Shashi Tharoor Writes From Tmc To Shiv Sena Defections

The dust has barely settled on the West Bengal Legislative Assembly elections, yet the landscape of its politics has been transformed by a tectonic internal collapse of the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC). Beyond its poll defeat, the party is experiencing an existential mutiny: Dozens of MLAs, a massive exodus of local municipal councillors, and 20 Members of Parliament have broken away to align with the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Meanwhile, two-thirds of the Thackeray-led Shiv Sena MPs have crossed over to Shinde’s, and rumours swirl around other parties.

The undercurrents are altogether familiar. Widespread public perception points to an orchestrated transition, with the BJP acting as a highly effective conductor. But this column is not a post-mortem of party splits, nor a lament for how the anti-defection law is being systematically bypassed in New Delhi. Instead, this dramatic fragmentation — coming on the heels of nearly a decade of similar wholesale desertions from the Indian National Congress and various regional satrapies, all to the ruling party — demands that we pause and confront a foundational question: What, ultimately, is politics for?

In its truest sense, politics is the structural framework through which human beings organise themselves to build a better society, a more equitable economy, and a stronger nation. It is the means to achieving a shared civilisational end. To enter the political arena, therefore, requires a vision, an answer to a fundamental question: What makes a better India?

For some, that vision is anchored in welfare economics, secularism, and the decentralisation of power; others may prefer market liberalisation, national security, and cultural nationalism. These distinct viewpoints are precisely why political parties exist. A party is meant to be a laboratory of ideas, an ideological collective where individuals bind themselves to a specific set of principles, policies, and values to advance them legislatively. You join a party because its platform reflects your preferred blueprint for the country. In a parliamentary system, the party is the vehicle for your vision of a better India.

When we look at the recent events, or the long parade of defectors over the last decade who have traded their original party colours for a seat in the Union Cabinet, we find an absolute absence of principle. Not a single major defection in recent memory has been preceded by an ideological epiphany. We have not seen leaders resign because they suddenly realised they prefer right-wing economics over centre-left welfarism, or because they had a profound change of heart regarding federalism.

Instead, the ideological switch is flicked instantaneously. The rhetoric of a lifetime is discarded overnight. These politicians are animated entirely by the pursuit of power for its own sake, stripping the profession of even the pretence of public purpose. India’s political contestation has transitioned from a battle of ideas into a marketplace of personal profit.

When a politician defects from a defeated party to a triumphant one, he is making a purely transaction-based calculation. In the case of the TMC split, rebel leaders openly admit that staying in the opposition exposes them to public anger, local vulnerabilities, and the cold reality of central investigative scrutiny. Joining or supporting the ruling establishment offers an immediate insurance policy, and allegedly, lucre.

This fundamentally subverts the democratic mandate. When citizens vote, they do not usually just vote for a name; they vote for a platform, a promise, and a counterweight to the ruling power. When an elected representative defects, they effectively erase the votes of thousands of citizens. They treat the public mandate as personal equity, a commodity to be bartered for a ministerial berth or a corporate concession. If political allegiance can be bought, coerced, or traded without an iota of accountability, then the ballot box becomes a fraud on the public and politics is reduced to a self-serving instrument of a transactional elite.

This brings us to the most important question: If politics is just about individual advancement, why do we maintain the expensive, elaborate theatre of political parties and a parliamentary system? Our system requires a robust Treasury bench to govern and a principled Opposition to question and challenge power, with political parties as the scaffolding, ensuring that debates are around policy differences rather than personalities.

However, if parties are merely vessels used to secure a ticket, only to be discarded the moment the wind changes direction, the system collapses. Parliament transforms from a deliberate assembly into a revolving door of opportunism. The anti-defection law — originally designed to prevent the infamous “Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram” culture of the 1960s — has been reduced to a subvertible hurdle. Politicians no longer jump ship one by one; they manufacture a two-thirds split, shifting factions to preserve their seats while changing their masters. This is politics decoupled from any vision for India.

The spectacle of TMC MPs huddling in Delhi to pledge allegiance to the NDA is not an isolated incident of political manoeuvring; it is a symptom of a deeper, systemic rot. It is the logical conclusion of a political culture that rewards victory at any cost and treats morality as an affliction of the powerless. If India is to fulfil the hopes of 1947, its political class must remember what politics was invented for. It cannot remain an unprincipled scramble for the spoils of office. We need to foster a political environment where defection carries an irreversible social and electoral stigma; where leaving a party over anything less than a profound, demonstrable disagreement on policy is recognised for what it is: An act of public betrayal.

Until the principles of ideology and public service are restored to the centre of our political contestation, our democratic institutions will continue to lose their moral authority — unless voters force those who seek their votes to prove that they are fighting for a better India, rather than just a better seat at the table.

The writer is a fourth-term Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram