THE report card of the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government in Maharashtra is not impressive enough to enable the States electorate to take a decision on polling day, April 23. In the last five years of its rule, the coalition has done little to take Maharashtra forward. Instead, new issues have often cropped up. Knowing that coalition politics and post-poll alliances are here to stay, the average voter finds the ballot exercise a pointless act.
The four main parties in Maharashtra the Congress, the NCP, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena have all had a chance to govern the State but have let down the electorate. Others, such as the Republican Party of India (RPI), the Janata Dal, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Samajwadi Party (S.P.) and the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP), have been unable to extend their influence and so, like the RPI, have either forged alliances with the main parties or, like the CPI(M), managed to remain strong but only in tiny pockets.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) contested in the 2004 general elections but could win no seat. This time around, the party is more meticulous in its planning. Raj Thackerays Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) will be fighting its first election. If he succeeds, the main parties are likely to take him more seriously in the Assembly polls later this year.
This time, the parties have displayed an unprecedented disregard for propriety as they set about searching for partners who would ensure them the best possible chance of victory. The stakes would be high as Maharashtra sends the second highest number of members to the Lok Sabha.
The most open display of pre-poll courtship took place between the NCP and the Sena. The NCPs decision to stick with the Congress in the end offended Sena supremo Bal Thackeray so much that he responded with a scathing editorial in his newspaper Saamna. He wrote that NCP chief Sharad Pawar had missed the opportunity to bury the Congress the same way that Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad and S.P. leader Mulayam Singh Yadav had done in their States.
The Congress and the NCP settled for a 26-22 seat division though the NCP had wanted 24 seats. Each will give one seat to factions of the RPI. That the two are unwilling partners was evident in their very public wrangling over the Osmanabad seat in Marathwada that ultimately went to the NCPs Dr. Padamsinh Patil. The Congress was very keen to have it for Shivraj Patil, former Union Home Minister, who had lost from Latur last time; he is unable to contest from there again because it has been made a reserved seat.
The Sena and the BJP have been forced to be partners again. The Sena, which has always played second fiddle to the BJP, was hoping to become a national party by flirting with the NCP. This alliance did not happen. The Sena and the BJP have agreed to share 22 and 26 seats respectively. As has been the case, the Sena will be given a larger chunk of seats in the Assembly elections. In the case of the Sena-BJP, this arrangement is a sound one given that the BJP has a bigger national presence while the Sena has a stronger presence in the home turf, especially in Mumbai.
The deal between the Congress and the NCP is similar, though there are fears that the Sena and the NCP will unofficially support each other in the Assembly elections. The aim seems to be to cut their respective partners votes. For the NCP, this will be one more effort to project its leader at the Centre and for the Sena it will be a boost for its Marathi manus card. In fact, much in the present elections is being done with an eye on the Assembly elections. At a rally in Nashik, the NCP demanded that the Chief Minister post be shared between itself and the Congress for two and a half years each. The Congress is spurring on the MNS in the hope that it will undermine the Shiv Sena.
The BJP is facing its first election without Pramod Mahajan, its main strategist. Mahajan was responsible for the rise of the BJP in Maharashtra and was credited with engineering the alliance with the Sena. Apart from ensuring that the party was well funded, he also smoothed over internal conflicts. Now, old tensions between the partys two main State-level leaders, Gopinath Munde and Nitin Gadkari, have resurfaced.
The S.P. is likely to play a spoiler, especially in Mumbai. It hopes to eat into the Sena and MNS votes by reminding voters about their attacks on North Indians.
The BSP is fielding candidates in all 48 seats and expects to win 15. The party is continuing with the successful formula it applied in Uttar Pradesh, of fielding candidates regardless of their caste or community. Whether this will appeal to Dalits, who form a sizable 13 per cent of the States voting population, remains to be seen.
The political awareness among Dalits in Maharashtra remains untapped because of the lack of good leadership. The fractured RPI is a party only in name. Its prominent leader, Ramdas Athavale, was unseated from his safe Pandarpur seat by the delimitation exercise. In his search for an alternative reserved constituency, Athavale was given the safe Shirdi seat, which is with the Congress. While Athavale and R.S. Gavai (now Governor of Kerala) have maintained their loyalty to the Congress and the NCP, the other prominent Dalit leader, Prakash Ambedkar, has always opted to stay away from the main parties. This time too he says his party, the Bahujan Mahasangh, will contest all 48 seats on its own. The Congress and the NCP, keen to keep him and his followers within their grasp, offered him the Akola constituency from their quotas. They both need him to regain this crucial Vidarbha seat, which has eluded the Congress in recent rounds. The elections will be a testing ground for the NCP and the Shiv Sena. The Sena will have to make a serious effort to regain lost ground following the departure of its Konkan strongman Narayan Rane (who joined the Congress in 2005) and Raj Thackeray. The NCPs endeavour is to make a bid for the prime ministership.
Swing factors in this election include the tacit alliances that parties make, the Dalit vote, the Muslim and North Indian votes in certain segments, and the delimitation of constituencies, which resulted in certain stalwarts losing their seats.
Election time once again brings to the fore unfulfilled promises. Contrary to popular perception, agriculture, industry and social development sectors in the State are not doing really well.
Except for sugarcane, and to an extent pulses and oilseeds, crops are not doing well. Sugarcane cultivation is on 2 per cent of the irrigated land but takes up 60 per cent of water resources. For a State where about 60 per cent of the population (most of them are not into cane cultivation) still depends on agriculture for a livelihood, this shows the uneven distribution of resources and profits.
The State is not as industrially developed as is made out to be. Mumbai, Pune, Thane and belts around Nagpur can claim to be industrially developed, and have reasonable support of power, water and transport facilities. But the quality of urbanisation and industrialisation in the rest of the State is poor.
The States social development index maybe higher than that of some other States, but that does not make things any better. More than half the population get less than the recommended 2,700 calories a day. Although Maharashtra decentralised primary health care, budgetary provisions for this have been declining over the years. Access to health care in rural areas is such that there is only one doctor 28 villages. Low investment and poor infrastructure troubles the educational sector too. Safety systems for the public such as free education, health benefits, public distribution system and employment guarantee by the state have all but collapsed. Instead, regional chauvinism, terrorism and social discrimination are gaining a foothold in the State.
Some region-specific issues are likely to determine the outcome of the Lok Sabha polls. In western Maharashtra, there is resentment about the way water is siphoned off for sugarcane cultivation alone. In Konkan, there is simmering anger over the poor market support given to horticulturists and the unfulfilled promise of improving tourism in the region. In the crucial Mumbai constituencies, terrorism and security-related matters are of concern to citizens. Rural out-migration has increased the pressure on urban infrastructure.
Lack of water and the long-pending demand for industrialisation continue to be huge issues in Marathwada. The communal politics of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh is making an entry into the northern tribal districts. On the livelihood front, the support promised to small farmers for taking up horticulture is yet to materialise.
In Vidarbha, suicide by farmers and peasants continue to be a matter of concern. Although government subsidies were sanctioned to farmers after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited the region in 2006, there were allegations that the funds were being diverted to western Maharashtra since they were channelled via cooperative banks, which are largely under the control of the NCP.
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