The election in five states including Uttar
Pradesh is over. The results have been declared and the process of government
formation has begun. Also a lot is being said and written about the poor, good
or excellent performances of political parties. The performance of Congress in
Panjab and Uttar Pradesh is especially being debated. The oldest political
party of the country has surprised everyone by its poor performance in Uttar
Pradesh. Its star campaigner, Rahul Gandhi worked hard in the real sense of the
word and was able to draw large crowds everywhere but failed to convert them
into votes.
The Congress failure, as all would agree,
owes a lot to its organizational weaknesses. The grand old party, especially
the Nehru family, must realize that the era of charismatic politics and
campaigning is gone. The voters of Rai Baraily and Sultan Pur have clearly sent
this message. Now you have to perform throughout the year as main hero and
‘guest appearances’ would no longer work.
Everywhere people want development. They
also want their leaders, at least, to be seen as working for them. The
conditions in rural Uttar Pradesh including Amethi and Rai Baraily are
pathetic. Roads are broken and public services, especially the supply of
electricity, are so poor that the private sector also shies away from investing
in rural U.P. People want their leaders
to work for their development but they are busy in all things except working
for them.
Both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul failed to read
people’s mood in their constituencies. It is not just the local leaders who
have failed but the Gandhis have also disappointed people. Can they recall if
they ever agitated in Rai Baraily and Amethi against poor governance? Did they
do anything, except delivering speeches, to improve the living conditions of
people? You may be a national leader but
you also represent a constituency and the voters want you to work for their
welfare. In sum, you have to continuously nurse your constituency.
Muslims are over 18 percent in U.P and in
large numbers of constituencies they play decisive roles in influencing
electoral results. Parties like the SP and BSP have developed their own Muslim
leadership which consists of Muslims coming from ordinary backgrounds mostly.
But these leaders are well-rooted in their constituencies where they work all
through the year and remain constantly in touch with people. Congress, on the
other hand, still has Muslim faces who reside in Delhi and also have ancestral
houses in their home towns where they occasionally go for picnic. Naturally
these leaders are not in touch with the common Muslims who, like all other
fellow Indians, want progress and development. There are some emotional issues,
like the Batla House encounter, but these have localized impact. Congress must
realize that even the Muslims of Azamgarh who are the most adversely affected
by the Batla House encounter, want development. They are taking to education in
a big way hoping that it would change their lives for good. But they see that
the Batla House episode has tarnished their image. One of the two young men
killed in the encounter was just over 16. His mother had sent him to Delhi for
studies. She wants to know where her upbringing went wrong and how her son
became a ‘terrorist’ during his very short stay in Delhi? As an academic I also
want to know how a teen-ager, who had come to Delhi to take admission in class
eleven, became a ‘terrorist’ in a short span of three-four months? Nothing less
than a judicial inquiry can satisfy us, the voters. The grand old party must
realize it.
Gimmicks rarely pay and yet the politicians
have a sort of addiction for it. It is sad to see that Congress is almost
unable to give up the politics of gimmicks. Worse, it has started indulging in
tokenism. Either it should not have given reservation to Muslims or it should
have been in proportion to their share in U.P. population. It was a policy
decision without conviction and rationale and consequently failed to deliver.
It surely convinced sections
of Muslims here and there but they too preferred the winning horses of SP and
BSP than the Congress candidates.
Many reasons can be
attributed to Congress why it failed to succeed in Western U.P. where it had
allied with Mr. Ajit Singh? The Jats and Muslims matter the most in this area
and they, especially the later, preferred the SP over Congress and RLD. The
chief reason that adversely affected the Congress performance in Western U.P.
is the arrest of so-called suspected and alleged terrorists from
Muslim-dominated areas of Bihar. These arrests were made towards the end of
U.P. election when polling took place mostly in its Western part. That was the
time when a Delhi-based young Muslim, Mohammad Amir was released after spending
18 years in jail. He was falsely implicated in 19 cases of terrorism by Delhi
police, which could not be upheld in the court. The matter has widely been
reported in the press including leading English dailies and Urdu newspapers.
At a time when Mohammad
Amir’s tragedy and Delhi police’s ‘cruelty’ was very much in news, the later
went on a hunting spree in North Bihar and arrested many alleged terrorists.
The national dailies, especially the Urdu press reported these arrests very
prominently which surely influenced the Muslim voters in Western U.P. They
started thinking if Delhi police was out again to tarnish the Muslim image. In
view of Mohammad Amir’s case no Muslim was ready to believe the police story
about the alleged terrorists from North Bihar. The Muslims also began to think
that Batla House was not an isolated incidence, it was rather a routine
Congress policy to hurt them. They feared that today the target was North
Bihar, tomorrow it might be Western U.P. A silent movement of anger and anguish
spread in the Muslim community which denied Congress the electoral benefits it
had expected from its policy of Muslim reservation.
All is not lost. The grand
old party may take solace in the fact that the Muslims appreciate Rahul
Gandhi’s hard work. They also like his attitude that he wants the throne of
Delhi on the basis of his work and not because he was a Nehru-Gandhi. But he
and his party must realize that half-hearted policies would never win the
Muslim heart and mind.
(February 2012)
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