In the Gujarat of 2022, a triangular electoral battle - Hindustan Times
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In the Gujarat of 2022, a triangular electoral battle

Nov 06, 2022 02:20 PM IST

The BJP, which has been in power since 1998, enters the race with an edge, the AAP enters as an aspirational force; and the Congress, with an attempt to repeat its 2017 showing. And as is with Indian politics, it’s not over until it’s over

For many Indians, 1990 is a generation away. Televisions, telephones and private cars were a privilege accorded only to a select few, liberalisation was yet to free the ordinary citizen from the imposed austerity of a socialist hangover, and the social fabric was stretched by competing mobilisations around religious and caste-based movements. It was also the last time Gujarat saw a genuine three-player electoral contest.

The BJP enters the race as the favourite. It has excellent ties with large community groups in the state, a stable government and a record of bringing big-ticket industrial projects to the state. (PTI/Representative Image) PREMIUM
The BJP enters the race as the favourite. It has excellent ties with large community groups in the state, a stable government and a record of bringing big-ticket industrial projects to the state. (PTI/Representative Image)

Three decades down the road, the electoral arena looks very different. The third player is no longer the locally rooted Janata Dal, but a new entrant, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which got a taste of power in the state for the first time in 1990, has not lost an election in the state since. And, the Congress has atrophied from a mighty force with stable community vote bases to an outfit limited to some pockets and without a popular face. Nevertheless, in a state with a traditionally bipolar polity and largely stable vote bases – with the exception of 2017, the BJP gets around 48-49% of the vote and the Congress just under 40% – the prospect of a triangular fight has energised the electorate, thrown up new political equations in usually moribund contests, and prompted all three players to invest significant time and energy in their campaigns. This may seem par for the course in an Indian election, but is a big deal for a state where an election has not been competitive in decades and it took a once-in-a-generation confluence of events and discontents for the Congress to give the BJP a run for its money five years ago. What it has done is not only make the race far more exciting but also ensured that the fight for the second place will be, in some respects, even fiercer than the one for the chief minister (CM)’s chair. But first, a look at the state of play.

The BJP enters the race as the favourite. It has excellent ties with large community groups in the state, a stable government and a record of bringing big-ticket industrial projects to the state. CM Bhupendra Patel is seen as an efficient, if somewhat low-key, administrator and faces no major dissidence in the party ranks. Unlike 2017, neither traders nor farmers are particularly angry with the party, teething problems with the Goods and Services Tax have been ironed out and basic income guarantees have provided a safety net for cultivators. And, it continues to have an edge with the enduring personal connection of Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah with Gujaratis.

The state is important to the BJP for it is from here that Modi’s political journey began with the invocation of Gujarati asmita (pride). It holds a central place in the party’s development agenda for it is a promise of replicating the Gujarat model nationally that propelled the party to sweep to power in 2014. And, barring possibly Uttar Pradesh, it remains the most important state election for the PM and the BJP brass, and definitely the most prestigious. This is the BJP’s fortress, and as the nation saw in the dying stages of the 2017 election campaign, the party leadership will invest every last ounce of energy to protect it.

This is not to say there aren’t challenges. No CM after Modi has been able to replicate his charisma and ground connect. Despite no major mobilisation, discontent continues to simmer about rising prices and lingering unemployment. And, for many legislators who have been winning for the better part of three decades, there is also a groundswell of local anti-incumbency. It is precisely to blunt this sentiment that the BJP virtually changed its entire council of ministers (and CM) last year, a strategy that it also successfully deployed, though on a much smaller scale, in Uttarakhand earlier this year. Barring some major reverses in the campaign stretch and snowballing of localised anger about tragedies – such as the death of 135 people in a bridge collapse in north Gujarat last week or the death of 40-odd people due to adulterated alcohol in Botad earlier this year – the BJP begins with an edge.

For the Congress, the challenges are steeper. The party is only a shadow of the robust political machine that ran an energetic and unprecedented race in 2017, mobilising farm and trader anger, mobilised backward and Dalit groups and effectively countered the BJP’s development pitch with sharp responses and slogans. The Patidar agitation for reservation – which helped the party pick up seats in rural Saurashtra for the first time in two decades – has largely been extinguished and the Congress has lost key caste-group leaders such as Hardik Patel and Alpesh Thakor to the BJP. Rahul Gandhi, who received a tremendous response in his 2017 campaign, has been largely absent from the state in recent years and his Bharat Jodo Yatra is not scheduled to touch the state. This is not to say that the party can be written off – after all, even in the heydays of then CM Modi, the Congress continued to receive around 40% of the vote and secured 50-odd seats – and it continues to have a base among poorer people, tribal and Dalit communities and in rural regions, especially in the northern districts of the state. But the lack of a popular pan-state face will hurt the party even as state unit chief Jagdish Thakor tries to stitch together a wide social coalition and run a relatively quiet but efficient campaign.

In sharp contrast the third entrant, the AAP, has entered the state with a splash. It has set an energetic pace and attempted to set the agenda based on its record of delivering effective governance and delivery of amenities such as education, health care and electricity, prompting at times even the BJP to respond to it. It has chosen to campaign on what is essentially an aspirational agenda (better schools, better health care, cheaper power and water) and is hoping that unhappiness with the BJP’s local legislators in several seats will help it open its account –the first large state in which it will do so. After its successful outing in Punjab, the AAP will be hoping to again upend a stable two-party polity and benefit from an electorate tired of the same political options. Unlike the Congress, it has declared a chief ministerial candidate early in the campaign and will hope to use the clean image of former journalist Isudan Gadhvi (and his background as a Other Backward Class leader) to gain new voters and erase the controversy raked up by its state unit chief Gopal Italia. But it remains to be seen just how effectively it’s able to attract voters from two parties with stable bases, whether it focusses on urban centres such as Surat (where it did well in the civic polls last year) that will hurt the BJP, or rural regions that are usual Congress strongholds, or marginal seats that flipped from the BJP to the Congress in the last election but with slim margins.

Whatever the outcome is on December 8, three things will be important to look for. One, in a prestige battle for the BJP, margins and vote shares will be key. Any dip for the party will be seen as an indictment of the local leadership. Two, it’s pivotal for the Congress to hold on to its number 2 position, even if it doesn’t win. If it slips, expect a churn in national Opposition formations with more parties challenging its leadership. And three, for the increasingly embattled AAP, it’s important to do well to establish itself as a national alternative and a genuine centrist player. As the old adage goes, no contest in Indian politics can be taken for granted.

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    History has an uncanny way of intruding into contemporary life and shaping our public conversation. A new controversy emerged recently over the relationship between Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose.

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