Five new state governments were sworn into office in the second week of May last year. Three out of the five — namely Kerala, West Bengal, and Assam — voted the same party back. However, Assam got a new Chief Minister in Himanta Biswa Sarma, replacing Sarbananda Sonawal who moved to the Centre. Puducherry saw a minor upset with the BJP and AINRC combine dislodging the Narayanasamy-led Congress government.
The biggest change was in Tamil Nadu — with the coronation of MK Stalin, who had been the heir in waiting for nearly three decades. Though the DMK was expected to win in keeping with Tamil Nadu’s tradition of two principal parties, DMK and AIADMK, swapping power after each term, Stalin won his spurs by winning a decisive mandate. But in Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan defied a similar pattern bringing the LDF back for a second consecutive term.
In West Bengal, buoyed by its success in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when it increased its seat tally from 2 to 18 seats out of 42 and vote share to 41 per cent, the BJP had mounted a frontal attack on Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress. In many ways, Bengal was the last bastion to be captured in the BJP’s “Go East” strategy. It did not spare any resources in terms of money, people, and campaigning by top leaders. The hype and surround sound created the atmosphere for an imminent change. Proving both pundits and punters wrong, Mamata Banerjee stormed back to office causing a total meltdown of the BJP’s state unit. The post-poll violence that followed is another chapter in West Bengal’s blood-stained political history.
In balance, BJP lost three out of the five states that went to polls. Assam which was expected to be a close fight with the Congress and its allies came as a consolation prize of sorts but cemented Himanta Biswa Sarma’s claim on the chief minister’s chair. However, the real setback for BJP was West Bengal. Not only was it a loss of face for Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, both of whom had invested a disproportionate amount of political capital in the state, but it sought to change the trajectory of national politics by catapulting Mamata Banerjee to a pan-India platform.
A collateral beneficiary was Prashant Kishor, who appropriated a substantial share of credit for Trinamool victory, positioning himself as a potential pivot for anti-Modi forces in the days to come. The Opposition that was singeing from its comprehensive drubbing in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls began to show signs of resuscitation. West Bengal rekindled hope among Opposition leaders that it is possible to stop the BJP juggernaut in its tracks with strategic alignment of constituents. Uttar Pradesh was identified as the next laboratory for experiment where the Yogi Adityanath government was believed to be battling anti-incumbency and aftermath of the devastating second Covid-19 wave. Some hopefuls announced Uttar Pradesh elections as the semi-finals for 2024.
The story from hereon is not about what happened in Uttar Pradesh and the other four states — Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa, and Mizoram — that went for elections this year and what it entails for 2024. It is also not about the enigma surrounding a phenomenon called Prashant Kishor or Arvind Kejriwal, the messiah in a bush shirt. Because, in doing so, we may miss the larger picture of the changing orientation and ambition of regional leaders.
There will be full-page advertisements in newspapers about the achievements of the new governments in the first year of the current term. But one suspects these will talk primarily about the various welfare schemes that respective chief ministers launched after assuming office. It will be a surprise if anyone talks about initiatives for improving governance, development projects and upgrading social infrastructure. It is doubtful whether there will be any reference at all to the law-and-order situation in the states. It would be interesting to see if any states talk of economic indices — investment, revenue collection or health parameters, especially record of vaccination. There is little guarantee that we shall not see any further waves of Covid-19. So, people would like to know the state of preparedness of the local governments. How many new beds have been created and new oxygen plants set up? But populism triumphs over progress.
Is it a question of misplaced priority, one may ask? Politicians know what works in their interests. As they say there can be no long-term without a short-term. And when the goalpost is the next elections, which in the present scenario, are the parliamentary elections of 2024, who has the time or motivation to look beyond. But was this always the case? Perhaps yes, but not to this extent one would argue. So, what has changed over the years?
Like everything else in today’s polity, some of the blame for this must fall on Narendra Modi. Ever since he rode the tsunami to Delhi in 2014, Modi has turned every election in the country into a virtual referendum for himself. With the result, the erstwhile regional stalwarts see him as the principal adversary even in their local turf. Seeing the unrelenting desire of the BJP to extend its national footprint, many of them feel an existential crisis. To contend against Modi’s larger-than-life image and his party’s hegemonistic designs, they fall into the populist trap of freebie politics.
The era of coalition politics since the 1990s saw the rise of regional parties. Most of them were content with consolidating their domestic base and leaving their own imprint on the state while playing a participatory role at the Centre. This was best demonstrated in Bihar, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, to an extent Uttar Pradesh and, if one may add, Jammu and Kashmir in the past. The Congress provided an umbrella cover for the motley group where cooperative federalism was embedded in the principle of sharing the spoils. That has changed under BJP rule. The progressive decimation of the Congress has left the smaller parties to fend for themselves. This sense of insecurity is manifest on the one hand in vicious hostility as displayed by West Bengal, Maharashtra, and of late Telangana, and on the other hand the overarching urge to grab a larger share of the national mindspace as a form of term insurance.
Meanwhile, the Modi government continues to work on a longer-term roadmap staying ahead of contemporaries who have one eye and one foot set on Delhi. As a result, focusing on the home state becomes a casualty. Hence, a balanced scorecard of these states after twelve months (barring Assam which has benefited from its relationship with the Centre) may not be much to talk about.
The author is a current affairs commentator, marketer, blogger and leadership coach, who tweets at @SandipGhose. Views expressed are personal.
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May 06, 2022 at 11:48AM
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