Volume 24 - Issue 24 :: Dec.

08-21, 2007
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU

THE STATES

Tribal turmoil

SUSHANTA TALUKDAR
in Guwahati
Assam goes through a violent phase over the tea garden communities’ stir
demanding Scheduled Tribe status.
UTPAL BARUAH /REUTERS

Local residents beat an Adivasi student activist in Guwahati on November

24, after the protest march by the tribal students’ association turned
violent.

ASSAM reported its most shameful incident in recent times on November 24 when a
teenaged adivasi girl, stripped naked by some youth during mob violence, ran for
dear life on a street in Guwahati with her attackers chasing her in full public view.
The girl, a Class X student from Biswanth Chariali in Sonitpur district in northern
Assam, pleaded with her attackers for mercy, but in vain. A middle-aged man finally
came to her rescue and offered her his own clothes to cover herself. Local
newspapers even published pictures of an assailant kicking her private parts, which
was subsequently shown by television news channels.
The girl had come to the city for the first time, to participate in the All Adivasi
Students’ Association of Assam (AASAA) rally taken out by the Adivasi student body
to press for the inclusion of Santhal Adivasis and the “Tea tribes” in the list of
Scheduled Tribes (Plains). The rally was taken out in defiance of a magistrate’s
order against holding it. The State government, however, had no explanation as to
why AASAA was denied permission to hold the rally although the organisation
applied for it as early as on November 6.

The march along Basistha Road in the city turned violent soon after it started. First,
a section of the protesters resorted to acts of vandalism, and this invited brutal
retaliation from residents of the Beltola locality. Nearly two hours of violence left
one person dead and 240 injured, some of them critically. Curfew was clamped on
the entire road but was lifted the next day.

On the basis of photographs published in newspapers, the police arrested three

young men, two of them shopkeepers in the Beltola locality, and slapped on them
charges of murder, attempt to rape, and outraging the modesty of women. The
police also arrested five leaders of the AASAA. The organisation said that 32 of its
rallyists were missing. On November 28, it demanded that the government should
inform it about their whereabouts within 48 hours. The violence broke out when the
valedictory session of the first leg of the India International Tea Convention, 2007
was in progress in Guwahati. The failure of the police and the administration to
make timely intervention evoked widespread public condemnation.

The AASAA called a 36-hour State-wide bandh on November 26 and 27, which was
backed by the All Assam Tea Tribe Students’ Union (ATTSA). This was followed by a
12-hour bandh called by the All Assam Santhal Students’ Union. The violence that
broke out during the bandh claimed the life of a teenaged boy in Kokrajhar district
and left many injured. Tension gripped several towns, which prompted the
administration to clamp a curfew in Rangapara town in Sonitpur district.

The violence spread to other parts of the State in the following days. Adivasis from
the tea garden areas, armed with bows and arrows, lathis and machetes, forced
their way into nearby towns and indulged in arson and attack.

Political leaders from Jharkhand, including former Union Minister Shibu Soren and
former Chief Ministers Arjun Munda and Babulal Marandi, rushed to Assam to take
stock of the situation since many of the tea garden tribes hail from what was once
south Bihar. They expressed shock over the brutalities and the government’s failure
to prevent them. Opposition parties in the State such as the Asom Gana Parishad
(AGP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held the Congress-led coalition
government in the State responsible for the mayhem and demanded Chief Minister
Tarun Gogoi’s resignation. The State unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist),
or CPI(M), and the Communist Party of India (CPI) also blamed the State
government and demanded that both New Delhi and Dispur take steps to grant
Scheduled Tribe status to the Adivasis in Assam and five other communities. The
violence was a manifestation of the frustration of these underprivileged sections,
which have waited for over five decades for a positive government response to their
demand.

As a damage-control exercise, Tarun Gogoi announced in Jorhat a compensation of

Rs.1 lakh to the teenaged girl, an ex gratia payment of Rs.3 lakh each to the next
of kin of the deceased, and Rs.50,000 to those who were seriously injured and
Rs.10,000 to those who suffered minor injuries. The government transferred the
Deputy Commissioner of Police of Kamrup (Metropolitan) district, the Senior
Superintendent of Police of Guwahati, the officer in charge of Basistha police station
and a sub-inspector, following the violence in the city. The Chief Minister initially
ordered a probe by the Additional Chief Secretary but later decided on a judicial
probe to be headed by Justice Manisana Singh, retired Supreme Court Judge. The
probe is expected to find out if there was a conspiracy behind the mob savagery of
November 24.

Four Cabinet Ministers in the Gogoi government – Prithibi Majhi, Ripun Bora,
Himanta Biswa Sharma and Dinesh Prasad Gowala – tried to placate the angry
Adivasi and Tea Tribe organisations by claiming that the State government had
always backed their demand for S.T. status. Majhi and Bora said that the
government had, in 2005, submitted a report compiled by the Assam Institute of
Research for Tribals and Scheduled Castes, Guwahati, recommending the inclusion
of 97 Tea-garden and Ex-Tea garden communities in the S.T. (Plains) list and that
the report was very much in the Central government’s consideration.

However, this was contradicted by Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil in the Lok
Sabha on November 27 when he said that Assam’s Tea tribe communities had
tended to lose their tribal characteristics over the years and that the Registrar-
General of India (RGI) also did not support their inclusion in the S.T. list for Assam.
He said: “There has been a demand for giving S.T. status to Tea and Ex-Tea garden
communities comprising Munda, Oran, Gonds, Santhals, etc. from Bihar, Orissa,
Madhya Pradesh, etc. This has been examined several times by the office of the
RGI. The Lokur Committee had also considered this issue in 1965 and had noted
that it agreed with the opinion of the Backward Classes Commission and did not
recommend the ea plantation labourers to be treated as S.Ts. The settlers in the
tea estates have tended to lose their tribal characteristics in their new
surroundings. Moreover, the office of the RGI noted that many of the Tea tribe
communities (Basor, Bhattar, Basphoor, Bhagta and Tandoi) were not listed as S.Ts
in their native States but as Scheduled Castes.”

This September, the All Indian Adivasi Coordination Committee submitted a

memorandum urging Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to initiate positive steps
towards conferring S.T. (Plains) status on 97 Tea- and Ex-Tea garden communities.

History of exploitation

The history of the migration of tea and ex-tea garden communities to Assam is a
long one, characterised by exploitation, deprivation and treachery.

After the annexation of Assam from Burma (Myanmar), the British colonial
administration started tea plantations on a large scale in the region. The first tea
committee was formed in 1834, and the first tea garden was established in 1837.
By 1900, there were 804 tea gardens covering an area of 337,000 acres (1 hectare
= 2.47 acres). The industry soon began facing a shortage of labourers. With the
native people of Assam engaged in independent farming, a labour class seeking
wage employment on a regular basis was not available locally. It therefore became
imperative for the planters to import labourers from outside Assam. The Tea District
Labour Association, constituted under the Tea District Emigrant Labour Act of 1932,
started recruiting labour from six labour-surplus provinces – Bengal, Bihar, Orissa,
Central Provinces, United Provinces and Madras. The first batch of tea garden
labourers were recruited from the Chotanagpur division of Bihar by the Assam
Company in 1841. The industry continued to import labourers until 1960.

The labourers thus brought into Assam had a trying time. The agents, known as
free contractors, enticed them with secure employment, good wages and healthy
habitation. But what the labourers got was a raw deal. The mortality rate among
them became high. The abuse of the free contractors was so grave that it met with
protests from various quarters.

Some of the recruits did not stay in the tea gardens. They settled in government
khas land or unused tea garden land in the vicinity of the tea estates so that they
could earn their living as casual labourers in the tea gardens and also by cultivating
land. This led to the creation of the Ex-Tea garden tribe.

RITU RAJ KONWAR

Women workers on their way to the factory after plucking tea leaves in a
garden on the outskirts of Guwahati. The tea garden communities by and
large hail from labour-surplus States such as Bihar.

In 1995, the Director of the Assam Institute of Research for Tribals and Scheduled
Castes recommended to the Government of Assam, after conducting a detailed
study of the status of Oraons, Santhals, Mundas, Kharias and so on, known as Tea
and Ex-Tea garden communities of Assam, that these tribes be included in the list of
S.T. (Plains). In the same year, the Hiteswar Saikia government also recommended
the same to the Central government. On August 5, 2004, the Assam Legislative
Assembly adopted a unanimous resolution urging the Government of India to
include Tea and Ex-Tea tribes/Adivasis and five other major communities (Koch
Rajbongshi, Tai-Ahom, Moran, Mottak and Chutia) in the list of S.T. (Plains). The
report submitted by the Amar Rai Pradhani Committee also made the
recommendation.

Union Minister for Tribal Affairs P.R. Kyndiah told Parliament that the Assam
government had sent a report regarding the social status of the six communities,
recommending their inclusion in the S.T. list for Assam. He informed the House that
in 1993 the then Assam government recommended the specification of Koch
Rajbongshi as an S.T. but the report appended to the State government’s
recommendation was found contradictory and the RGI rejected the claim. Later, the
State government sent a revised report, on the basis of which in 1995 the RGI
supported its inclusion in the list, without connecting it with the earlier report. On
Jaunary 27, 1996, an ordinance effecting the inclusion of Koch Rajbongshis in the
list of S.T.s of Assam (excluding the autonomous districts of Assam) was
promulgated. The ordinance was re-promulgated thrice, on March 27, 1996; June
27, 1996 and January 1, 1997. It lapsed on April 2, 1997, prompting the
organisations of Koch-Rajbongshis to revive their movement.

The Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order (Amendment) Bill, 1996, was introduced
in the Lok Sabha on July 12, 1996. The Bill was referred to the Select Committee of
the Lok Sabha on August 2, 1996. The Select Committee submitted its report on
August 14, 1997. This report was circulated among the Assam government, the
RGI, and the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. “The
government of Assam and the Registrar General of India had recommended the
inclusion of Koch Rajbongshi in the list of Scheduled Tribe of Assam (though in
March 1997, the Government of Assam had stated that Koch Rajbongshi have
benefited like other sections of the society by the process of development and it will
not be correct to say that they have become backward during this period so as to
claim status of Scheduled Tribe). But the National Commission for Scheduled Castes
and Scheduled Tribes did not favour its specifications as Scheduled Tribe. However,
in 2002, the National Commission changed its stand and recommended the
inclusion. It also referred the case to the RGI for the justification, but the RGI
rejected the claim of Koch-Rajbongshi community. The RGI has commented eight
times (1981, 1992, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005 and 20.3.2006) on the proposal
for inclusion of Koch Rajbongshi including the above referred reference of 2005 (on
20.3.2006). Similarly in the case of other aforesaid communities, the RGI has
rejected the claim for their inclusion in the list of Scheduled Tribes of Assam several
times,” the report said.

Kyndiah also stated that the modalities required the consent of the State
government concerned, the RGI and the National Commission for Scheduled Castes
and Scheduled Tribes for modification in the list of Scheduled Tribes. That would
take time, and therefore, no specific time frame can be mentioned, he said.

New Delhi’s stand on the issue has added to the worries of the Congress
government in Assam, which fears that it will lose its traditional vote bank in the
tea belt. And with only a month left for the panchayat elections, State Congress
leaders are now under pressure to go on an overdrive to hold on to this vote bank.
The Gogoi government is also worried about the armed outfits among the Adivasis
throwing their weight behind the overground organisations. Local newspapers
published a statement purported to have been issued by the All Adivasi National
Liberation Army (AANLA), a new militant outfit active in the tea garden areas in
Upper Assam, which threatened to target “civilians and the Gogoi government’s
men” to avenge the brutalities on Adivasi protesters in Guwahati. In the coming
weeks, the Gogoi government will be under pressure to convince New Delhi to
concede the communities’ demand. •
ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS

In Vibrant Gujarat

DIONNE BUNSHA
The communal divide and the growing urban-rural disparities will be the
deciding factors.
AJIT SOLANKI/AP

Narendra Modi, Gujarat Chief Minister.

MAYBE it is the potbellied stockbroker wearing chunky diamond rings, the

sentimental non-resident Indian with romantic notions of his homeland or the
perfumed women who shop at malls instead of markets. But aside from the ‘AC’
brigade, it is difficult to imagine who would buy into the “Vibrant Gujarat” idea.

If you get out of air-conditioned comfort and smell the gutter, there is a repulsive
stink. And it is not the stink of just the rotting bodies of those killed in the
communal carnage of 2002; it is also of the pesticide lying on the floor next to the
farmer who swallowed the fatal dose, the sewage in the slums and the lethal
cocktail of gases in the industrial towns.

The posters of Chief Minister Narendra Modi that dominate the traffic proclaim
“Jeetega Gujarat” (Gujarat will be victorious). He is no longer talking about Godhra
or terrorism. This time round, he is boasting of his “achievements”. “Gujarat is the
number one State in the country. We are showing the way forward to others. We
have the highest growth rate and have attracted the most foreign investments,”
says Vijay Rupani, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson. In the past six
months, Modi has spent Rs.750 crore of State money on propaganda – equivalent
to the amount Gujarat spends on social welfare and nutrition in a year.

If you get off the highway and get into the dirt roads, the reality is far removed
from the cardboard cut-outs. Many places have regressed, rather than progressed.
In Madiya village, Bhavnagar district, Kavabhai Vegad was found dead in his field
with a bottle of pesticide by his side on October 12, 2006. Instead of spraying his
field with pesticide for the nth time, he swallowed a few gulps and ended his
misery. He left his family the legacy of his sorrow. His wife, Ramuben, was left to
pick up the pieces. “The crop had failed in the last three years. We were heavily in
debt. Every month moneylenders used to visit the house and demand their
payments. What answer could he keep giving them?” she asks. Now, their fields lie
fallow. Ramuben and her sons barely manage to survive by working in fields in the
neighbouring village or by loading trucks.
In Madiya, three farmers have committed suicide. “But those who are living are in
the same crisis,” says Bachubhai Mer, a young farmer from the village. “When the
Kalubhar dam near by overflows, the water floods our fields. There is no drainage
outlet for the water. Factories constructed near by have blocked its natural flow, so
we have to suffer.” Farmers here have no irrigation. They depend on the monsoon
to cultivate cotton and jowar (sorghum). Around 500 farmers have committed
suicide in Gujarat in the past five years, according to information obtained under
the Right to Information Act by activist Bharat Jhala. The actual number is likely to
be even higher than these official statistics since the police have not recorded many
cases. Most of these suicides are in Saurashtra and northern Gujarat, where cash
crops such as cotton, groundnut and jeera (cumin) are grown. “In the last three
years, our situation has worsened. The government has totally ignored farmers.
Why should we go and vote? We will lose a day’s wages,” says Bachubhai Mer.

Until recently, Gujarat was considered a prosperous cotton-growing belt that had
not witnessed the kind of mass farmers’ suicides seen in States such as
Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. But now, cash crop farmers here too are facing
the brunt of inflation and unsustainable commercial cultivation. “The price we get
for our cotton has remained the same for more than five years, but the cost of
everything else has risen rapidly. How are farmers supposed to survive? Every day,
a new suicide takes place, but Modi says in his speeches that farmers in Gujarat
travel in Maruti cars. They don’t even have a decent pair of chappals,” says
Vinubhai Dudhat, a local leader of the Bharatiya Kisan Sabha, the farmers’ wing of
the BJP.

Water woes

Modi claims that he has made the Narmada waters reach Gujarat. But many
villages in the Saurashtra region still do not have enough drinking water. “The
borewells have salty or bitter water. We walk 1 km to the river to get water. No
Narmada water has reached here,” said Bhikabhai Aher from Vadli village, Amreli
district. “A government audit for 2004-05, which reviewed the performance of
Narmada drinking water supply to Kutch, Jamnagar and Rajkot districts, found that
out of 1,324 villages surveyed, the water reached only to 415 villages,” says
Himanshu Upadhyaya, a researcher with Intercultural Resources, a research
organisation based in New Delhi. “The Narmada Tribunal had allocated 0.86 MAF
[million acre-feet] water for drinking to drought-affected villages and 0.20 MAF for
industrial use. The Sardar Sarovar Nigam in May 2006 increased its commitment to
supply Narmada water for industry from 0.2 MAF to 1 MAF, leaving the municipal
share at a paltry 0.06 MAF.” Water is still a mirage for many in Gujarat.

The bumpy ride to Malugaon village in Vadodara district hints of what is in store.
There are no roads here, only stones. As we drive along, there are electric poles
with no cables. “These poles were supposed to deliver 24-hour electricity to our
village. But it was stopped by the forest department,” says Ashok Rathwa, a youth
leader in this Adivasi village. “Even the ST [State Transport] buses on the main
road have stopped, so now we have to rely on autorickshaws.” But Modi’s website
says that “Gujarat’s excellent rural road connectivity of 98.53% is the best in the
country and translates into fast track growth.”

Not only are people denied basic amenities but they are now being thrown out of
their ancestral homes. The forest department has seized the land of every single of
the 70 families of Malugaon: the plan is to plant trees on the land. The department
wants to evict Revjibhai Rathwa (80) from his home. “Two years back, they built a
fence in the middle of the village and declared that everything beyond it was theirs.
That includes my house,” says Rathwa.

He has filed a case against his eviction. When he defied the department, he and
four others were jailed for 10 days. “I have travelled across Gujarat to fight for our
land back – rallies, courts, offices. I have spent Rs.22,000 just on this. My feet are
hurting, yet I go.” Rathwa has also lost 3.5 acres of land. Since then, four members
of his family have had to leave the village and migrate in search of work. “How are
15 people supposed to survive on the 1.5 acres that I have left?” he asks. “This has
happened in every village. In Mandalva the forest department has managed to evict
them from their homes.

” A large majority of Adivasi people in Gujarat migrate each year in search of work,
according to a study by Lancy Lobo, director of the Centre for Culture and
Development, Vadodara. They camp on roads or in tents near construction sites or
the farms of landlords. That is the “employment” Vibrant Gujarat has to offer.

Malugaon gets electricity for two hours every night. And there is a medical clinic
that has never functioned. If anyone in the village is ill, they have to be carried on a
cot for three hours to the nearest town or highway. No one in Malugaon has heard
of Modi’s Van Bandhu (forest friend) scheme which promises to provide facilities to
tribal areas. It looks like a cruel joke. Instead of getting better amenities, they are
losing their only assets.

In this Adivasi region in central Gujarat, for the first time in Gujarat’s history the
Adivasis participated in the 2002 communal violence. But the violence seemed to be
directed against the Muslim trader-moneylender class and incited by Hindu
competitors. There are no signs that Adivasis here support saffron forces. There is
no faith left in any political party. “Gujarat’s 70 lakh Adivasis are in nine districts in
the eastern hilly belt. They are 14 per cent of the population, same as the city of
Ahmedabad, but political opinions are made in Ahmedabad,” says Ganesh Devy,
Adivasi rights activist. “The disparities between the expressway Gujarat and the
hilly Gujarat have multiplied.”

The divide is not only economic. It is also communal. Here, Muslims live like
“second class citizens” – the poor the and rich alike. Cities are ghettoised along
communal lines. In the elite areas, it is difficult for Muslims to find a house. Many
try to mask their identity for fear of being targeted. Several Muslim businessmen
have moved out. Others are planning their escape. The boycott has affected
everyone, from judges to industrialists to vegetable vendors.

Iinternally displaced

Around 21,800 of the 150,000 made homeless after the communal carnage of 2002
have not been able to return home. Some live in resettlement colonies in towns
close to their villages. The city dwellers have been pushed to townships on the
margins of the city or in the most uninhabitable places like dumping grounds. These
are Gujarat’s internally displaced.

In Kalol village in Panchmahal district, eight families still live in a relief camp, an
abandoned government dispensary. “Ours was the only Muslim home in the village,
so now we are scared to go back,” says Jahida Diva from Kalindra village also in
Panchmahal. “The relief committee asked for Rs.9,500 to build a new house. We
didn’t have the money so we are still here in the garbage and the gutter. People
defecate behind our house. We have put thorny bushes there but it doesn’t deter
them.”

DIONNE BUNSHA

Revjibhai Rathwa, who is threatened with eviction by the forest

department.

Some refugees are still living in tents in the Modasa relief camp in northern Gujarat.
They do not even have electricity and use diyas (oil lamps) to find their way
through this swampy area.

The “Golden Corridor” is Gujarat’s pride – an industrial belt that stretches along the
coast from Vadodara district to Vapi, a city near the border with Maharashtra. But
the corridor is not golden. It is a rainbow of colours – black, green, red – depending
on which pollutant was dumped that day. The 400 km-long Golden Corridor is
“world famous”. Vapi has the unique distinction of being named as one of the 10
most polluted places in the world by the Blacksmith Institute, which works on
pollution related issues ( http://www.blacksmithinstitute.org/ten.php). The pollution
in Vapi alone affects 71,000 people. Levels of mercury in the city’s groundwater are
reportedly 96 times higher than the safety levels stipulated by the World Health
Organisation, and heavy metals are present in the air and the local produce, quite
an achievement for Vibrant Gujarat. You can dump as you please. No one will stop
you. Is that what is attracting all this investment and pumping up the growth rates?
 DIONNE BUNSHA

Refugees at a relief camp in Kalol. Thousands who lost their homes in the
2002 communal carnage are still unable to return home.

“No one has benefited from this industrialisation except the industrialists. They can
get away with any mischief. They can dump chemicals as they please, exploit
contract workers. There’s no one to stop them,” says Mohammed Ali Darsot, from
the GIDC Land Losers Association. For 27 years, he has been fighting land
acquisitions and pollution here. In his village, Sanjali in Bharuch district, 300
farmers were made landless to make way for the Panoli Industrial Estate. “No locals
get jobs here. They only want contract workers from outside. Farmers here have
become rickshaw drivers, dhobis, cycle mechanics or they rent out rooms to
migrant workers. Even my son, who is an MBA student, was not given a two-month
traineeship in the companies, so what hope do others have?” he asks.“Every night
they release gases. Sometimes, people can’t sleep. Our children are constantly ill.
But the doctors can’t do much. They say it’s because of the pollution and send them
back home,” says Darsot. “The school is close to the factory. If you stand there, you
are covered with blue chemical dust.” These factories are Modi’s modern mandirs
(temples).

The people of Gujarat are known to be hard-working. For the last few decades,
Gujarat has been one of the most economically advanced States in India because of
the economic advantages and resources it possesses. But disparities are growing.
New malls come up every day, but infant deaths are also increasing. The highways
are unable to bridge the gap between the Vibrant Gujarat and the vanishing
Gujarat. •

ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS

Uphill task
T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
in Shimla
Factionalism and non-performance will make the Himachal Pradesh election
a tightrope walk for both the main parties.
V. V. KRISHNAN

Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh.

BEFORE the February 2003 Assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh, Bharatiya

Janata Party leader M. Venkaiah Naidu had declared in an interview to a news
website that the electoral race was like a quarterfinal before the finals, that is, the
Lok Sabha elections of 2004. The BJP was supremely confident of winning the
Assembly elections in not only Himachal Pradesh but also those in Rajasthan, Delhi,
Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh that were due later that year. The party
campaigned hard in Himachal Pradesh since it felt it had a natural advantage in the
State. The National Democratic Alliance government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee,
the BJP’s most charismatic leader, was in office at the Centre and the party was
confident that the slogan of “India Shining”, would pay rich dividends all over the
country. But it got a rude shock when the results were out. It lost the quarterfinal.
In 2004, it lost the finals too, at the Centre.

It is the fourth year of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government at

the Centre now and the Himachal elections could once again prove to be a litmus
test of the popularity of the Central government. Although the State has had more
Congress governments than BJP (or Jan Sangh) ones, since its formation in 1966,
the voters have not voted any party to power for two consecutive terms.

And it is this factor that gives the BJP an advantage in the coming elections despite
the fact that its performance as the main Opposition party in the State has not
been exactly outstanding. It is ridden by factionalism down to the grassroots level
and prominent leaders, former Chief Ministers Prem Kumar Dhumal and Shanta
Kumar, view each other as adversaries. Even as BJP national president Rajnath
Singh declared Dhumal chief ministerial candidate, attempts to mollify Shanta
Kumar were set into motion. After all, the party could ill-afford to annoy the veteran
leader who had a stronghold in the Kangra region, where the BJP had performed
poorly in 2003 – of the 16 seats here, the BJP could win only four and the Congress
took the rest. Moreover, the party could not win a single seat in the eight Assembly
segments in Shimla, considered a bastion of the Congress, especially Chief Minister
Virbhadra Singh.

This time round, the BJP is making no mistake. Fourteen seats in the Kangra belt
have been allocated primarily to Shanta Kumar’s supporters. Further, on November
28, Dhumal called on the septuagenarian leader at his residence in Palampur
reportedly to convince him to pacify potential rebel candidates. According to a
political observer, factionalism is rampant in the BJP.

Shanta Kumar is the first non-Congress Chief Minister to be elected, in 1977. His
popularity took a beating in 1992 owing to his policies that went against the
interest of government employees and farmers. During an agitation over the
support price, three apple farmers were felled by police bullets. Shanta Kumar also
introduced the “No Work, No Pay” policy for government employees primarily as a
move to pre-empt strikes. He has won four out of the five times he had contested
in the Assembly elections and was also a Minister at the Centre in the 1990s.

A chief ministerial aspirant in every election, Shanta Kumar is not in the fray this
time. “He introduced the No Work, No Pay policy for government employees. It was
like asking them to eat dal, after they lived on chicken during the Congress
regimes. He is very unpopular among them. The BJP could not have taken the risk
of declaring him its chief ministerial candidate. Besides, he would have alienated
our voters in Upper Himachal,” said a party insider.

V. V. KRISHNAN

Former BJP Chief Ministers Prem Kumar Dhumal (left) and Shanta Kumar
with the party’s national vice-president, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, in New
Delhi.

Satpal Jain, the BJP office-bearer in charge of elections, told Frontline that the
overall situation was favourable to the party. The party has fielded 11 new
candidates and renominated 17 of the sitting legislators and two former Speakers
of the State Assembly. The party is planning to campaign on issues ranging from
the bomb blasts in Uttar Pradesh to Nandigram to corruption.

But the problems that the BJP faces are not confined to appeasing senior leaders.
In Kullu, a former Minister and a former Member of Parliament, who were denied
the ticket, have made their displeasure known by joining hands with the Bahujan
Samaj Party, which for the first time is contesting all the seats in the State. The
State convener of the BSP is a former Congressman, Vijay Singh Mankotia, who has
resolved to bring down the Virbhadra Singh government. Mankotia was unhappy
that Virbhadra Singh kept him out after the passage of the Bill limiting the size of
State Cabinets to one-tenth of the strength of State Assemblies.

Mankotia joined the BSP in July. In fact, the party has absorbed some of the better-
known rebels from both the Congress and the BJP. It is now focussing on Dalit
votes. Not surprisingly, Mankotia has promised, in the party’s election manifesto,
reservations for Dalits and Other Backward Classes apart from five lakh jobs to the
unemployed. The State has a Dalit population of 26 per cent, the highest (as a
percentage of the State population) in the country after Punjab. But the leadership
of the BSP is hardly Dalit. Neither has the BSP raised issues pertaining to Dalits in
the last five years. Most of its candidates are also non-Dalits. In 2003, the BSP had
contested 28 seats but drew a blank.

The Congress, rather than concentrating on setting its own house in order, is
focussing more on this rivalry between the two top BJP leaders. Both the national
parties have retained the bulk of their sitting legislators for the 65 seats that go to
the polls on December 19. This has been done also to mitigate the influence of
rebel candidates contesting the elections. In fact, in 2003, independents, mostly
rebels from the Congress, cornered nearly 12.5 per cent of the vote share. At least
four of the independent candidates who won the elections last time have been
made associate members of the Congress and have also been given the ticket,
which triggered another bout of rebellion in the party.

Some heavyweight candidates have been denied the ticket. In Arki, the sitting
legislator and Deputy Speaker Dharampal Thakur was dumped to make way for a
political greenhorn, Prakash Chandra Karad, whose sole claim to fame was his
proximity to the Congress leadership at the Centre. Karad, who is a Dalit, would be
contesting from a predominantly Rajput- and Brahmin-populated constituency.
Predictably, Dharampal Thakur has declared his intention to contest as an
independent. “It is not going to be easy for Karad. Firstly, he is not from Arki and
secondly, the Dalit votes here are negligible,” said a Congress worker from Arki.

Coupled with the anti-incumbency factor, the denial of the party ticket either to
sitting MLAs or to those who contested unsuccessfully last time could queer the
pitch for the party in at least a dozen constituencies. “I really don’t think the anti-
incumbency factor is going to be a problem as we have done a lot of development
work,” Viplove Thakur, Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC) president,
told Frontline. She ruled out any major rebellion in the party ranks. She added that
it was difficult to please everybody but the party was trying hard to mollify those
who were unhappy with the ticket distribution.

While the Congress leadership has been insisting that winnability has been the main
criterion for seat distribution, the rank and file of the party is not convinced. Party
sources in Shimla said that the only reason the Congress might fare poorly would
be the selection of non-deserving candidates – such as those who were favoured by
the high command or the wives and brothers of party leaders. The HPCC chief’s
brother Nikhil Rajour is the party nominee from Jaswa constituency.

It is clear that the election is not going to be a cakewalk for either the Congress or
the BJP. One thing that has become apparent is that the degree of public
resentment the BJP faced last time was way above what the ruling Congress is
facing now.

However, issues such as unemployment, massive contractualisation of employment

in the new industries as well as in government, the agrarian crisis, paucity of
drinking water in the State capital and the scrapping of posts in government
departments have resulted in high levels of dissatisfaction among different sections
of people. Of the 15 lakh unemployed persons in the State nine lakh are registered
as unemployed.

There are reportedly 400 vacant posts at the prestigious Indira Gandhi Medical
College in Shimla. Several private colleges offering Bachelor of Education (B.Ed)
courses at an annual fee of up to Rs.50,000 per student has been opened in recent
years. State investment in health and education is almost stagnant.

These issues have been raised by the Left parties in the State, notably the
Communist Party of India (Marxist). In 2003, in the triangular contest for the
Shimla Assembly segment, the CPI(M) candidate Sanjay Chauhan was runner-up
while the BJP candidate was a poor third. This time, the BJP has fielded a Member
of the Rajya Sabha, Suresh Bharadwaj, in Shimla.

T.L. PRABHAKAR

BSP convener Vijay Singh Mankotia.

Sanjay Chauhan, who is contesting once again, told Frontline that neither of the
two main parties have raised issues of critical importance. “There is not much of a
difference between the policies of the two parties,” he said. The Virbhadra Singh
government had drastically cut down the social sector expenditure after enacting
the Fiscal Responsibility Management Bill in 2004.

This piece of legislation was supported by the BJP. He said that the resettlement of
around 2,000 families who had been displaced by the Bhakra and Pong dam
projects are yet to be resettled. Similarly, in the several hydel projects under way
people have not been either compensated at all or paid adequately.

The Congress government is accused by the Opposition of not doing anything in the
last five years to resolve Shimla’s drinking water shortage. The government was
equally apathetic to the problems of street vendors and slum-dwellers, it is said. It
has not kept its promise of regularising the slums that housed the working
population of Shimla.
There is no apparent anti-Congress wave in the State. It is quite clear that it is not going
to be easy for Virbhadra Singh to retain the massive mandate he got last time. He is
going to bear the brunt of the anti-incumbency factor to a large extent. The electorate
actually does not have much of a choice between the BJP and the Congress, but the
highly aware and literate population of the State always ensures that no party or
candidate can afford to be complacent and take its support for granted. •