The optics are terrible. They usually are when Mani Shankar Aiyar decides to open his mouth, but this time the timing feels particularly glitchy. Just as the opposition’s "INDIA" bloc was trying to look like a coherent operating system, Aiyar—the Congress party’s perennial bug in the code—decided to hit delete on the hierarchy.
He’s calling Mamata Banerjee the natural leader of the alliance. It’s a direct snub to Rahul Gandhi, and it’s being framed as a "fresh salvo," but let’s be real. This isn't a salvo. It’s a legacy developer intentionally crashing the server because he doesn't like the new UI.
Politics, much like the tech industry, is obsessed with the idea of a "unified platform." You want one interface, one login, one coherent vision to sell to the users—in this case, the voters. But the INDIA bloc has always looked less like a sleek iOS update and more like a collection of open-source projects held together by spit and mutual loathing. Aiyar just pointed out the obvious: the Congress party thinks it owns the kernel, but Mamata Banerjee actually has the processing power.
It’s a classic power-scaling problem. You have the Congress, a massive, slow-moving legacy corporation that hasn't had a hit product in a decade but still insists on the corner office. Then you have the Trinamool Congress (TMC), a scrappy, aggressive regional player that actually knows how to win its local market. Mamata Banerjee isn't interested in being a sub-module. She wants to be the OS.
Aiyar’s comment isn't just a stray thought over tea. It’s a reminder of the friction that makes this entire alliance feel like a beta version that’s nowhere near ready for a public rollout. The trade-off is simple and brutal. If the Congress yields to Mamata, they admit they’re no longer a national brand. If they don’t, they risk the entire coalition splintering before it even hits the 2024 production environment.
We’ve seen this movie before. The "Mani Shankar Aiyar Special" usually involves him saying something elitist or divisive that the BJP’s marketing team turns into a viral campaign within six minutes. He’s the gift that keeps on giving to the incumbent. While the Congress tries to pivot Rahul Gandhi into a "man of the people" via long walks and artisanal social media clips, Aiyar pops up to remind everyone of the old guard’s habit of self-sabotage.
The price tag for this kind of internal leak is high. It isn't just about hurt feelings at the high command. It’s about seat-sharing math. In West Bengal, the friction is a physical thing you can touch. The local Congress workers are being squeezed out by the TMC, and here is a senior Congress leader basically telling them their boss isn't the real boss. It’s a management nightmare. Imagine a Google VP standing on stage and telling the Android team that, actually, Apple has the better idea. You don't get a promotion for that. You get a security escort to the parking lot.
But Aiyar doesn't get the boot. He stays. He lingers. He’s a legacy feature that can’t be uninstalled without breaking the whole system’s internal logic. His "salvo" is a symptom of a deeper hardware failure within the Congress party: the inability to decide if they are the leaders of the opposition or just another node in the network.
Meanwhile, the BJP is watching this play out with the smug satisfaction of a monopoly that just saw its only competitor's board of directors get into a fistfight during an earnings call. They don't even have to write the attack ads anymore. They just have to hit "record" when Aiyar speaks.
The alliance wanted a "Big Tent" strategy. Instead, they got a group of people fighting over who gets to hold the tent poles while the wind is picking up and the stakes are at an all-time high. Aiyar thinks he’s being a realist, an elder statesman offering a cold hard truth about Mamata’s street-fighting credentials. In reality, he’s just adding noise to a signal that was already dangerously weak.
Is Mamata Banerjee the actual leader of the bloc? Maybe. She certainly acts like it. But in a business where perception is the only product that matters, having your own team members doubt the CEO is a quick way to ensure your IPO flops.
The real question isn't whether Aiyar is right, but whether the Congress party actually wants to win, or if they’re just content with being the most prestigious losers in the room.