Feeling the Heat
THE BJP’S FIRST DUO, NARENDRA MODI AND AMIT SHAH, FACE ONE OF THEIR TOUGHEST ELECTORAL BATTLES AS THEY SEEK TO PROTECT THEIR HOME TURF FROM A RESURGENT OPPOSITION
A combative Congress and charismatic opponents threaten BJP’s prospects in PM Modi’s home state
ON OCTOBER 16, MEMBERS OF A spiritual movement called Divine Life Mission gathered for a satsang in Eral village. The venue was the haveli of Harvardhan Singh Chauhan, the erstwhile Thakur of the village. After the satsang, the conversation drifted towards politics. The village is in central Gujarat, a BJP bastion, so Chauhan didn’t expect any surprises when he asked the knot of 15 villagers, including farmers, about the likely result of the coming assembly election. The ambivalent reply shocked him. “Let’s see what’s in store this time,” a member of the group said.
When Chauhan insisted the BJP’s formidable election machinery and Prime Minister Narendra Modi would see them through, one of the farmers shot back: “But he’s not going to lead the Gujarat government.” The rest of the group nodded their heads in silence. “It is this silence that is worrying for the BJP,” Chauhan says.
It is a worry that is reflected in Prime Minister Modi’s frequent trips to Gujarat—eight in the past five months. Like an indulgent parent making up for his absence, Modi has been on a gifting spree. He has announced or inaugurated projects worth over Rs 20,000 crore, not counting the Rs 1.1 lakh crore Ahmedabad-Mumbai high speed rail, the foundation stone for which was laid on September 14. It didn’t stop there: there was the Sardar Sarovar dam project dedicated to the nation and also the inauguration of the first phase of the Rs 615 crore roll-on, roll-off ferry service between Ghogha and Dahej.
To call Gujarat the mother of all battles for both the BJP and the Congress would not be a misnomer. Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah face their biggest test over the next few weeks all the way up to the two-phase elections finally scheduled for December 9 and 14. Anti-incumbency will play a part; after all, the BJP has been in power in the state for 22 years (since 1995). And now there is the discontent over the Centre’s twin economic moves—demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST).
On the face of it, things still look good for the BJP. An india today-Axis My India Opinion Poll conducted between September 25 and October 15 in all 182 constituencies of the state shows the BJP bagging 115-125 seats. This is in the same range as the party’s performance in the 2007 and 2012 assembly elections. The Congress is projected to win 57-65 seats; in 2012, it had bagged 60 seats.
But on the ground, the mood is less upbeat. The BJP is battling more than just anti-incumbency or Modi’s absence from state politics. A new opposition front led by three caste leaders—Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mevani—is giving state BJP leaders sleepless nights. Sixty-five per cent of the state’s 43.2 million electorate is under the age of 35, and this troika from the Patidar, OBC Kshatriya and
Dalit communities has not just captured the imagination of the youth, but has also thrown in its lot with the Congress. The Congress itself has been resurgent with vice-president Rahul Gandhi leading the charge and landing a volley of punches on the ruling party.
Rahul Gandhi has seen impressive crowds at his rallies in central Gujarat and Saurashtra. And he has successfully tapped into the popular disenchantment with the government’s big bang reforms, such as GST. The BJP strategy has been to carpet-bomb the electorate with development rhetoric, the now familiar narrative of the state’s transformation over the past 22 years. Except, this rhetoric will be lost on the nearly five million first-time voters born after 1995 who have no memory of a time when the Congress ruled the state.
For the Congress, a fourth consecutive loss in Gujarat will only add to its declining fortunes. Winning, however, could reinvigorate the party ahead of the multiple state elections due in 2018 and the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. And this is where the party has put the BJP on the defensive by playing up the bogey of tanashahi (autocratic rule), propping up caste equations, even playing the soft Hindutva card. While the BJP has a 48 per cent vote share and the Congress 38 per cent, the three new leaders in the mix could play a crucial role in swing seats. There has been a difference of 10-11 per cent between the votes polled by the BJP and the Congress in the past three
assembly polls since 2002. A six per cent swing in the Congress’s favour could upset the BJP applecart.
“Clearly, the BJP isn’t getting the state on a platter this time,” says Ketan Trivedi, political analyst with Gujarati magazine Chitralekha. “This time, it looks like it has its back to the wall.” How rapidly the electoral landscape is changing was evident from the developments over two days after Diwali. On October 20, the start of the Gujarati New Year, the Congress offered tickets to the three young Turks—Patidar agitation leader Hardik Patel, emerging Dalit icon Jignesh Mevani and OBC leader Alpesh Thakore. Only Thakore, a social worker from the powerful OBC Kshatriya caste that forms over 26 per cent of the electorate in Gujarat, accepted. Thakore had become a hero in his community by running an antiliquor reform movement under the banner of the Gujarat Thakore Sena. The change of heart came after a meeting with Rahul Gandhi in Delhi.
The opposition has played the strategem of being the underdogs pitted against the BJP’s moneybags. Leaders of Hardik’s Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) have alleged that they have received offers from Rs 1-10 crore to join the BJP, allegations that seem credible in the light of the party’s attempt to entice Congress MLAs during Ahmed Patel’s Rajya Sabha election in August. Hardik has lost no time rubbing it in. “We are a social movement. We can’t pay like the BJP. Our fight is for justice, for reservation for the Patel community and against the political arrogance of the BJP,” he says.
THE BJP’s MODI STRATEGY
There is still a month-and-a-half to go for the polls and the BJP’s star campaigner Narendra Modi has just hit the campaign trail. The party believes the Modi effect will get it past the post. The initial reports have enthused them. Modi’s roadshow in Vadodara on October 22 and his Gujarat Gaurav Sammelan in Ahmedabad drew an enthusiastic response.
Indeed, most analysts believe that although the BJP faces a stiff challenge, it is unlikely to lose. Chief Minister Vijay Rupani is dismissive of the Congress: “Before every election, it tries to whip up anti-BJP sentiment and then bites the dust.” The BJP and Amit Shah’s 150-seat target is based on sound logic, he explains, trotting out some numbers. The party led in 165 of the 182 assembly segments in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and it swept all 26 seats. “It was the impact of Narendrabhai as PM candidate,” he says. “And today, he is PM, an unblemished PM who has given India’s cleanest government in years.” Apart from Modi, the party is banking on Shah’s strategy, the party’s organisational strength, the gaurav yatras led by state BJP president Jitu Vaghani and deputy CM Nitin Patel that covered 5,000 km with the slogan, ‘Hun chhun vikas, hun chhun Gujarat (I am Development, I am Gujarat)’, to work their magic.
The party’s booth management structure is its biggest strength and an area where the Congress is at its weak-
est. A network of vistaraks (party expanders) handle each of the 48,000 booths in the state. The BJP has another ace up its sleeve. It is reportedly planning to offer a ticket to former Gujarat encounter cop D.G. Vanzara. The retired deputy inspector general of police, the main accused in a series of alleged extra-judicial ‘encounter’ killings, was in jail for seven years till 2015. Vanzara’s entry could be a game changer, for it will bring the nationalism vs anti-nationalism debate centrestage. Vanzara is well respected among Gujarat’s Hindu electorate who see him as a ‘patriot’ jailed for a “nationalist cause”. “Vanzara can draw as much crowds as Hardik once he steps out as a political leader,” says a BJP leader.
BJP state spokesperson Bharat Pandya dismisses any threat from the new troika. “These three are as apart in their objectives as chalk and cheese. It’s an alliance based on just one thing—hatred for the BJP—and so it will never succeed,” he says. However, rising prices and the problems caused by the GST are troubling the BJP in many pockets, with the party not doing enough to remove the doubts of the small businessmen. The party has also not been able to fully
arrest the drift it witnessed soon after Modi left Gujarat. It had manifested itself in the mismanaged handling of the 2015 pro-Patel reservation agitation and then the BJP’s defeat in the district and taluka panchayat polls at the Congress’s hands. However, the party has won all the seven big and small polls held since 2015. The party’s biggest challenge is how to tackle “crowd magnets” Hardik and Alpesh. Hardik has caught the imagination of the Patel youth by playing on their sentiments and invoking the 10 Patel youths who died during the violent 2015 agitations.
Much will also depend on ticket distribution. To win, the BJP will have to drop at least a third of its 120 MLAs, particularly the Patel MLAs targeted by Hardik. Though Patels are only between 12 and 15 per cent of the electorate, 44 BJP MLAs are from the community. There are 10 Patel ministers in Rupani’s cabinet. One strategy for the BJP is to depend on the OBC Kshatriyas and other backward community sections in constituencies where Patels are under Hardik’s influence. There, the BJP has to give tickets to non-Patels.
Veteran political analyst Vidyut Thakar lays out three factors which favour the BJP despite the adverse political atmosphere: “PM Modi, the BJP’s unmatched election machinery and a committed 25 per cent votebase. The BJP could get 125 seats.” Shah says “the work our government has done on providing water, 24-hour power and in law and order cannot be erased from public memory. We are on a very strong wicket. If the Congress plays its caste card, it will see itself sinking in quicksand”.
RESURGENT CONGRESS
On October 9, Rahul Gandhi delivered a moving speech to a crowd of intellectuals, businessmen and professionals in Vadodara. It drew quite a favourable response. The Nehru-Gandhi scion spoke out against the BJP’s highhandedness, manifested in slogans like ‘Congress mukt Bharat’. “Everyone has a right to be in politics,” he said. “Why should anyone think of erasing others from politics? We in the Congress never think in such negative terms.”
Significantly, Rahul Gandhi’s public meetings during his visit to central Gujarat in the second week of October drew good crowds, sometimes drawing huge ones like in Borsad, Petlad and Phagvel. The Phagvel rally was particularly noteworthy. The pilgrim centre is surrounded by the assembly seats of three of the 14 Congress MLAs who left the party at the BJP’s bidding in July—Shankersinh Vaghela, Ram Singh Parmar and Man Singh Chauhan. The last two have since joined the saffron party. The turnout could be an indicator of the public mood, perhaps showing that the public disapproved of the politics of defection played by the BJP.
In the 2007 and 2012 elections, the Congress party lacked a strong state leader to counter the Modi aura. Five years later, it still lacks one, but it sees a glimmer of hope of victory in a series of events—the absence of PM Modi from the state and the growing discontent with the BJP.
For the first time, the party is also unabashedly playing the soft Hindutva card. The Congress has not raised the issue of injustice to Muslims by Modi and the BJP. Rahul has also visited a series of temples on his last two trips, starting with Dwarka and a trek up to the hilltop Chotila shrine. State Congress chief Bharatsinh Solanki has even demanded a countrywide ban on cow slaughter. The message is clear—the Congress is no more a party just for minorities. The challenge, however, is to convince the voters.
The Congress has also played up the tanashahi charge against the BJP. Hardik Patel was jailed in 2015 for ‘waging war against the state’ and banished from Gujarat. Bharatsinh Solanki describes the case of a businessman and party ticket contender from Vadodara who, after being threatened, skipped a meeting with Rahul Gandhi. “Such high-handedness is only going to strengthen the resolve of the people to throw the BJP out,” he says. “The arrogance of being in power for 22 years is clearly showing,” says senior Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil, who played a pivotal role in Ahmed Patel’s surprise Rajya Sabha victory. “The state government is insensitive and high-handed. The BJP is in no position to form the government this time.”
In the six months since the Congress launched its Gujarat campaign, it has focused its strategy purely on winning the elections. In September, the party decided a candidate’s winnability would be the prime criterion for a ticket even if it meant lateral entry of outsiders—a straight lift from the BJP playbook. In May, former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot was made general secretary in-charge of Gujarat. Disgruntled veteran Shankersinh Vaghela’s veiled threats of rejoining the BJP were ignored (he finally left the party).
Offering seats to Hardik, Jignesh and Alpesh was part of its strategy of forming a grand alliance against the BJP. The challenge for the party is to accommodate Alpesh and Hardik on the same platform—the former’s OBC Kshatriya bloc is opposed to the Patels in the villages.
A combination of agrarian stress and the Hardik-led popular movement may dent the BJP’s Patel votebank that swept it to power in 1995. The Congress has discarded its 1980s strategy of wooing Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslims, the so-called ‘KHAM’ formula, and also resisted
THE CONGRESS HAS PLAYED UP THE TANASHAHI CHARGE AGAINST THE BJP; HARDIK WAS BANISHED FOR WAGING WAR AGAINST THE STATE