There is no great mystery about the results of polls in three states, though, on the face of it, the results are surprising. Take Maharashtra, the biggest of the states that went to poll. Almost every type of calamity that could have befallen it did do so. Yet the ruling party or parties managed to crawl back to power, with the Congress doing even better than it did last time.
The opposition hammered at the government from the word go. There were farmers’ suicides at the rate of three to four hundred a month. Power? There were thousands of villages in the state that did without power for as long as twelve to fourteen hours a day. In fact, the government, perhaps the most incompetent in the country, has not been able to add even one megawatt of capacity during the last ten years it has been in power. Did the voters hold the ruling party responsible for it? Perish the thought!
Now, the prices. In the last six months, prices of most food commodities, particularly pulses, have shot up by hundred per cent, that is, doubled, including items of daily use like potatoes and onions. There was time when onions used to bring down governments. Now, apart from the usual scary headlines in the papers, nothing happens. Not a single Congress candidate lost election because of prices. It is as if the word “inflation” has been rubbed out of people’s memory.
Then the shootings in Mumbai on 26/11/08 in which at least 200 people died. This happened in Mumbai , the state capital, under the very eyes of the Chief Minister who after a decent interval decided to inspect the damages in the company of his actor son and a film producer. It was as if the shooting were stage-manages for filming. The Chief Minister had to go, but he is back again in another garb as a union minister, and not once was he asked about the shootings by pressmen during his election campaign. And the thug who did it? He is being treated as a five-star state guest, on whom the government is spending thousands of rupees a day, including choicest biryani everyday. The man is a Muslim, as are 99 per cent of terrorists.
Did any of this have any impact on the election? None at all. In Mumbai city, the Congress and its new side-kick, MNS (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena), have grabbed more than 50 per cent of seats, as if they had nothing to do, either with rising prices or farmers’ suicides or shootings in the city. There is now a distinct disconnect between politics and political events, as if the two were independent of each other, with no link between them.
It is therefore useless to try to interpret election results in terms of cause and effect, Opposition leaders cried hoarse over rising prices, farmers’ suicides and the brutal shooting in Mumbai, but they were crying in vain. Election politics, which means politics in general, is now decided elsewhere, in the drawing rooms in New Delhi with their Italian furniture, not in the streets of Pune or Ahmednagar, and certainly not in the ten by ten sitting rooms of clerks in Andheri and the hovels of farmers in Vidarbha, which once decided the fate of political parties and politicians.
What has happened is that over the years the ruling party has tightened its hold on about 25 per cent of the electorate, including minorities, and the rising middle class, whose fortunes are not decided by farmers but by the ups and downs on the stock market. Their incomes now depend on what happens in Dalal Street in Mumbai and Wall Street in New York than the onion fields in Nasik or potato patches in Solapur. These sections now believe that their fortunes are linked with those of the ruling party, no matter what happens elsewhere. They are least concerned with farmers’ suicides, or, for that matter, the killings in Mumbai, unless they happen to be dining at the Taj or the Oberoi. They know that the ruling party will take care of them, no matter what happens and where. They have cast their lot with the Congress because the Congress and its allies like Sharad Pawar think like them. Remember that Pawar & Co, and other politicians now make their money not buying and selling onion and potato, as Pawar & Co once did, but buying and selling potato and onion farms, that is, land, and you can do it only if you deal in millions.
But you don’t win elections with 25 per cent of the vote. You need at least 30 per cent to 35 per cent for a win. So the entire energies of the ruling party are directed towards acquiring and making sure of this extra five per cent to 10 per cent, which makes the difference between victory and defeat.
It is possible to get that difference only if you break up the existing opposition parties. And, for the last ten years, this is what the ruling party and its bosses have been doing. First it went about its job in a subtle manner, but now it has become blatant and goes about it quite openly. It began with the BJP, by starting unnecessary feuds between groups and dividing the party, as it has done, over Hindutva, Swadeshi, globalistaion, its links with the RSS etc, through people who have or had no connection with the BJP or the RSS, who suddenly appeared on the scene and captured key positions in the party without anybody suspecting anything. They began wielding undue influence in the party’s affairs though they themselves confessed later they had no faith in its fundamentals. The party is now torn asunder and is only a shadow of its former self. This is precisely what the Congress wants, for without the break-up of the opposition, its position is not secure.
Look what is happening in Maharashtra. It is not an accident that a Thackeray should suddenly delink himself from the Shiv Sena and start his own outfit, calculated to cause maximum damage to the real Shiv Sena, and benefit the ruling party. Without Raj Thackeray’s MNS, the Sena-BJP outfit would have wound up with at least 150 seats, leaving the Congress far behind. MNS is said to have damaged, directly and indirectly, at least 50 BJP-Sena candidates. And who is the real gainer? Sonia Gandhi’s Congress Party.
It is high time the opposition saw the writing on the wall and closed its ranks. It is not only the farmers who are committing suicide, the opposition is committing suicide too aided and abetted by the Congress. This explains the enthusiastic reception accorded to Raj Thackeray by the media, which is largely controlled by foreign interest and the ruling party. It is Raj today, it could be some body else tomorrow. Mulayam Singh and Mayawati, are you listening?
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