Narendra Modi’s grip on the electoral arithmetic in Gujarat

Despite strong public opinion prevailing in other parts of the country, successive elections to the Gujarat assembly in 2007 and 2012 were handsomely won by Narendra Modi. Not just critical opinion, there seems to be quite a lot of documentary evidence of the not-so-great performance of Gujarat over the years in terms of the human development, government policies openly favouring the rich and the very rich businessmen and industry groups flouting normal fiscal prudence and administrative norms (running up sizable fiscal debt), the widening of the urban-rural divide, government doing everything to delay and deny justice to the 2002 riot affected and displaced Muslims apart from the official insensitivity towards them and neglect of their rehabilitation needs. Despite all these facts, many of which the congress party brandished as the part of their propaganda at various times before the 2012 elections, 48% of the valid vote polled went in favour of BJP (and in Gujarat the party does not mean anything without Modi), with Congress polling about 39%.

The Muslims constitute only about 9% of the population of the state. For the sake of a simplified analysis, even if Muslims vote enblock against him that hardly affects Modi electorally, as long as he could garner the majority of the remaining votes on the supposed strength of economic development of the state, apparent priority accorded by the government to business and industry (which goes well with the traditional Gujarati ethos), well developed urban infrastructure, good availability of electricity and electronic connectivity, etc. From the reports critical to NaMo and his policies and programs, it may appear that Gujarati society is after all not monolithic and his actions did affect sections of the population in negative ways, especially the poor and the marginalized and those inhabiting the rural Gujarat. Do the voting percentages and patterns in different parts of the State, the regions and the districts demonstrate the disenchantment of these sections? Only a detailed statistical analysis of the poll data can establish that or refute the hypothesis.

Since the voting patterns in 2012 election show a fairly complete polarization between those for and against NaMo (all other parties in the opposition neither significant in gathering votes nor seats) obviously there is a fairly clear divide in the state – it remains, however, to be demonstrated as to whether this divide is indeed between those apparently benefiting from the stress Modi placed on the economic development  (coinciding with the benefits visible in the urban and semi-urban areas of the state) and others being denied of the same. That BJP won comprehensively in the urban areas, cities in particular, is beyond dispute as shown by statistics. But the party also appeared to have got majority of seats – if not greater vote percentage- in most of the 5 major regions of the state.

The 8-9% difference between the BJP and the Congress votes during the last election is too large to have happened without a benefit that accrued to Modi on the back of the perception of a development dividend delivered. There are some indications of the role played by the so-called neo-middle classes of the Gujarati society in this election. There is a sizable section of the population from the poorer classes of the rural areas forced to migrate to urban and semi-urban areas as a result of economic difficulties and backwardness. It is quite possible that they have been attracted by the promise of an economic revival of their fate in the wake of the development ‘magic’ they are consuming as new entrants of the burgeoning middle classes in the cities and urban clusters of Gujarat. And for them the perception is that entrepreneurial ethic is getting the desired attention and support from the government. And naturally they became the latest vote bank for Modi.

Lastly, the recent delimitation of the assembly constituencies may also have played a role in tilting the electoral balance by way of redistributing the purely rural areas and combining them with relatively more urban areas and generating a new constituency with both urban and rural category of voters. This again needs more detailed examination provided relevant statistics are available.

Hope to revisit Modi’s magic formula for wining elections and how it could impact countrywide if at all some other time.



Getting past the shadows of the past

Lamenting about the loss of a time in the past is generally considered futile and a part of the natural wistfulness of a fogey about to be permanently archived. The values and the culture people were then comfortable with could at best be a historian’s curiosity and is certainly ineligible to provide a relevant perspective to our present-day attitude or demeanour.

In terms of the rapid changes occurring in the recent times in India and even in the neighbouring countries, fifty or hundred years are a long time in the past indeed.  A writer in The Hindu Sunday Magazine section (dt 3^rdAug 2013) first wonders aloud as to why there is hardly any celebration (official government sponsored or otherwise) on the occasion of the birth anniversary of an once famous Hindi short story writer and novelist Munshi Premchand, and then finds the answer in the innate disconnect between the values of the writer and his contemporary readers. On the one hand Premchand appears too rooted in his times and the society (largely that of villages and small towns of India of late nineteenth and early twentieth century) that appeared almost static and immutable. An India that almost seems to be too primitive and remote, hence not of much relevance to today’s ‘shining’ India. The young readers today are certainly far removed from the mileu Premchand described and was concerned with and hence are probably unenthused about his work (many may not have even heard about him). What might have additionally contributed to the quiescence is that he is not uniquely identified with or appropriated by any currently dominant political constituencies like dalits, scheduled castes and tribes or the Muslims or the women, although much of his writings held up a mirror to the caste oppression and the plight and the position of women in the Indian society with unmistakable empathy for the downtrodden.

Ironically, while The Hindu magazine writer entitled his article ‘Cast into the shadows’ referring to the fate of  Premchand, one has the uneasy awareness about the dark shadows of worst forms of cast discrimination being insidiously continued and ingenuously revived in much of the dark hinterland behind the neon shine of the progressive and contemporary India. Undermining of women’s rights and position in society is continuing unabated despite big charades of government-initiated tokenisms perpetuated by power-hungry politicians of all hues. If anything, the humiliation of women have become much more open, brutal and ubiquitous. Are we sure we are getting out of the shadows of our past ?

By a curious coincidence, in another page of the same Sunday Magazine, there was a discussion with Tash Aw the acclaimed Malaysian writer discussing the context of his recent   novel “Five star Billionaire” (that made to the Booker Prize long list), that of Malaysians migrating to Shanghai seeking to change their life, make a fortune, pretty much with the same motivation that drives much of the voluntary migrations within and from the post-colonial Asia. But, Tash makes the point, coming out of the shadows of a stagnant underdevelopment in the native country and embracing the new, the glittering, the desirable, has not always been easy despite valiant and somewhat tragic effort. To quote from his analysis of the problem, “I think that there’s a tendency in many Asian cultures to be very ruthless with the past, both in a national and a personal sense. Partly this is because our recent histories have been difficult narratives to deal with; often involving upheaval, violence and, above all, the lingering and badly-articulated humiliation of having been colonized, or defeated in some sense. So we tend to focus on the shiny new ‘Now’, in which our countries are on an upward curve, certainly in a material sense; the past is at best irrelevant, at worst a bit shameful. Which means that we cut off parts of our narratives and, in so doing, cut off our emotional roots.” According to him Asians in countries like Malaysia, Singapore, China have generally found it difficult to deal with their past in an honest and rational manner with the desired detachment despite pretending to do so. That in some sense is also true about Indians in India and those described to be the diaspora Indians.