MAHARASHTRA ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS

Yet Another Stinging Rebuff To Communal Forces --- II

Ashok Dhawale

A SIGNIFICANT outcome of this election was the rout of the smaller secular parties, whose actions could objectively lend themselves to only one interpretation --- splitting the secular vote. During the election campaign, all of them publicly subscribed to the doctrine of equidistance between the communal SS-BJP combine and the secular INC-NCP alliance which, to be sure, had its own opportunistic deviations. Another common feature of all these parties was an inflated opinion of their own strength, which led them to contest an inordinate number of seats. They expected to play a balancing role in the new assembly.

SPLITTING THE SECULAR VOTE

By far the most dubious among them was the BSP, which contested as many as 272 of the 288 seats and boasted of playing the role of kingmaker in the new dispensation. It had played an identical role in the recent Lok Sabha elections, when it contested 46 of the 48 seats in Maharashtra and directly contributed to the victory of at least 10 candidates of the SS-BJP, mainly in Vidarbha. In both the Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabha polls, there is reported evidence that the BSP was directly encouraged and helped in every way by the BJP-SS communal combine. In the Vidhan Sabha elections also, like in the Lok Sabha polls, the BSP did not win a single seat, and it lost its deposit in as many as 263 of the 272 seats that it contested, despite strenuous campaigning by Mayawati herself.

But that is only one side of the story. The other side is that the BSP garnered 16.72 lakh votes in the state in this election, which comes to 4 per cent of the total votes cast. In the recent Lok Sabha polls, the corresponding figures were 10.21 lakh votes and 3.1 per cent. The performance of the BSP in the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections in Maharashtra requires deeper study and analysis, which lies beyond the scope of this article.

Some of the reasons for the BSP’s growing influence in Maharashtra are quite clear. These are growing disillusionment in Dalit masses against the opportunism and factionalism in all groups of the Republican Party, an attraction about the contrasting success achieved by BSP in Uttar Pradesh; unlike the Republican factions which limit themselves largely to one caste, a conscious attempt by BSP to distribute election tickets among all major castes and communities; the blatant policy of giving BSP election tickets to rebels of the INC, NCP, SS and BJP without much discrimination; the all-out help of all types rendered to the BSP by the BJP-SS communal combine in both Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections precisely to bring about a division in the secular vote, the BSP attempt to channelise the common people’s discontent against all the four major established parties; and the conscious and planned efforts being made by BSP to expand its organisational base with the full backing of organisations like BAMCEF that work mainly among the middle class Dalit government employees.      

Renowned journalist P Sainath, who analysed all the Vidarbha results constituency-wise, concluded that the BSP had become a double-edged sword. He wrote, “The BSP affected the outcome in half of Vidarbha’s 66 seats in the assembly elections. There were 32 seats in which the BSP’s votes were higher than the margin of victory between the top contenders. In 24 seats, it authored the defeat of one or the other of the main fronts. In 13 of these, it torpedoed the Congress-NCP. In over 11, it sank the Sena-BJP.

“The BSP got over 8.60 lakh votes in Vidarbha in these polls. It had secured just around five lakh in the Lok Sabha elections from the same region in May. It also raised its vote share in Vidarbha from just under 7 per cent then to over 9.5 per cent this time. There was a dramatic difference though. In the Lok Sabha, it devastated the Congress-NCP. This time, several of its candidates, especially from the upper castes, also wrecked the Sena-BJP in many places.

“Further, the huge rise in voting in this region stopped the party from making an even greater impact. Mrs Gandhi’s ability to draw voters in Vidarbha seems to have strengthened after she turned down the prime minister’s post. A lot of the additional voters went the Congress way…The BJP-Sena had no counterweight to Mrs Gandhi in this region. Neither a Vajpayee nor a Thackeray made it here. And their demoralisation after the Lok Sabha defeat meant their front was unable to ride major issues like rural distress and farmers’ suicides.”

Among the other secular parties, the SP contested 95 seats, won no seat and lost its deposit in 91. The BBM, led by Prakash Ambedkar, contested 83 seats, won one seat and lost its deposit in 76. The JD(S) contested 34 seats, won no seat and lost its deposit in 30.

Its alliance partner, the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP), which was earlier a part of the Left Front together with the CPI(M) and CPI, contested 43 seats, but won only two of the five seats that it had in the previous assembly. The CPI, which was the only party that was politically with the CPI(M) in this election, contested 15 seats but won none.

Thus, in the new state assembly, the secular group of MLAs outside the INC-NCP front comprises only six legislators, as follows: CPI(M) – 3, PWP – 2, BBM – 1. This compares poorly with the 14 MLAs elected in 1999, as follows: PWP – 5, BBM – 3, CPI(M) – 2, JD(S) – 2, SP – 2. However, in the course of the last five years, all three BBM MLAs joined the INC and both the SP MLAs joined the NCP. One of the JD(S) MLAs crossed over to the SS-BJP during the governmental crisis in 2002 and was disqualified.  

PERFORMANCE OF THE CPI(M)

The CPI(M) contested 16 seats in this election and won three seats, which was an increase of one seat over last time. While retaining the Surgana (ST) seat in Nashik district and the Jawhar (ST) seat in Thane district --- two rural tribal seats that the party has won almost continuously against both the Congress and the communal combine for the last 26 years since 1978 --- it added to its tally the urban working class seat of Solapur city south, which it had won in 1995 but had lost in 1999 by a small margin. All three seats have been centres of big mass struggles led by the party for decades.

CPI(M) state secretariat member and AIKS state president Jiva Pandu Gavit won the Surgana (ST) seat, securing 73,370 votes (53.5 per cent), with a lead margin of 14,621 votes over his SS rival. CPI(M) state committee member and AIKS state joint secretary Rajaram Nathu Ozare won the Jawhar (ST) seat, securing 60,050 votes (42.2 per cent), with a lead margin of 23,231 votes over his BJP rival. CPI(M) state committee member and CITU state vice president Narsayya Narayan Adam won the Solapur city south seat, securing 32,552 votes (30.6 per cent), with a lead margin of 5,191 votes over his SS rival. In all three seats, the CPI(M) votes and percentage have increased compared to 1999. The INC and NCP had not put up their official candidates in these three seats, but a NCP rebel in Jawhar got 28,721 votes while an INC rebel in Solapur got 24,790 votes – a little more than what official NCP/INC candidates had polled there in the 1999 elections! But the absence of official INC/NCP candidates helped to attract a section of minority voters.

In the other 13 seats, despite several struggles and a good election campaign by the CPI(M), people felt that the party and its candidates were not in a position to defeat the communal combine. In five of these seats, the party polled between 10,000 and 16,000 votes each, in two seats between 6,000 and 9,000 votes each, in three seats between 4,000 and 5,000 votes each and in the remaining three seats, less than 3,000 votes each. The state committee has self-critically drawn the proper conclusions from this experience.      

In two other seats in Thane district, the CPI(M) had fully supported the Kunabi Sena, a peasant organisation that has been having joint struggles with the party for the last two years and that had supported the party in the last Lok Sabha elections. In these two seats, the Kunabi Sena with CPI(M) support polled over 30,000 and 20,000 votes each, which was an increase over the votes polled in those segments in the last Lok Sabha elections.

At the request of the state committee, CPI(M) central leaders Sitaram Yechury, Prakash Karat, Mohd Salim, Basudeb Acharya, Subhashini Ali, Mehboob Zahedi, Dipankar Mukherjee and Chandrakala Pandey took part in this assembly election campaign and effectively addressed large public meetings in practically all the seats fought by the party. The participation of these leaders was appreciated by the people and by the party cadre.

With the CPI(M) winning three seats in this election, despite the poor performance of the Left and secular forces as a whole, the party has emerged as the leader of the Left-secular opposition in the state. The state committee has decided to take steps to improve the party’s performance in the legislature, to link this up with the mass struggles outside to champion people’s causes, and to utilise the ensuing party conferences in the state at all levels to consolidate the CPI(M) in its political, ideological and organisational aspects.

THE CHALLENGE AHEAD

We shall conclude this piece with some perceptive observations from an article titled “Assembly Polls in Maharashtra: Issues in an Issue-less Election” written before the polling by political scientist Suhas Palshikar in the October 2, 2004 issue of the Economic and Political Weekly. He writes, “This leaves the two main political alliances with very little option. Neither can claim a good record of governance and, therefore, performance and governance cannot be major issues. The position of the two alliances on most issues of economy and public policy means that they cannot invest much energy in mobilising the masses on these issues…

“Against this background, it is no surprise that the electoral scene is characterised by issue-less ad hocism rather than viable policy alternatives; that it relies on emotional appeals or manipulative politics rather than cleavage-based politics. Both the coalitions have kept indulging in populist extravagance without addressing the issue of welfare in any systematic manner. Instead of politics of contestation, they resort to politics of manipulation.

“In a sense, the ongoing electoral competition in Maharashtra is a story with a potential for issue-based contestation, but like many a Bollywood flop movie, it is a story that resolutely bypasses the real issues and produces a tame comedy that satisfies no one. Whatever the outcome of the election, it is certain that the core issues will come to haunt both the winners and the losers.”

Truly, the economic, social and political core issues of Maharashtra have been crassly neglected by every single state government over the last few decades. All the fundamental problems of agriculture and industry, employment and education, food and health, water and power, roads and housing, and of social justice, gender equality as well as balanced regional development have, in fact, seriously aggravated in the era of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation.

The real solution to these problems requires an alternative class perspective, backed by massive struggles and powerful organisations of politically conscious people, to make this perspective a reality in the years to come. And that, precisely, is the challenge before the CPI(M) and the Left forces in Maharashtra today.