Hello, it's Mamata, the telemarketer of no-confidence

Oh, what a difference two months makes. Then Mamata Banerjee was pouting in Kolkata waiting for the Prime Minister or Sonia Gandhi to pick up the phone and call her. Now she is hitting the phone all day long like a telemarketer selling a no-confidence motion. And no one seems terribly keen to admit they received her call. Sushma Swaraj has gone mum about an alleged call from Didi. The CPI’s Gurudas Dasgupta will neither confirm nor deny it.  All this skullduggery has turned a perfectly ordinary telephone call into some kind of strange cross-connection conspiracy. Didi’s man in the Rajya Sabha, Derek O’Brien tweeted “If the PM invites SushmaSwarajbjp for dinner it’s kosher, but when Mamata talks to her on the phone people get their balls in a twist.” Well, it’s not just people. The newspapers also have quotes from a “Trinamool MP who insisted on anonymity”. Honestly, it’s not illegal for a political party, even one with just 19 MPs, to plot a no-confidence motion against a government that it says has lost the moral right to rule.  It’s not like they are discussing 2G spectrum prices. So why this game of Chinese whispers? As The Telegraph writes “(B)oth parties have ended up making a purported telephone conversation – a perfectly normal mode of communication among legitimate political parties in the free world – look not only exceptional but also something that is not discussed in polite company.” [caption id=“attachment_528991” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Is Mamata more concerned about the symbolism of her plan than actually unseating the UPA government?[/caption] The problem for Mamata is after months of threatening to leave the UPA she has finally jumped. And right now she has little to show for her bluster. Her exit won’t lower LPG cylinder prices. She had fired her own rail minister to stall a rise in rail fares. Her departure cleared the way for those fares to go up as well. And on the home front she finally succumbed and allowed taxis, private buses and minibuses to raise their fares.  And her unilateral decision to defer the cable TV digitization deadline by five months is hardly anything to set the Hoogly on fire. Mamata has painted herself into a political corner. And she’s reacting the only way she knows how – with a lot of bluster, projecting herself as a far bigger leader than what she’s actually able to deliver. The Congress is trying to call her bluff scoffing that no party with just 19 Lok Sabha members can really move a no-confidence motion against the government. But such simple arithmetic never dissuades Didi. So Mamata can cause a huge political storm by nominating Abdul Kalam for president without checking and double-checking her numbers. Ultimately that turned out to be a storm in a teacup. But undeterred, our lady in white presses on. Her modus operandi seems to be declare her move first and then try and get the numbers later. When it works out, it’s great. But every misfired political salvo queers the pitch vis a vis the allies she will need for a no-confidence motion. Mamata hopes that by forcing the issue into the open, she will be able to name and shame the parties who have to stand up and be counted or come up with convoluted responses like the CPM’s Prakash Karat about why they won’t support it. “This is not a numbers fight,” said former Railways Minister Mukul Roy. “This fight will make it clear who are in support of Delhi’s anti-people policies and who are against them.” Her problem is the BJP which has the numbers to credibly initiate a no-confidence motion has little incentive to let her romp home with the glory. They have certainly wooed her since she left the UPA  and don’t want to rebuff her but  that does not mean they want to be seen as playing second fiddle to her.  The Bengali tabloid Ebela said a section of the NDA feels that singing the twice-departed-in-a-huff-from-NDA Mamata’s tune would be “political foolhardiness.” But the most foolhardy one is Mamata herself. Mamata hopes that like Chandrababu Naidu in the past she can gouge special treatment for her state whether she is with the NDA or the UPA. But by being belligerently truculent she has singlehandedly turned herself into a political hot potato. Bengali daily Ei Shomoy says Mamata’s real goal in starting this fire now is to send out smoke signals that she’s ready for early Lok Sabha elections.  This is her opening bugle. Her gambit, if it fails, can be a blessing in disguise for the UPA, giving it another six months of life. But Didi does not really care about that. She thrives on a politics of symbolism rather than real results. She wants to be able to say she fired the first shot. It does not really matter to her if it proves to be a blank.