Amitabh
Shukla | Chandigarh
One
of the most fiercely contested elections recently, Himachal Pradesh is one
classic case of democracy where anti incumbency seems to be sole determining
factor in the November 9 assembly polls.
If
Virbhadra Singh Government is voted out of power forty days later on December
18 when the results are to be announced, it would be largely due to
anti-incumbency as the State has been voting out the incumbent Government for
the last over three decades without fail.
Not
that the six-time Chief Minister has done a lot of development work in the last
five years and he needs another term to complete his work. That’s not the case.
Himachal is one State where successive Government — BJP and Congress — both
have done remarkably well and touched the developmental chord and consistently
strived to improve the social and economic indices of the State.
So
much so that whoever has been in power, they have focused on core areas like
roads, schools, health, transport, women empowerment, horticulture, agriculture
tourism etc. Of course, a lot of work still needs to be done as development is
an ongoing phenomenon, but it is pleasant to find that there is no
politicisation of development in the hill State unlike its neighbours. Ask the villagers and they will tell you that
the BJP started that work and Congress completed it or Congress Government
started a particular work and the next BJP Government ensured that it was
complete as per the time schedule.
Many
villagers do not even associate any work with any political party, simply
saying that the government did it. “As long as we get our old age pension on
time and other schemes, we are not even bothered to find out who funds the
scheme-Centre or the state,” said, Daulat Ram, a village head in Una
constituency. Rani, who goes by the first name, and who runs a shop on the
highway from Hamirpur to Una, is satisfied with governance as her expectations
have been met broadly. “Whatever scheme is announced, either by the Centre or
the State, comes here and the villagers get benefit. There is so much awareness
now that whoever is in power in Shimla ensures that we are not left out,” she
added.
The
general refrain in Himachal is that “it’s a well administered State” and
whoever has been in power, has more or less continued the work done by the
previous regime, except a few exceptions here and there. Comparison with other
states like neighbouring Punjab would be apt as polity here, is completely
divided by two adversarial political power structure of Akali Dal and Congress
where one upmanship is the norm and verbally tearing each other apart is
practiced without fail. Not in Himachal, where good work by the other party
keeps on going and the political rival too has little or no issues with it.
Even when the local but rival Himachal leaders attack each other, it has little
to do with conviction and more to do with political expediency and demands of
their respective high command.
Travelling
in the hill State during the elections was an eye opener. The bitter acrimony
which the rival political parties — BJP and Congress — engage in at the macro
level, is absent at the micro level. The high decibel campaign doesn’t really
affect the voters living in areas outside the urban habitats and largely they
get influenced and go by door to door canvassing and personal touch of
candidates. The simple Himachalis in the hinterland are convinced more by their
friendly neighborhood candidate and their accessibility than the helicopter flying
tall leaders making tall promises or leveling all sorts of accusations against
their rivals.
During
my travel during elections, I came across numerous tea stall owners, cloth
shops, dhaba owners, daily need shops, heads of gram panchayats etc, where the
local MLA comes in the evening either for a drink, tea or a simple chat all
throughout his or her tenure of five years. Most of the people I interacted
with in the villages and the hamlets adjoin the State highways and Major
District Roads, personally knew their MLA, had met them and interacted with
them on numerous occasions.
“That’s
a way of political life her. This is how you conduct your politics here,” said
Ramesh Singh, a dhaba owner in Arki constituency. He is a school friend of the
sitting MLA Govind Sharma of the BJP and has been voting for the Lotus for the
last two terms of Govind Sharma. As his friend Sharma is not contesting this
time, he would rather go with Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh who is contesting
from Arki for the first time after leaving his Shimla Rural seat for his son
Vikramaditya Singh. “I am what you can say, a floating voter. I take a call at
the appropriate time. Had Govind Sharma been contesting, it would have been
extremely difficult for me but I would have gone with my friend,” he added.
Sharma is a regular at the Dhaba.
There
were few takers for the allegations of corruption leveled by top BJP leaders
against chief minister Virbhadra Singh. “Corruption is a non issue in Himachal
Pradesh. Who would believe that Raja (as Virbhadra Singh is known) who has
ancestral wealth running into multiples of crores, would indulge in corruption
amounting to `5 crore or something,” said a Professor in Himachal Pradesh
University who did not want to be named.
Another
Congress leader added, that the problem was in the “unprofessional accountants
of Singh who did a shoddy work” while filing his tax returns. They are not
willing to buy the charge of BJP leaders that a Raja would indulge in such a
small corruption. “People simply laugh it away,” said the Congress leader, when
asked about the main election plank of BJP.
The
Professor, who is a fence sitter in the politically surcharged State in the run
up to elections, does not have a grudge against the BJP either. “See, Congress
raised the issues of demonetisation and GST in the elections. These issues are
of no consequence to the people of the State,” he said, adding that “the
biggest failure of Congress remained finding issues which could find traction
with the people”. The Professor said that in a relatively prosperous state, the
level of expectations keeps increasing. “People keep voting out the incumbent
Government as the expectations are not met. In fact, no government can ever
meet all expectations and that is where they vote out one Government and bring
out the other,” he added.
The
Congress leaders, who claimed to have toured the State and who were managing
the polls from the State party headquarters on Cart Road, said it was a “normal
election” unlike the “wave election” of 2014 where BJP resoundingly won all the
four parliamentary seats in the state. They kept on insisting that Modi is no
longer a strong factor in Himachal Pradesh.
BJP
leaders disagree. “There is no proof so far to suggest that the Modi wave is on
decline. We just won a landslide in UP earlier this year and that was entirely
due to Modi magic,” said a BJP leader in Hotel Combermere, the headquarters of
the party during the assembly polls. “We have a triple advantage in Himachal
this time-charisma of Modi, chief ministerial face of Prem Kumar Dhumal and
anti incumbency,” summed up the BJP greenhorn, who claims to be well acquainted
with the broader socio-political current of the state.
So,
there you have it. The political trend in Himachal is slightly different and it
would be difficult to see it from the prism of macro factors that determine the
trend in the rest of the northern state. Local factors, local leaders and
localized issues seem to dominate the broader contours and that makes the
elections all the more exciting. November 13, 2017)
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