The BJP is perhaps the most ideologically prepared among all parties. It wants to privilege Hindutva rhetoric over state-level concerns.
Even before the campaign for the Maharashtra assembly fully kicked off, a local BJP leader from the newly named Ahilyanagar district made derogatory remarks about the daughter of a Congress leader in a public meeting. The audience laughed, the media shrugged it off, Congress contented itself with social media anger and BJP sympathisers became busy with whataboutery.
This incident, while a sad comment on the willful rejection of public reason in electoral discourse, also represents a more specific ailment that afflicts the current state election. Maharashtra has always taken pride in being socially progressive and economically well-to-do. Both claims have an element of myth mixed with doubtful truth. The sharp caste consciousness that should be seen as a stark contrast to social progressivism has of late become the most visible feature of public and private life in the state. Besides an aggressive sharpening of Maratha identity over the past one decade — not a necessary component of the reservation demand, even if one were to support that demand — the state is witnessing a simmering tension between OBCs and Marathas. There is also a brewing bitterness among Adivasis against Dhangars who are demanding ST status. Not to be outdone, the Brahmins are aggressively expressing deep caste consciousness even while mobilising on a Hindutva platform. The state has witnessed the mushrooming of government-appointed caste-specific corporations, including one for Brahmins.
The incident mentioned in the beginning is only a small tip of the iceberg of anti-women prejudice. It is not confined merely to an uncivilised diatribe against women activists in public life, though they bear the brunt of it. The state has been witnessing a spate of molestation incidents and no party seems to be seriously addressing the random violence against women. So much for the progressive pretensions of Maharashtra.
The huge expenditure that the current lame-duck state government has been indulging in on so-called welfare schemes testifies to the poverty of well-being. Maharashtra is said to be a vastly urbanised state but almost 40 per cent of its urban population is concentrated in the Mumbai-Thane-Pune belt. This means that urbanisation is uneven and that other urban centres are denuded of resources and infrastructure. They are mostly nominally urban even as Mumbai-Thane-Pune are sitting on a volcano of infrastructure collapse. This “developed” state continues to have half of its working population engaged in agriculture. Equally well-documented are the failures in converting promises of FDI into actual investment, producing more employment and, above all, in the recent past, the flight of industry from the state, particularly to Gujarat.
The point of reminding about these limitations and failures is to contrast them with the current electoral rhetoric. In the past five years, Maharashtra’s politics has been torn asunder. Two state parties have witnessed vertical splits and party competition has become fluid. Stories of intra-coalition disagreement are occupying centrestage. Most Marathi media have reported the nearly unprecedented prevalence of the “family factor” in ticket distribution. Members from the same family have obtained tickets from different parties of the same coalition and, in one instance at least, father and son have obtained tickets from rival coalitions.
Both the main coalitions are entering the electoral fray without any genuine policy approach vis-a-vis the decline of the state. On the one hand, every party wants to perform as well as possible in order to be able to jockey for the top post after the election. Neither coalition has announced its probable chief minister candidate — this is natural in view of shaky coalitions. There is only the crude focus on numbers. The other issue that concerns all parties is personal animosities of the deepest nature. Blinkered by these, no party has the time and energy to offer a programme to voters.
The BJP is perhaps the most ideologically prepared among all parties. It wants to privilege Hindutva rhetoric over state-level concerns. It is interesting to watch whether Modi launches that rhetoric full throttle or leaves it to diffuse campaigning. During the past two or three years, the state has witnessed the silent march of the Hindutva sentiment. Caught between the hope of winning some Maratha votes and the ambition to consolidate the OBC vote, the BJP is turning to the slogan of Hindu unity. Conveniently, it has managed to get the media to discuss the question of “vote jihad”. This penchant for attributing every Muslim move to the idea of jihad stirs up Islamophobia that can push various Hindu communities toward the BJP. This, however, also indicates that the BJP does not have anything to offer in terms of development and governance and wants to contest without reference to the interests of Maharashtra.
The Maha Vikas Aghadi does not have any answer to this. Congress believes that its Lok Sabha success in the state will be repeated in the assembly. It also believes that “Bharat Jodo” etc is an extravaganza only Rahul Gandhi can afford. So, since June 4, Congress has only been dreaming of becoming the largest party in the state without doing anything. The NCP led by Sharad Pawar has been more active organisationally but its pragmatism has meant that it is only busy poaching powerful players from the BJP and rival NCP. This may bring some electoral dividend but in terms of a game-changing electoral campaign, it lacks vision. The Shiv Sena of Uddhav Thackeray has confined itself to licking its wounds from the split and the insults caused by it. It thinks that this is an adequate electoral plank. Thus, no partner of the MVA has any substantive response to the efforts of communalising the social sphere or to slogans of Hindu unity. In fact, the MVA does not seem to be one united block fighting against the BJP and its allies.
Going back to the incident mentioned at the beginning, it warns of the kind of electioneering that is going to take place over the next three weeks or so. At one level, a deeply competitive election is bound to produce a no-holds-barred campaign, but at another level, the incident manifests the determination of political parties to engage in warfare without a cause. The BJP may succeed in making this election a fight for Hindutva, the MVA may make this election a fight against the BJP, but as the campaign heats up, it would be more and more clear that for voters in Maharashtra, this is going to be a big fight for nothing.
The writer, based in Pune, taught Political Science
