VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
Narendra Modi will take oath as
the new Prime Minister of the country on May 26, making it clear through the
Verdict 2014 that a new political script for the Hindi heartland has been
written. What is also clear is the fact that the 25-year-old Mandal politics
has been demolished with little chance of its revival.
Modi and the resurgent BJP have
rewritten the rules of the game which the veterans of Mandal politics are
finding difficult to decipher. Looking at the statements of SP chief Mulayam
Singh Yadav, RJD boss Lalu Prasad and BSP supremo Mayawati after the electorate
rejected them, you can see utter confusion. They are still analysing their rout
in old paradigm of politics and finding it difficult to understand why their
old magic is not attractive enough to make a decent electoral outing.
Watching an interview of Lalu
Prasad was an eye-opener. He failed to realise that development could ever be a
poll issue. He kept on bragging about the Muslim-Yadav alliance in the State
even though his party was thoroughly routed. BJP had never been a dominant
political force in Bihar as it contested in alliance
with the Samta Party and later JDU in Bihar in the last
18 years. For the first time, it contested alone and swept the polls,
demolishing all caste equations, social theories and politics based on
calculators where numerical strength of castes is added up to get a bigger
picture.
As Lalu Prasad is still grappling
with the results, he has found nothing wrong in the politics he follows —
raking up the caste factor, insecurity of Muslims, bringing in social justice
whatever its meaning today and bringing out a calculator and totalling the
castes and sub-castes in a constituency. Not only the Bihar
leader but all those born and strengthened due to Mandal politics have failed
to read the writing on the wall.
As the rules have changed, they
are yet to realise that aspiration for a better life, education, jobs,
development, better power and infrastructure too count a lot in the voting
preferences of the people. For them, these issues don’t even exist as they want
the electorate to vote only for so-called issue of ‘social justice’ and keep
them trapped in the politics of a quarter of century ago.
A lot of water has flown in the
Ganges in 25 years but the parties who benefited from the implementation of
Mandal Commission have kept themselves firmly secured in a timeframe and don’t
want to get out of it.
Modi may or may not fulfil the
aspirations of the people who voted for the Lotus but he has read the pulse of
the people. Along with a subtle polarisation and reverse polarisation, what
really mattered was catering to the aspirations of those who want a better life
for themselves and their next generation. It was hope and optimism versus
pessimism in UP and Bihar .
Early in his political innings as
Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar realised the futility of banking heavily
only on caste and carried forward the agenda of development and creation of
basic infrastructure. But in 2014, he was outsmarted by BJP as it was offering
a better agenda and a better future for the aspiring class. Also everyone in Bihar
knew that they were voting for a Government in New Delhi
and not in Patna .
Now, the deft players of Mandal
politics are coming together, realising that Congress has become too weak to
challenge the resurgent BJP under Modi. RJD is supporting the JDU Government
led by Jitan Ram Manjhi in Bihar . Nitish and Lalu Prasad
were old friends united as they were by the OBC politics unleashed by the
Mandal commission, then sworn enemies and now they are coming closer once again
due to the threat on their political survival.
In neighbouring Uttar Pradesh,
the den of caste-based politics, Samajwadi Party is facing the heat as those
who are getting social justice are only the family members of party boss
Mulayam Singh Yadav. So far, there has been no development on BSP and SP coming
closer to fight BJP. Both these social justice parties have so much of acrimony
and personal hatred that they can never ever come closer even if the threat is
that of extinction. In the last 10 years, both BSP and SP played a friendly
match with the Congress and UPA in the Centre due to their vested interests and
the tentacles of CBI on their leaders. The voters in 2014 saw through the game
and failed to distinguish between the three, giving them a sound thrashing.
Politics may be a game of
uncertainties, but what is certain is that here 2 plus 2 does not make four.
For instance, in Bihar even if JDU and RJD form an alliance for the Assembly
polls and persuade Congress to join them, all the votes which they got in the
Lok Sabha polls may not add up and make then victorious. Then, there are so
many incompatibilities between the two that they would only see the short-term
gains like forming the Government and not long term social alliance.
The tone and tenor of OBC
politics of 1989 and the 1990s has now changed completely when Modi is assuming
power. In UP and Bihar, which send 120 members to Lok Sabha, the hold of caste
as a determining factor in elections is changing fast. The SP was voted to
power in UP in 2012 simply because people wanted and expected more from it than
the previous BSP regime. In Bihar , the vote was for the
social alliance which the BJP and JDU together represented for the last nine
years. Of course, after JDU and BJP parted ways in 2013, the Government should
have resigned and ordered for fresh elections as it no longer was an alliance
of social forces and the platform for which votes were sought together, was no
longer there.
When the rules of the game are
changing at a rapid pace, the regional parties need to reinvent themselves to
remain relevant. In a democracy, you need divergent opinions and interest
groups for policy formulation for a country as linguistically, socially and
religiously diverse as India .
But in the two States of UP and Bihar, the main regional parties have failed to
introspect, failed to address the concerns and aspirations of a new generation,
rooted as they are in dynasty and caste with only motive being to get power.
You cannot fight a modern electoral war with tools invented decades ago. Change
or perish, is the larger message of the Verdict 2014 for the regional forces of
the Hindi heartland. (May 26, 2014)
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