The arrival of a new force in Tripura

In India’s mainstream political imagination, Tripura is often on the periphery. This may stem from the tyranny of distance from the national Capital, and its location in the often-neglected Northeast, but the state’s diverse social landscape, strategic location, and history makes it politically crucial. For long, the state’s political history was marked by Left domination — and the presence of Manik Sarkar as a steady hand at the helm of governance. The Congress was the other pole in the state, but in 2018, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sprung a surprise by sweeping the state polls in a remarkable victory. The Congress’s political fortunes sank further when party chief and a member of the former royal family of the state, Pradyot Manikya Deb Burman, quit and set up his own party, The Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance. This force has now marked its political arrival by winning 18 of the 28 seats in autonomous district councils, ahead of all the other forces in the state.

Mr Burman’s victory is significant for two reasons. One, representing the indigenous tribal community, his party poses a challenge to what has been a polity dominated largely by the state’s majority Bengalispeakers, and has successfully overwhelmed other smaller tribal formations — one of which is in an alliance with the BJP. Two, Mr Burman was among the younger leaders who quit the Congress because of the incoherence at the top of the party, uncertainty over leadership, and its ideologically vacillating positions. But he chose to set up his own force, rather than join an existing outfit. Tripura’s unique social mosaic, and his own background as a royal, allowed him to do so. But it is a lesson to the Congress — if you let talent go, the talent will find a platform but the party will shrink further.