From the IPL to the Indian Parliamentary League

I landed in Delhi this morning for the IPL: the Indian Parliamentary League. This past evening, on Sunday, June 1, I was in Bangalore for the other IPL: the Indian Premier League. It was a delight to see Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) win, and I hope this heralds a good week.

I’m more a soccer fan than a cricket fan, I must confess, and I don’t usually have club loyalties. I don’t follow the EPL or the IPL with fervour and prefer matches – whether the FIFA World Cup or limited-overs cricket – where countries play each other. This year, persuaded by my 18-year-old daughter, I made an exception for the IPL. Together, father and daughter saw two games at the Eden Gardens and then flew to Bangalore for the final.

We politely refused KKR’s gracious offer to be guests in the team owner’s box. There’s nothing like watching a sports game in the midst of ordinary crowds and enthusiasts, and cheering with a thousand others. That’s what we did on Sunday.

I expected Robin Uthappa, the Bangalore boy who’s been so devastatingly good for KKR this season, to fire away in the final. Inexplicably he failed. Two unlikely heroes emerged. Wriddhiman Saha, a tiny young man from Siliguri, north Bengal, and resident of Rajarhat, a new township near Kolkata, played an unbelievable innings for King’s XI Punjab. Next Manish Pandey, a lad from Nainital who lives in Bangalore and plays for Karnataka in the Ranji Trophy, delivered a spellbinding 94 for KKR. It was a pulsating contest, made sweeter by Kolkata’s victory.

The new parliamentary session begins this week. In the days and weeks and months and years to come, the 16th Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha will throw up new and unlikely stars. The opposition is now in government but the old government is not quite in opposition. The BJP will depend on its new batting order to put up a good score. The Congress, with only 44 seats, is short of piercing fast bowlers; it will be for parties such as the AIADMK, the Trinamool Congress and the BJD to spin a web around the new government and confound it with their googlies. Inevitably, hitherto unheralded parliamentary heroes will emerge. The game is on.

Derek O’Brien
Member of Parliament
Chief Whip in the Rajya Sabha and National Spokesperson, Trinamool Congress

Congress 44: Is it time for a reverse merger?

The Congress is down to 44 seats in the Lok Sabha, a staggering loss of 162 seats since 2009. How has this happened? To understand it, one needs to see the event in context.

In its long and chequered history, the Congress has split several times. I am not referring to the historical Congress of the freedom movement but the more recent political party dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi family. Every state leader who has broken away from the Congress in recent memory has had to go back, tail between legs.

The First Citizen of India, in an earlier incarnation, set up his own breakaway party in West Bengal, contested all 294 seats in the 1987 assembly election and won precisely nothing. The outgoing Finance Minister of India was member of a party that came out of the Congress in Tamil Nadu in 1996. Less than a decade later, the bravado was gone. He was trying to find his way back. Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra set up his party in 1999, but was allying with the Congress in five years. Today, his party, the NCP, is an also-ran, a small appendage of a shrinking Congress.

The one and only leader, since Independence, who has moved away from the Congress and succeeded is Mamata Banerjee. The Trinamool Congress won 34 seats in West Bengal, only 10 seats lower than the Congress’ all-India figure. The party which was started on January 1, 1998, won 19 Lok Sabha seats in 2009, and a thumping majority in the West Bengal Assembly in 2011. Both these famous victories were won when the Trinamool was in alliance with the Congress. What makes the 2014 win even more satisfying is that the party won 34 seats and 40% of the vote share, all on its own.

In the old days, the Congress inevitably subsumed breakaway groups and dissident parties as these groups and parties lost vitality. Today, the Congress itself is on the ropes. Is it time for a reverse merger? The Congress is a party in search of strong leaders. It has driven out its strong leaders. Congress workers know where to find them.

Derek O’Brien
Member of Parliament
Chief Whip in the Rajya Sabha and National Spokesperson, Trinamool Congress