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Happy New Year 2020 to all Readers.          January 2020 Edition of Power Politics is updated.
Issue:Jan' 2020

BJP’S JHARKHAND LOSS

A self-inflicted wound

Power Politics Bureau

Modi’s BJP has been voted out in Jharkhand. And the Sonia-Rahul Congress has returned into reckoning as a junior partner of the mighty JMM.
Only six-months ago, the electorate in Jharkhand, like the people of Haryana, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, had voted for Narendra Damodardas Modi. Now, like them, the Jharkhand people have shown no preference to the Hindu Hrudaya Samrat, and his local saffron siblings.
Clearly, Modi was not a big factor in these state assembly elections. Wisely, he had preferred to take a back seat particularly in the Jharkhand campaign though his satraps, notably Amit Shah, Smriti Irani and Yogi Adityanath made his shadow loom large on the state. As the result shows (47 seats for new alliance: JMM -30; Congress-16; RJD– One,while 25 seats for the BJP in the 81-member assembly) the voters gave their thumbs down to Raghubar Das, the man in the hot seat. His image remained of a rude politician, who is inaccessible to his own cadre.
Social media did no less damage to his image going viral with videos showing Raghubar Das yelling at commoners and officials on many occasions in the past five years. One videos showed a gaffe where Raghubar Das was heard saying "Jharkhand will be the first adivasimukt state"

Hemant Soren with Rahul Gandhi Jharkhand was created as a tribal state in 2000 after a very long agitation by leaders like Shibu Soren, father of the new chief minister Hemant Soren. In the last assembly round (2014), the BJP-led alliance had won 13 out of 28 assembly seats reserved for Scheduled Tribe candidates. Even in the Lok Sabha election, the BJP won three of the five seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes in Jharkhand. So much so, the BJP leadership should have guided his every step since it bestowed CM post on him as a part of its political engineering that was at play in Haryana and Maharashtra as well. It did not. Now it must bear the cross with a sheepish grin.

Anyhow, polarisation did not work for the BJP while many factors went against it. The amendment to the local land acquisition law was seen by tribals as an assault on their rights. Creation of land banks confounded the tribal voters further, as a political scientist puts.

Raghubar Das Modi’s political rejig has been seeking to ignore the local dominant caste or community in state after state and prefer a leader, who can be groomed to deliver. Devendra Phadnavis in Mumbai and Raghubar Das in Ranchi failed the test and have been dumped. Luck has favoured Manohar Lal Khattar; he survives in Haryana even after the electorate has shown their disenchantment with his brand.
The message from Ranchi is clear therefore. Modi wave has no value addition at the state level. It is the local satrap who matters. By implication it also means that vote for Modi in the 2019 LS polls was not for his Hindutva plank but his delivery on development front.

This is bad news to both Hedgewar Bhawan (RSS headquarters, Nagpur) and Big Building on Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg (BJP in Delhi). But it certainly makes the Grand Old Party (GOP) to smile. Both mother and son aided by the daughter appear willing to shed their inhibitions, as also sense of their legacy in order to piggy back any winning horse anywhere.

Modi’s political rejig has been seeking to ignore the local dominant caste or community in state after state and prefer a leader, who can be groomed to deliver. Devendra Phadnavis in Mumbai and Raghubar Das in Ranchi failed the test and have been dumped. Luck has favoured Manohar Lal Khattar; he survives in Haryana even after the electorate has shown their disenchantment with his brand.

Hemant Soren meets father
Shibu Soren touches his feet
They realise that to be relevant on the Indian scene, and to off-set the loss of bench strength in Parliament, the Congress must be in reckoning in as many states as possible. A clear give away is the tie-up with the Maratha Big Brother, Shiv Sena, for whom Veer Savarkar is a hero whether Rahul Gandhi likes or not.
It is tempting to see the Jharkhand vote as a referendum on the CAA and NRC as Congress leaders like RPN Singh have done. Any such effort will be missing the woods for the trees. This is notwithstanding Modi’s remark at a poll rally,
"Those (opposing the government and resorting to violence over Citizenship Amendment Act) could be identified with their clothes"? It is because, CAA became a political football only after Jharkhand entered its penultimate rounds of voting.
Anyhow, polarisation did not work for the BJP while many factors went against it. The amendment to the local land acquisition law was seen by tribals as an assault on their rights. Creation of land banks confounded the tribal voters further, as a political scientist puts. The Pathalgadi movement for the rights of tribals has hurt the BJP as the party came to be seen acting against the tribal sentiment.The anti-conversion bill did no less damage and as the day of the ballot approached the BJP miseries were compounded by lynching deaths – more than 20 in the past two years alone.
Put simply, the loss of yet another state for the BJP is a self-inflicted wound that became unavoidable in the absence of the ability of the leadership to hear murmurs from the ground for timely course corrections.