Gujarat, Karnataka, Goa, UP- Election 2007 - 2

[Guest]

Why a villain is still vibrant- Modis development demagoguery is striking a chord

MANINI CHATTERJEE

Jetalpur (central Gujarat), Dec. 13: Sitting around the chai shop in this village in the heart of central Gujarat, Jitendra Rathore and J.K. Purohit hedge their bets on which way the wind is blowing when Jitendra’s brother Rajendra rudely butts in.

<b>“We need a leader like Indira Gandhi. But the Congress is a bunch of nincompoops who can’t decide on anything. Narendrabhai Modi is our Indira Gandhi.”</b>
That comparison may sound outrageous but there are more sophisticated backers for rustic Rajendra’s theory.

<b>A day before in Ahmedabad, the BJP’s chief “election strategist” Arun Jaitley said something similar. Dismissing suggestions that dissidence in the BJP and anti-Modi feelings within the Sangh parivar would affect the outcome, he compared Gujarat 2007 to the watershed general elections of 1971. Just as Indira won a landslide despite the Congress “Syndicate” ganging up against her, Modi too would triumph regardless of the rebels, Jaitley said. </b>

Both leaders, Jaitley implied, were dynamic and dictatorial and managed to communicate directly with the masses without depending on the party organisation or the support of the media.

As we travel from Ahmedabad to Vadodara via the prosperous Kheda, Nadiad, Borsad-Anand belt, we discover another stylistic similarity — albeit rooted in a substantive difference — between the two polls Jaitley mentioned.

Just as Mrs Gandhi’s “Garibi Hatao” slogan mesmerised vast millions and she remains to this day the most popular leader among India’s poor, Modi’s “Vibrant Gujarat” demagoguery seems to have clicked with urban and semi-urban Gujaratis and its ripple effect is being felt even in many rural areas in this region.

Upper and middle class Gujaratis have more or less internalised Modi’s rhetoric about Gujarati asmita (pride). Madhav Desai (name changed), a senior retired civil servant in Vadodara, admits “feeling bad” about the 2002 carnage but insists that Modi isn’t to be blamed.

“You all have made Modi the villain and tarnished all of Gujarat for the past five years. The fact is that there was a spontaneous outpouring of anger and the mobs took over — Modi did nothing. And in the last five years, riot-prone Gujarat has not seen a single communal clash.”

That is an argument we hear repeatedly — “Gujarat has better law and order, better infrastructure, better governance, a better business climate than any other state in the country. And it is all thanks to Modi.”

Pranav Ghosh (name changed), a Bengali who grew up in Madhya Pradesh but has been a Vadodara resident for 25 years, is particularly happy with the state’s business climate. “Gujarat has progressed a great deal and it is essentially because of the Gujarati spirit of enterprise. But Modi too has helped.”

Modi, the urban mantra goes, is the least corrupt chief minister Gujarat has seen and runs a strong administration that is ideal for business.

<b>The overwhelming urban middle class support for Modi is playing a significant role in the elections for two reasons. First, Gujarat is possibly the most urbanised state in India with around 40 per cent of its population living in urban centres. Apart from the big cities of Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot, there are 29 towns with a population of over a lakh and another 30 with between 50,000 and a lakh. </b>
Second, the rural-urban divide is far less rigid than in most parts of India with well-to-do farmers often having homes in the town and building city-style homes in the village. As a result, the urban voice dominates political discourse to a far higher degree than in other states.

That could be one reason why the conversations in an upper middle class Vadodara or Ahmedabad drawing room are echoed, almost verbatim, in much poorer village squares.

In Hariala village, for instance, Kamlesh Parmar insists that “jo Congress ne 45 saal nahi kiya, woh Modi sarkar ne paanch saal mein kar dikhaya (What the Congress failed to do in 45 years, Modi has done in five).”

Even in the seats of Chaklasi and Borsad — traditional Congress strongholds, which the party held against the Hindutva wave in 2002 — villagers talk about bringing about a “parivartan” (change) and by that they mean the possibility of voting BJP.

It is not as if “development” has reached everywhere and everybody. Interspersed between the gung-ho praise for Modi, there are voices of dissent and distress. Muslims, in town and village, are the most vocal supporters of the Congress “even though the party did nothing for us”.

There are others too — those who own neither land nor capital to take advantage of the get-rich-quick-never-mind-what-it-costs syndrome.

But for the past five years, no one has come around to mobilise or channelise those who have been left out — socially and economically — from Modi’s “vibrant Gujarat ” or even question the ruthless nature of that growth, they complain.

<i>Buoyed by exit polls showing a swing in its favour in Saurashtra, the Congress is hoping to make more gains in the second phase. That could happen in the Adivasi belt that forms the eastern fringe of north and central Gujarat, but in the heartland itself there is little sign of any anti-incumbency wave.<span style='color:red'>{here comes Manini's own spin. They cannot digest Modi and they have to write something to show their true color.}</i></span>