NOT SO FAST, RAHUL
BUOYED BY ANTI-INCUMBENCY AND CASTE DISSATISFACTION, IS THE CONGRESS BEING TOO OPTIMISTIC ABOUT ITS APPEAL TO GUJARATI VOTERS?
Rahul Gandhi has wowed the crowds in the state, but will his party also get the votes?
Party workers and volunteers are flocking towards the Gujarat Pradesh Congress office in Ahmedabad’s affluent Paldi area. For the first time in the last three state elections, the Congress believes it has a genuine chance when polls open on December 9 to defeat the BJP. Rahul Gandhi has been drawing large crowds. And part of the confidence also stems from the potential effect on the elections of three young disruptors—Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mevani—who command significant followings in their respective castes and are opposed to the BJP.
Is the BJP in trouble in a state it has controlled, except for a brief, negligible period, since 1995? Rajdeep Sardesai, consulting editor at the India Today Group, argues that “only anger can unseat the BJP in Gujarat and at the moment there is unhappiness at most rather than outright anger”. Veteran Gujarati journalist Kanti Patel, who has been covering state elections for 35 years, is even more dismissive. “There might be anti-incumbency against the BJP,” he says. “But with Narendra Modi as the party’s face, the BJP will win comfortably. The only thing that the party has to guard against is its apparent arrogance.”
The obstacles to a Congress win are significant.
POOR TICKET DISTRIBUTION
In the past three Gujarat assembly polls, the Congress has failed at distributing tickets while keeping those it has disappointed on board. In both 2007 and 2012, those who had lost out on tickets responded with violence at the party headquarters. Insiders estimate that mistakes in ticket distribution have cost the Congress at least 30 seats in previous elections. Under national secretary Ashok Gehlot and his no-nonsense deputies, Bharatsinh Solanki and Shaktisinh Gohil, ticket distribution is expected to be more transparent. But the party’s hand is forced. It must give its 44 sitting MLAs tickets, having lost 13 MLAs to the BJP in the rebellion led by former Congress leader Shankersinh Vaghela.
Nishit Vyas, Gujarat Congress general secretary, acknowledges the need to be “careful that ticketless malcontents don’t react negatively”. This could prove to be easier said than done if it is true, as one Congress leader confesses anonymously, that “in this election cycle there are 15 to 20 contenders for almost each seat in rural areas”.
Dealing with Thakore, Patel, and Mevani may also prove difficult, with all three reportedly striking deals with the Congress leadership for ticket allocations. Thakore, in particular, is said to be unrelenting. Patel, some insiders claim, has asked for 15-20 tickets. And while Mevani has been the most accommodating, between them the trio want control over at least 40 seats.
THE HARDIK AND ALPESH QUESTION
While on paper the prospect of Patel, Thakore and Mevani being in the Congress corner is enticing, in reality their interests clash. For instance, in north and central Gujarat, and some crucial districts in Saurashtra, Thakore and the Congress enjoy a strong following in the OBC Kshatriya community. At the village level, though, the Patels are traditionally in conflict with OBC Kshatriyas. When the two communities have united in the past, it has been because the BJP has persuaded them that their interests are best served by Hindu solidarity.
How will the Congress handle their competing demands? In major parts of rural Gujarat, the Patels are opposed by nearly all OBC castes, not just OBC Kshatriyas. The BJP, party workers say, is already planning to divide the electorate along caste lines in areas where the Congress’s Patel candidate, handpicked by Hardik, enjoys strong support.
Gehlot, the party’s Gujarat in-charge whose leadership has been essential to the Congress’s apparent resurgence, insists that the “BJP’s attempts at polarisation along caste and communal lines won’t succeed because anger on various counts against the BJP has united the people”. The feeling of anti-incumbency, many in the Congress claim, is so strong that caste divisions can be papered over. Still, as many as 38 Patel organisations, both small and large, have come out in opposition to Hardik, describing him as a politically ambitious, self-interested leader who continues to mislead the Patel community when the BJP state government has already acceded to most of his demands.
As with Hardik, a significant number of Thakores dispute Alpesh’s leadership of the community. Former followers of his Gujarat Thakore Sena have complained that Alpesh vowed he was a social worker and would never enter party politics. The BJP is keen to emphasise their sense of betrayal. Bharat Pandya, a spokesman for the Gujarat BJP, says, in obvious reference to Hardik and Alpesh, that “it’s not as easy as the political pundits think to maintain a grip over large communities”. Natuji Thakore, the BJP’s OBC Kshatriya face, is more direct, claiming that “Alpesh’s strength is highly overrated”.
CONGRESS’S URBAN NIGHTMARE
Even if the Congress is able to resolve some of the issues outlined above, how will it reverse the BJP’s dominance of 100 urban and semi-urban seats? A dominance that was proven in 2012 when the BJP won nearly every seat in cities like Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, and Rajkot, though it suffered heavily in rural north and central Gujarat.
In the 2015 civic polls, after the emergence of Hardik Patel, the BJP won just eight of the 31 district panchayats and 80 of the 230 taluka panchayats, but held sway in urban areas, winning all seven municipal corporations. Supporters argue that the BJP’s commitment to development has been evident over the last few decades, that there is a track record at both state and national level.
The proposal to raise the Narmada dam to its full height of 138 metres, for example, was pending for a decade under the UPA at the Centre until Modi became prime minister. In 2012, as Gujarat chief minister, Modi announced a project to divert the excess waters of the Narmada stored in the Sardar Sarovar dam to 115 dams to ease drought-like conditions in some 5,000 villages in Saurashtra. As prime minister, he followed through, inaugurating the first phase of the Saurashtra Narmada Avataran Irrigation (SAUNI) Yojana in 2016. The project, the BJP says, is a boon to farmers and will help the party counter Congress attacks in rural Saurashtra.
MODI AND HINDUTVA
Finally, for all the Congress’s tom-tomming of anti-incumbency, it knows that Modi has attained almost mythical status in his home state. So much of what some call ‘Gujarati pride’ is invested in the image of Modi as leader. A senior Congress figure admitted that all the progress his party has made in the last three months “could collapse like a house of cards in the face of Modi’s appeal. It is the factor that we most fear”.
And in the state known as the laboratory of Hindutva, BJP president Amit Shah is not shy about playing the Hindutva card. A clumsy attempt has already been made, trying to link Congress Rajya Sabha member and Sonia Gandhi confidante Ahmed Patel to ISIS via a suspected operative who worked in a Bharuch hospital where Patel had been a trustee. Another Shah trump card is D.G. Vanzara, a former deputy inspector general of the Gujarat police and popular ‘encounter cop’. He spent eight years in prison, suspected of extra-judicial killings. It made him a hero among many Hindus. His popularity, the BJP believes, can negate the Congress’s caste strategy.
If Modi is the figurehead, Shah’s tactics and expert booth management mean it is hard to see how the Congress’s dream of taking Gujarat will be realised.