The Hindu : Dissecting the Gujarat verdict

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 17, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Dissecting the Gujarat verdict

THE FACT THAT the BJP's share of votes in the Gujarat elections crossed the 50 per cent threshold — for the first time in the State — should be seen as significant and is perhaps the fallout of the bi-polar nature of the contest that was witnessed in the State. But beneath the apparent indicators is the fact that at least 12 nominees of the ruling party, including a former Chief Minister, Suresh Mehta, were defeated. Mr. Mehta's defeat in Kutch, from where the Congress managed to win four of the six Assembly seats, is a clear message that the people in this region were not swayed by the majoritarian slogans — the mainstay of the BJP's election agenda — and instead decided to punish the incumbent (and his party) for mismanaging relief operations after the devastating earthquake that struck in January 2001. The same holds true for several other members of the Narendra Modi Cabinet. Anti-incumbency, certainly, was a factor that guided the choice of voters in several constituencies across Gujarat leading to the defeat of at least ten former Ministers and also the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker of the dissolved House. That the Congress as a party managed to wrest all these seats despite the poor overall performance is a factor that cannot be glossed over.

This, in turn, should lead to the logical question: why were the results different elsewhere in the State? In Saurashtra, for instance, from where the BJP had secured 45 of the 52 seats in the last elections, the ruling party was down to just 37 this time. This is a region where Godhra had no impact at all. But then, Saurashtra was also a region where the Congress was expected to inflict a lot more damage this time (for a variety of reasons) but this did not happen. The inability (or refusal) of the Congress to put in place a strategy guided by the social chemistry — KHAM — that had kept the party afloat across Gujarat (and particularly in Saurashtra) in this election was perhaps behind the party's tally being restricted to just 14. The Congress, it now appears, had refrained from putting the KHAM strategy to work because its leaders were guided by the consideration that the party could make inroads this time among the Kurmis (the Patels), a numerically strong caste group, there after the BJP had marginalised Keshubhai Patel. The fact is that this assumption did not work in Saurashtra. It is another matter that the BJP too suffered a considerable setback in Saurashtra and this could be attributed to the fact that the region as a whole did not witness the kind of mobilisation by the BJP and its Sangh Parivar associates post-Godhra. The strategy adopted by the BJP to conjure up fears about the Hindu faith being in danger was not played out in Saurashtra.

It is in this context that the outcome of the December 12 polls in the districts of Panchmahals (of which Godhra is the district headquarters), Dahod and Vadodara is significant. The 26 seats from these three districts have been bagged by the BJP and these were places where the post-Godhra violence went on unabated for days on end. Similarly, the Dangs, once again the place where the Sangh Parivar outfits had engaged in a violent campaign against the Christian missionaries and their institutions (even before Godhra), is another region where the BJP nominees seem to have done well. What is evident from the outcome in Panchmahals and adjoining districts and also from the Dangs is that the Sangh Parivar's strategy to terrorise the members of the minority communities had helped it draw into its fold a substantial section of the Dalits and the Adivasis (two important constituents of the KHAM factor) over the past few years and this helped the BJP improve its tally both in terms of the number of seats and vote percentage in this election despite the scale of discontent against the performance of the Government revealed in the defeat of several prominent members of the Cabinet. These are, indeed, the pointers that need to be internalised to understand the verdict in Gujarat.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

Stories in this Section

Setbacks for the CBI

Dissecting the Gujarat verdict

Extradition & international law

Courts & minority education — II

An exercise in bridging party-govt. divide

Tax reform and human development