DEEP inside Vidisha, in the unkempt village of Manpur, some young men are plodding along the fields, glumly talking about the issues that affect them: unemployment, price rise, long power outages. Strewn around them are a couple of pamphlets bearing the lotus symbol in dazzling orange colour. These had been distributed only some time ago when Mukesh Tandon of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who is contesting in the Vidisha Assembly constituency, came to solicit their support. The scene speaks for itself: the Hindi heartland that powered an emphatic victory for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014 is now spurning his party. Yet, it remains a hard combat for the Congress to turn people’s rage into votes in Madhya Pradesh, where the government’s generous sops and cash incentives have the effect of a tranquiliser.
“ Pakki sadak ab ban rahi hai [the roads are being asphalted only now],” shouts a visibly exasperated man in Manpur, pointing to a site under construction inside the village where the roads are decrepit, unlike the excellent highways. Another tries to attract this reporter’s attention to the hanging, worn-out power wires, while a ninth standard student rues: “There’s only 10 hours of electricity: six hours in the morning and four hours at night.”
The sense of disillusionment with the BJP, which has been in power in the State for three consecutive terms since the defeat of the Congress government of Digvijaya Singh in 2003, manifests itself unmistakably in the hinterland. In village after village, the litany of complaints is the same: erratic power supply and poor provision for primary health care and education.
The allegations match several findings. The health index released by NITI Aayog in February this year placed Madhya Pradesh at the 17th position among 21 big States while an ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) survey said nearly 17 per cent of pupils in rural government schools in the State could not recognise basic letters.
Not surprisingly, when Sadhna Singh, wife of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, visited Budhni on November 12 to canvass for her husband who is seeking re-election from that constituency in Sehore district, she faced angry questions from women over drinking water supply. The videos soon went viral on social media.
In Vidisha constituency, in a dusty field at Rakoli village in Gulabganj town, there are not even a few dozen people to receive Tandon. Aware that the anti-incumbency sentiment is high in the district and exacerbated by the long absence of its Member of Parliament, Sushma Swaraj, Tandon attempts to stir up memories of the decade-long rule of Digvijaya Singh from 1993 to 2003, which was discredited for bad roads and poor electricity supply. But when this reporter asked him about the non-performance of the incumbent BJP Member of the Legislative Assembly Kalyan Singh Thakur, whom he has replaced as the party’s candidate, he stammers. “Everyone should get a chance...,” he leaves the sentence hanging.
However, Sachin Tambrakar, election in-charge of the BJP in Gulabganj, is confident the party will overcome the anti-incumbency sentiment. “The Congress won only once from Vidisha, some 30 years ago. This is a BJP bastion,” he declares, adding: “We have issued credit card to farmers, enabling them to procure short-term loans of up to Rs.3 lakh. We have capped the electricity bill for them at Rs.200 a month, and for every Rs.100 of manure and fertilizers that they purchase, they are charged Rs.90.”
In contrast to the tepid scene at Rakoli, Tandon’s rival Shashank Bhargava of the Congress is welcomed with celebrations in the streets and an explosion of fireworks during a door-to-door campaign at Buxaria. Later, while touring the city along with this reporter, Bhargava occasionally pointed to non-functional street lights and piles of garbage, while mocking the Centre’s flagship initiatives such as Swachh Bharat and Smart Cities. “There are only eight hours of power supply [the local people claimed 10 hours], farmers are not getting the right prices for their produce and the government has increased house tax by 18 per cent at a time when the common man is reeling under price rise,” Bhargava told Frontline . He predicted 145 to 155 seats for the Congress in the 231-member Assembly (230 elected representatives and one nominated member).
The opinion polls are divided. Results of the ABP-CSDS survey, released on November 8, predicted 116 seats for the BJP and 105 for the Congress. The C-Voter poll has given the opposition Congress a simple majority with 116 seats. It has further projected Jyotiraditya Scindia as the most popular choice for Chief Minister with 41.6 per cent votes compared with Chouhan’s 37.4 per cent.
Despite the early signs of recovery, it will not be easy for the Congress to reclaim Madhya Pradesh. From the capital, Bhopal, to its outskirts to remote villages, Chouhan’s welfare sops, distributed hastily in the past one year, have abated the rage against his 13-year rule.
At the Indian Coffee House in Bhopal, where college students have gathered on a late afternoon, there is a more positive reception to Chouhan’s claims of good governance than to the Congress’ exhortation for change.
“There’s a sense of belonging with Shivraj Singh Chouhan,” says Shubham Chourasiya. “The Congress is talking about scams; maybe there is truth in that. But the Chief Minister has done a lot for us. Students who score 75 per cent and above in class 12 are entitled to free education in government colleges.” Kajal Singh add: “He [Chouhan] is concerned about the poor. Every year, 200-250 sammelan vivah s are organised for girls from humble backgrounds.” All except one student, Ranjay Singh Deb, said they would vote for the BJP, as they looked outside the window at the azure sky above the immaculate Shivaji Nagar in the heart of the city.
In a small consolation for the Congress, most of these respondents told Frontline that they feel Congress president Rahul Gandhi is increasingly showing the aptitude to take over from Modi, although they pledged support for the latter. A nationwide survey conducted by the Political Stock Exchange and the India Today group recently found that the gap between Modi and Rahul Gandhi for the Prime Minister’s chair is, indeed, narrowing—the Congress president polled 32 per cent compared with Modi’s 46 per cent.
At Obaidullaganj, 37 kilometres south-east of Bhopal, vendors on the street were venting their anger against the government, but they said they were undecided whether or not they should shift allegiance to the Congress. “ Karyakal to theek nahi hai, lekin paisa mila hai [we are not happy with the incumbent government, but people have received money],” said most of them. A man in his forties who was selling flowers outside a temple claimed that in the nearby Arjun Nagar locality, many of his acquaintances had received Rs.2.5 lakh cash to build houses.
Down south, some 30 km away, a smooth expanse of roads, dotted with a receding forest line, takes one to Bhubni, where work on a two-lane road is in progress, announcing the VIP status of that constituency. But at the dhaba s along the highway, people are muted when they are asked to rate Chouhan, who is the sitting MLA. Some said, in whispers, that they were unhappy. Some others said they had not heard about the Sambhal scheme, though the government claims that over two crore people have enrolled for it. The Sambhal scheme targets people in the unorganised labour sector. The benefits include electricity at a fixed rate of Rs.200 a month and insurance money in the case of death.
The Congress, which has fielded its former Pradesh Congress Committee president Arun Yadav against Chouhan in the constituency, is aware that its campaign needs to attain a feverish pitch to defeat the Chief Minister on his home turf. The preparations are on.
In Rampura Chakaldi village, at Congress leader Shaitan Singh’s house, former Education Minister Rajkumar Patel tells the party cadre to fully exploit the wave of anti-incumbency. He reminds them that the housing sop that the State government has distributed was a Congress initiative, now appropriated by the BJP. He asks them to tell people this and step up door-to-door canvassing.
Outside his house, when Arun Yadav takes the podium, he talks about a “vyapak model”, promising a monthly pension of Rs.1,000 to people above 60 years of age and upgrading the housing sop to Rs.3,00,000 for both village and city dwellers—currently it is Rs.1,20,000 for villagers and Rs.2,50,000 for those living in urban areas. With a grin, he asks an elderly farmer sitting in the front row: “ Chacha mila 15 lakh? [Did you get the Rs.15 lakh]”, alluding to Modi’s tall claims of bringing back black money and distributing it among the poor. People clap.
During a conversation over lunch with this reporter, he refers to the Chief Minister as a “mafia mentor”, as he talks about illegal mining, which is rampant in the Narmada belt. “There’s a huge sand mafia at work with their main hub at Budhni. They enjoy the tutelage of Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his kin,” he alleged. Rajkumar Patel adds that forests along Budhni, once classified under the D5 index (facing increasing level of disturbance), have seen swift erosion under the Chief Minister’s nose. Villagers, many of whom were chanting “ ab ki haar karari hai, Arun Bhaiya ki baari hai ”, complained the primary health care centre in Rampura Chakaldi was in a shambles and the Nasrullaganj Civil Hospital, 20 km away, has worn out X-ray machines. The claims could not be independently verified by Frontline .
But senior Congress leaders are not complacent. At night, after the fleet of media vans parked outside their Shivaji Nagar headquarters in Bhopal leaves for the day, they meet select journalists informally for tea and enquire about the public mood. At times, they betray signs of apprehension. They fear Chouhan’s populist measures might lessen the impact of the anti-incumbency sentiment. The chances of the BJP making a windfall gain from communal rhetoric, which the Modi-Amit Shah (BJP president) duo traditionally unfold at the fag end of their campaign, also looms in their mind.
The Congress’ national spokesperson, Shobha Oza, who is overseeing the electioneering in Bhopal, recalled how an overt Hindutva campaign ruined her prospects at the hustings many years ago when she contested from Indore. “Since I’m from Kerala, accusations of beef-eating were whipped up energetically from the adversary’s camp, leading to my defeat,” she told Frontline , looking weary but composed after a tiring day. She quickly added that this time the Congress would not let the BJP divert from real issues.
“The issues that matter in this election are farmers’ suicides, unemployment, the impact of GST [Goods and Services Tax] on small traders and atrocities on women. Corruption and the scam rate in this State are very high, although adroit media management by the BJP has prevented them from becoming a national issue. Anyone who talks about irregularities, whether a journalist or a whistle-blower, is found dead in mysterious circumstances. We have seen more than 50 such deaths in Vyapam [scam],” Shobha Oza said, in an exclusive chat with Frontline .
The Congress manifesto has promised an incentive of Rs.10,000 a month to an unemployed member of every family and Rs.51,000 for marriage assistance to girls. The party has also committed itself to reducing taxes on diesel and petrol.
Barely half a kilometre away, at the BJP headquarters, an anxious party office-bearer is giving a minute-by-minute update to Amit Shah through a conference call inside a closed cubicle. The stakes are high for the saffron party and the chances of an election upset are real. But the party functionaries exude confidence in private conversations that the odds can be overcome by raising the communal pitch in television debates. On November 8, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra screamed at a fellow panellist on a television channel who was a Muslim, asking him to “sit down” or else he would name a mosque after the Hindu god Vishnu. Some BJP office-bearers revealed that “game changer statements” were expected during Modi’s and Amit Shah’s rallies in the last leg of the campaign.
But Father Varghese Alengaden, an educationist and social activist based in Indore, feels Madhya Pradesh, unlike Uttar Pradesh, is generally not receptive to a polarising election template. However, he cautions that right-wing politics can “hit below the belt”.
This reporter found that people had begun questioning the BJP’s commitment to the Hindutva ideology. Hemant, whose father owns the Tillu auto parts shop in Vidisha, feels cheated by Tandon, who declined to help when he and his friends approached him for setting up a cow shelter. “We run an organisation, called the Gau Security Force, that provides food and medical care to abandoned cows. We want them off the roads, and so we went to Mukesh Tandon and asked him to provide us a place that we can develop as a cow shelter. But he showed little interest,” recounted the miffed young man.
The Congress is readying itself for the Hindutva trial. Its senior leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, are continuing their zealous “temple run”, which was the highlight of the party’s Gujarat and Karnataka campaigns. Whereas the BJP has fielded one Muslim candidate, Fatima Rasool Siddiqui, against the Congress’ Arif Aqueel, who is also the State’s only Muslim legislator, the Congress has fielded not more than three, as it attempts to shed its “pro-Muslim” image. At public rallies, its leaders no longer paint the election as a stark choice between differing ideologies. In Budhni, Arun Yadav’s speeches are peppered with flattering references to the cultural heritage of the place, besides salutations to “Maa Narmada”.
Muslims, a forgotten lot
Muslims, constituting roughly 8 to 9 per cent of the State’s population, are a forgotten lot. Moulvi Aliqadar, nazim of a madrasa called Nidausafa, feels that the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh’s (RSS) brahmanical order is being brazenly emulated by the Congress. He also blames Rahul Gandhi for not doing enough to cement an alliance with the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. According to him, this was done to keep the upper castes in good humour. But he says local Muslims will still vote for the Congress in the absence of a viable alternative. “It takes time to build a credible and viable alternative. We do hope that someday there will be Dalit-Muslim consolidation. When that happens, we will no longer be dependent on the Congress, which has done little to improve our socio-economic condition,” Aliqadar tells Frontline .
A trip to the Muslim ghettos in Bhopal, at Karond, Bilal Colony, and so on, brings one face to face with the filthy and miserable conditions in which the minorities live. Says the imam of a mosque in the area, not willing to be named, that two months ago, at Moti Lal Nagar, drainage work was stopped soon after it was started. When the residents contacted the local BJP legislator, he reportedly said, “ Yaha se vote nahi padta [we don’t get votes from this pocket].”
“The BJP wants a barter. By depriving us of basic civic amenities, they want to make us so helpless that we will have no choice but to vote for them,” said a man in his late twenties at Bilal Colony, a shabby hub at old Bhopal inhabited by lower income group people who are mostly masons, drivers and house painters. “Even the Congress scarcely mentions the injustice done to us,” he says with an air of resignation.
Meanwhile, the Congress remains beset by internecine feud between the claimants to the chief ministeriral post. Recently, there were reports of a spat between Digvijaya Singh, who is pushing Kamal Nath for the job, and the vastly more popular Jyotiraditya Scindia. The party dismissed the reports both on and off the record, but a veteran journalist based in Bhopal confirmed to this reporter that the spat indeed took place.
More worryingly, some in Bhopal have a foreboding that Digvijaya Singh may have some mischief up his sleeve. It is well known that in 1993 when the Congress clinched a majority in the election following President’s Rule in the State, Digvijaya Singh, helped by Kamal Nath, insidiously stole the chief ministership from Shyama Charan Shukla, who had the then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s blessings besides avowed support from Madhav Rao Scindia.
Journalists who covered Madhya Pradesh in the 1990s are harsh in their assessment of Digvijaya Singh, often blaming him for the party’s misfortunes. The journalist quoted above remembers Digvijaya Singh being overjoyed at the prospect of a weak All India Congress Committee when Sitaram Kesari took over as party president in September 1996. “I was sitting with Singh that day when the news arrived that Kesari had become the Congress president. On hearing this news, Digvijaya Singh displayed that traitorous smile of his. I asked him, ‘What is there to be happy about this?’ He replied: ‘A weak centre would mean stronger regional satraps.’”
The journalist further said that Digvijaya Singh badly, and deliberately, dented the Congress’ prospects in 2003 by making public his intention to go on a 10-year-long “sanyas” from politics in the middle of the election season. The journalist feels that the former Chief Minister may be “at it” again. The Congress recently stirred up a hornet’s nest by proposing in its manifesto to prohibit government employees from attending RSS shakhas. The journalist said that this was bound to incite the RSS, which had so far not been critical of the Congress, to destroy its prospects at all costs.
The journalist said that there was a strong feeling that Digvijaya Singh could be the brain behind the insertion of that clause in the Congress manifesto. “The fact that a retired Indian Administrative Service officer, known to be close to Digvijaya Singh, came out with strong statements against the RSS on TV just as the controversy was unfolding impels one to suspect that this controversy may have been architected by the former Chief Minister.”
Whatever be the truth, the heartening news for the Congress is that reports about Modi’s waning popularity across all sections of society are real, as this reporter found out when he travelled across Bhopal, Sehore and Vidisha districts. But to win over Modi’s discontented voters, the Congress will have to articulate a persuasive case for change. That is its biggest challenge.
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