The Hindu : Alternative voices

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Nov 03, 2002

Opinion

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Alternative voices

From Gandhians to Marxists, they have come together to form the Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti to campaign for the BJP's ouster.

POLITICAL PUNDITS are weighing the factors that will influence the election outcome. Candidate selection, caste equations, Hindutva, or anti-Hindutva factors. Outside this, there are voices of hope and despair. Hope that there will be change and despair that even change will not make a real difference.

Valjibhai Patel, a Dalit leader who runs the Council for Social Justice in Ahmedabad, says that the BJP and the Congress are two sides of a coin. Neither will address the needs of the people. Achyut Yagnik, social activist, agrees with him. In fact, he holds the Congress responsible for communalising politics. But, in the current environment, he said the Congress was the least bad option.

It would at least not highjack the institutions of state that had narrowed the space.

Seeking to expand this space is a broad coalition of opinion from Gandhians to Marxists who have come together to actively campaign for the ouster of the BJP. The Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti, an anti-BJP forum, comprises 40 groups and includes the Gandhian, Chunnibhai Vaidya, and the socialist, Prakash Shah, both of whom did time in jail during the Emergency; social activist and editor of Naya Marg, Indubhai Jani, Dalit groups, followers of Vivekananda, NGOs and left-wing trade unions.

They understand that their campaign, so far conducted in Surat, Surendranagar, Palanpur and Bharuch, is effectively a campaign in support of the Congress and that the Congress in Gujarat has a lot to answer for and little to offer. But, Mr. Jani said, at least it would be a Government which had not assisted in the violence.

He believes that in a political environment which offers no third alternative the only hope is that groups such as the Gujarat Lok Sangharsh Samiti will also be able to generate a movement for governmental accountability.

Mr. Shah said that despite a lifetime spent opposing the Congress he feels that in Gujarat today voices like his will find a little space.

The loud din of party politics, well-funded election campaigns, and vote bank calculations seem to drown out these voices. But they persist, and not to do so would be tantamount to losing hope.

For, there are those like Nisar Ansari, a Congressman and formerly a city corporator representing the volatile Gomtipur area of Ahmedabad, who believe that it is only people who can make a difference in the State. — A.M.

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