The Political Scenario In Maharashtra

                                                                                               Ashok Dhawale

WITH exactly a year left for the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections that are scheduled for September 2004, all political forces in Maharashtra are beginning to gear up for the crucial battle to come. The Solapur Lok Sabha bypoll result has thrown a spanner in the ruling alliance and has temporarily boosted the hopes of the communal combine. While the political drama is on, all sections of the working people are reeling under the constant onslaught of LPG policies of the regimes at both state and centre. The CPI(M), the Left Front and other secular parties, despite their limited strength, are leading struggles and campaigns around the burning issues of the masses.

All the four major bourgeois landlord parties have made leadership changes in preparation for the ensuing elections. In January this year, the Indian National Congress (INC) changed both its chief minister and its party chief. Vilasrao Deshmukh was replaced by Sushil Kumar Shinde as the chief minister, and Govindrao Adik was replaced by Ranjit Deshmukh as the party chief. The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) also changed its state chief, with Babanrao Pachpute making way for R R Patil. In the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Gopinath Munde once again formally took over the state presidentship at the party’s conclave last month. And in the Shiv Sena (SS), Bal Thackeray’s son Uddhav was anointed the working president of that party, clearing the way for his succession. Needless to say, these leadership changes are merely cosmetic, for they do not signal any change in the basic policies of any of these outfits.

DEVASTATING DEBACLE IN SOLAPUR

Although there is as yet no formal announcement to that effect, it is widely expected that the INC and the NCP will contest the 2004 elections in alliance, unlike in 1999 when they fought each other. That is the only way they may hope to overcome the strong anti-incumbency factor against their current state regime. But even such an alliance, if it is actually concluded, is fraught with grave risks. The biggest nightmare before the leaderships of both parties is the prospect of large-scale rebellion within their own ranks, led by those disgruntled elements that will be denied election tickets precisely because of such an alliance.    

Besides, traditional tensions between both these Congress factions and also within each faction continue unabated. For instance, three months ago there occurred a running public feud between top state leaders of the INC and the NCP that regaled the people of Maharashtra for a fortnight. At a point, it even threatened the existence of the state government. But the overriding consideration of retaining power prevailed and the feud abated.

But far more serious is the result of the just concluded Lok Sabha byelection in Solapur, which was necessitated by the resignation of Sushil Kumar Shinde from the Lok Sabha after his appointment as the state chief minister. The INC candidate was Anandrao Devkate, who had vacated his own assembly seat for Shinde. The BJP fielded Pratapsingh Mohite-Patil, the brother of NCP district boss and state minister Vijaysingh Mohite-Patil, who has for long been at daggers drawn with Sushil Kumar Shinde. The INC lost by a whopping margin of 1,22,817 votes to the BJP.

Although the NCP at the state level had officially declared its support to the INC candidate, the ground reality was diametrically opposite. The NCP district leadership under Vijaysingh Mohite-Patil, openly campaigned for his brother, the BJP candidate. Sharad Pawar stayed away from the campaign, reportedly under threat from Vijaysingh who is said to have warned that he would leave the NCP with 14 MLAs if his brother lost the election. Further, there was large-scale rebellion within the INC itself, with two MLAs and over 20 municipal corporators working against the official party candidate and helping the BJP. This shows how fickle is the loyalty to secularism displayed by leaders of both Congress factions. 

The result of the election was also a verdict on the non-performance of the Shinde government. In Solapur, in particular, several burning local issues like severe drought and closed textile mills were never addressed by the government in spite of the chief minister himself hailing from Solapur. The recent state government decision to privatise the collection of octroi alienated the traders lobby.  The indiscriminate use of POTA angered the minorities, who had already suffered in a serious communal riot that broke out in Solapur last year.

There was also a strong caste dimension to this battle. The feudal Maratha sections in all bourgeois landlord parties, led by the powerful Mohite-Patil family which also controls the district bank, sugar factories and other cooperative bodies, ganged up against Sushil Kumar Shinde, the first Dalit chief minister of Maharashtra. The result of this keenly fought election will have statewide repercussions, since the prestige of the chief minister was directly at stake. Significant political events may unfold in the coming weeks. Already the SS-BJP combine has called for Shinde’s resignation.

The CPI(M), which has a presence in Solapur city, having won an assembly seat there in 1978 and 1995, and hoping to regain it in 2004, took the principled political position of calling for the defeat of the BJP candidate. The party led an independent Left campaign in the city towards this end. A meeting of the Left Front --- comprising the CPI(M), CPI and PWP --- that was held in Solapur also took the same position, which was announced by CPI(M) state secretary Prabhakar Sanzgiri in a press conference. 

OPPORTUNISM OF SS-BJP COMBINE

The Shiv Sena and BJP, like all fascistic forces, appear to be more disciplined than the two rowdy Congress factions. One major factor that they are banking on is the strong anti-incumbency feeling against the INC-NCP regime. But the results of a couple of recent assembly byelections and local body elections have been a slap in the face for the SS-BJP communal combine.

These include the Bhokardan assembly seat in Jalna district (a seat that was held by the BJP for the last 15 years), the Jamner municipality in Jalgaon district (where the local BJP MLA had last year instigated a vile communal riot), the Sangli municipal corporation in the sugar belt (which has long been controlled by Congress factions) and the Kanakavali municipality in former SS chief minister Narayan Rane’s assembly constituency in Sindhudurg district (where SS goons had murdered a NCP leader and the enraged people had burnt down Narayan Rane’s house in protest). All of these were won by the NCP-INC alliance.

One local election in which the BJP-SS markedly improved its performance was in the Jalgaon municipal corporation, where its adversary was the infamous NCP leader Suresh Jain. Suresh Jain was earlier in the Congress, joined the Shiv Sena to become a minister in that regime and then joined the NCP to become a minister yet again. It was against Suresh Jain and three other NCP ministers that corruption charges were levelled by Gandhian social reformer Anna Hazare. Hazare and Jain led simultaneous fasts in Mumbai from August 9 to demand an inquiry into each other’s alleged corruption. Suresh Jain’s assets have recently been ordered to be attached on account of a massive cooperative bank scam by a recent judgement of the Aurangabad bench of the Mumbai High Court.

The SS-BJP attempt to fan communal passions continues unabated. This was seen most recently in the series of gruesome bomb blasts in Mumbai. After one of the blasts, the SS-BJP gave the call for Mumbai bandh in protest, which was enforced with the usual violence characteristic of SS goons. After the second horrific blasts on August 25, which killed over 50 innocent people, the SS-BJP tried to communalise the situation by holding maha-artis during the Ganesh festival. The same maha-artis, it may be recalled, had set the stage for the heinous communal riots in Mumbai in 1993. 

As the CPI(M) Central Committee Report on Current Developments has stated, “Despite L K Advani and the BJP leadership’s efforts to blame this bomb attack on external forces, the motive for the attack stated by those persons arrested has been revenge for the Gujarat killings of the minority community. This once again shows how the vicious circle of terror gets fuelled by communal poison and violence.”

HYPOCRITICAL PLOY TO ATTRACT DALITS

Another hypocritical ploy that has been tried by the SS leadership under Uddhav Thackeray is its call for the coming together of Shivshakti and Bhimshakti, and posters have been put up by the SS claiming that a combination of the two adds up to Deshbhakti! This is a thoroughly opportunist call to attract Dalit sections to the Shiv Sena. The SS calculation is that some second-rung RPI activists, disgruntled with the long-standing alliance with Congress factions, can be persuaded to forget the earlier SS venom against Dr Ambedkar and the Dalit movement and thus won over.

Most sections of the Ambedkarite movement, represented by the various RPI factions, have long been in alliance with one or another of the Congress factions. But as a result of INC-NCP manoeuvres, none but a handful of RPI leaders like Ramdas Athavale, Prakash Ambedkar, R S Gavai and Jogendra Kavade have gained from the alliance with Congress factions. They have been elected to parliament and assembly, and one or two have been made ministers. On the other hand, all three MLAs of the Prakash Ambedkar faction of the BRP were last year offered assorted blandishments, with the result that they all left the BRP and joined the INC. Incidentally, the same was the case with the Samajwadi Party, with both its MLAs being whisked away by the NCP.

The rank and file Dalit activists and especially the Dalit masses have gained little from the alliance of RPI factions with Congress factions. None of the real and burning issues of the Dalit masses --- education or jobs, land or minimum wages --- have been satisfactorily addressed by successive Congress regimes. In fact, in recent months there has been a spate of atrocities on, and killings of, Dalits in various parts of Maharashtra --- and that too in spite of a Dalit chief minister being in office. There is also another considerably weighty view that these atrocities have been incited by feudal vested interests precisely because there is a Dalit chief minister.

But, whatever the limitations of the Congress factions, the alternative for the Dalit masses can never be the SS-BJP communal combine. That would be like leaping from the frying pan into the fire! The RSS-VHP-BJP upper caste “Manuvadi” bias is, of course, well known. It was recently in evidence in the horrific lynching of Dalits at Duleena in the Jhajjar district of Haryana. The way the BJP recently dumped Mayawati unceremoniously in Uttar Pradesh has also been another eye-opener to opportunist and gullible sections among the Dalits.

The Shiv Sena has had an even more openly aggressive stance against Dalits. It began with the violent battle against the Dalit Panthers and the killing of Panthers activist Bhagwat Jadhav in the early 1970s. It included the virulent campaign against the publication of Riddles in Hinduism written by Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, the rabid opposition to the renaming of the Marathwada University after Dr Ambedkar, and the systematic attacks on Dalit agricultural workers in Marathwada to achieve feudal upper caste consolidation in the 1980s. And it reached its pitch with the SS-BJP government in power, when 10 Dalits were mercilessly gunned down at the Ramabai Ambedkar Nagar at Ghatkopar in Mumbai in the 1990s.

All these incidents are still fresh in the minds of Dalit masses. Hence Uddhav Thackeray’s hypocritical call for the coming together of Shivshakti and Bhimshakti did not meet with much response from the mainstream Dalit movement. Except for erstwhile literary figure and former Dalit Panther leader Namdev Dhasal, who has no following in the Dalit masses and who has abjectly surrendered to the Shiv Sena quite some time ago, no other prominent Dalit leader has so far bit the Shiv Sena bait.

The CPI(M) and the Left Front have posed that the real alternative before the Dalit masses is to be an indivisible part of the struggle of the working people led by the Left and secular forces --- that Bhimshakti is an integral part of Shramshakti. A large statewide convention towards this end has been planned by the Left Front in the coming months.

RENEWED DRIVE FOR SEPARATE VIDARBHA

Another issue that came up last month was the renewed drive for a separate state of Vidarbha. The BJP has for long been advocating a separate Vidarbha state, in line with its ideological understanding of a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ with a strong centre and weak states. Pramod Mahajan has been regularly making public statements during his visits to Nagpur that if only the Maharashtra state assembly were to pass a resolution for a separate state of Vidarbha, he would do all the rest from the centre in a matter of days!

Both sections of the Congress have also been taking opportunist positions on this issue for some time. Similar is the case with the Janata Dal (Secular) and various RPI groups. The CPI has not taken a clear position, one way or the other. Ironically, the only three parties in Maharashtra today, who come out strongly in defence of a united Maharashtra and publicly oppose these separatist demands are the CPI(M), the PWP --- and the Shiv Sena! But the Shiv Sena stand loses credibility because it does nothing while its own alliance partner, the BJP, vociferously advocates a separate Vidarbha.

In the month of August, the issue was raked up again by Congress veterans Vasant Sathe and N K P Salve. They were joined by Banwarilal Purohit, whose Congress-to-BJP-to-Congress journey is well known. Sathe and Salve announced their decision to quit the Congress and start a new party called the Vidarbha Congress Party, if the Congress high command did not accede to their demand that a resolution for a separate Vidarbha state be moved by the INC-NCP government in the December session of the state assembly at Nagpur. They gave the deadline of September 2 for this assurance and organised a convention on that day.

NCP leader Datta Meghe supported Sathe and Salve’s demand, and NCP national president Sharad Pawar himself declared that the NCP would have no objection to a separate Vidarbha if the people so desired. Meanwhile, dissensions arose amongst the Sathe-Salve-Purohit trio within a week, with Purohit declaring his opposition to the word ‘Congress’ while forming the new party!    

The print and electronic media in Maharashtra, especially in Vidarbha, highlighted the issue of a separate Vidarbha for several days. On the eve of September 2, Sathe and Salve were somehow made to retrace their steps and a vague assurance is said to have been given that their demand would be considered sympathetically. Purohit alone went ahead with the convention, which proved a damp squib. Now the issue is likely to be reopened in December during the state assembly session. The danger is that if the INC and the NCP agree to a separate Vidarbha, an INC-NCP-BJP combination can get the resolution passed in the state assembly with a big majority. Both Congress factions will then be playing into the hands of the BJP.

SERIOUS PROBLEM OF REGIONAL IMBALANCE

Space does not permit a detailed analysis of this issue here. But it must be stressed that one major reason why such separatist demands are raked up is that there has been great regional imbalance in Maharashtra’s development ever since the state was formed in 1960. Thousands of crores of rupees of the developmental backlog of the backward regions of Vidarbha, Marathwada and Konkan in the fields of irrigation, industry, education, communications etc have not been allocated by successive governments led by all the four bourgeois landlord parties for the last four decades. Regional imbalance is the inevitable result of the path of capitalist development. But now it is these guilty parties themselves that have the temerity to raise separatist demands! Several studies have, in fact, shown that small states cannot remain economically viable without abject dependence on the centre.

If Vidarbha is formed as a separate state, Marathwada will not remain far behind. And now in this age of globalisation, the old demand of big business for a separate state of Mumbai, on the lines of Singapore and Hongkong, will be pursued with even greater vigour - with generous help from foreign finance capital. The unilingual state of Maharashtra, which was formed as a result of the massive Samyukta Maharashtra movement led by the Left parties in the late 1950s, and in which the Congress government spilled the blood of 105 martyrs in police firing, will be broken up into bits.

That is why the CPI(M) state secretariat meeting held on September 1, when the drive for a separate Vidarbha was reaching its peak, decided to launch a campaign for preserving the unity of Maharashtra on the one hand, while demanding economic justice to the backward regions and balanced development of the state as a whole on the other. It is planned to involve other Left parties and secular intellectuals in this campaign.

While some of the above political developments initiated by the bourgeois parties seek to divert the attention of the people, the crisis in various spheres keeps growing, with disastrous consequences for the toiling sections, as we shall see in the concluding part of this piece in these columns next week.

                                                                            (To Be Concluded)