the past five years we have strived to restore the state to health.
 In four years, the state's tax collection has doubled. Social welfare programmes such as Kanyashree, designed to protect the girl child and help her from infancy through her education, have come to cover 3.1 million girls and been recognised by UNICEF. In agriculture, West Bengal has received the Krishi Karman Award for four years consecutively, unparalleled in India. I can go on and on, but that will only be a listing.

More than a tabulation of schemes and of statistics, there is the chemistry: the relationship of implicit trust between the people of West Bengal and Mamata Banerjee. Even if they occasionally disagree with her, ordinary people rarely if ever question her motives or intentions. They know she means well and is working 24/7 without any personal benefit in mind. This cannot be said for the fixers and brokers in the CPI(M) and the Congress. That is the key difference between the two sides.

This warm reality is completely lost on the Congress and the CPI(M), and more so on the cynical and manipulative media partner who has arranged their alliance and is practically running the CPI(M)-Congress campaign. But more of him on May 19, when the votes are counted. Let him worry about how the alliance will fare. In 2011, the Congress and the CPI(M)-led Left Front collectively won 104 seats in an assembly of 294. That's where they start from. Let's see where they end up.

Derek O'Brien is leader, Parliamentary party Trinamool Congress (RS), and Chief National spokesperson of the party.

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