Chouhan’s poll stunt
Nationalism and regionalism represent the farthest ends of the political spectrum and are so antithetical that the craftiest of political thinkers need to summon the ingenuity at their command to reconcile these concepts. The BJP’s ‘Project Nationalism’—mirrored in slogans such as ‘Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat’ and ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’—sought to subsume the country’s myriad identities, shaped by history, geography, culture and migration, in a pan-Indian form that was painfully limited to begin with but expanded incrementally to suit the party’s electoral exigency. This week, the BJP’s avowed belief in ‘nationalism’ took a knock when a top leader rebooted regionalism to a level for which the leadership owes an explanation. Not that the redefinition was unprecedented. But when articulated by the representative of a ‘nationalist’ entity, it proves that political convictions are never cast in stone, not even for a party that professes to be ‘different’.
Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the Madhya Pradesh CM, announced that henceforth, government jobs in his state would go only to the locals and said his decision would be enforced through a legal framework. He linked the idea of the locals’ ‘first right over resources’ to the ‘scarce job opportunities’ in MP, an admission that the glitzy investment jamborees he hosted in his previous stints might not have yielded jobs.
Chouhan’s move was contextualised as an enticement for the bypolls in 24 Assembly seats that were vacated by the Congress legislators who resigned to join the BJP with Jyotiraditya Scindia. In reality, it’s more than a quick fix. Chouhan’s predecessor Kamal Nath made an identical declaration on his first day as CM in 2018 and offered incentives to those industries that promised to employ 70% locals. The gesture, which never took off, was compared with the Shiv Sena’s age-old demand to reserve jobs for the Marathi-speaking population. It was a demand out of depth with the variegated demography of urban Maharashtra, which for long drew migrants from across the country. The Sena’s accent on the ‘Marathi manoos’ manifested in aggressive street protests, fights and strikes that jeopardised the lives and properties of the migrants until its former ally, the BJP, dealt a reality check and forced the Thackerays to soften the rough edge of their chauvinism. Nath would not countenance a likeness with the Sena. His contention was that the local economy should pander to MP’s young people, the population aspiring to a life better than the one handed out to their fathers and grandfathers. Ironically, at that time, the BJP celebrated MP’s place as the ‘heart of India’ and reminded Nath that people from all over the country had made it their home.
Indeed, the tourism ads created in Chouhan’s earlier regimes pitched MP as ‘Hindustan ka dil dekho’. Historically, the Hindi heartland, considered the cradle of the pre-Independence struggles, identified itself with the nationalist spirit and had little use for regionalism of the genres that evolved in the West, South and the Northeast of India. There were sporadic linguistic movements and disputes over river water sharing but these never led to full-blown regional confrontations. Chhattisgarh was carved out of MP but it was not conceived in violence.
The Congress and BJP are for long the poles of MP’s polity. There were occasional ‘intrusions’ by the Gondwana Ganatantra Party that was formed to speak for the Gondi tribe but it never got too far. Occasionally—and when the Congress or BJP feel like—a call to create Bundelkhand state is flagged but the clamour is not underpinned in the classic definition of what spurs regionalism: ethnicity, language, sub-regionalism, border and river water discords, ‘anti-outsiders’ or an onslaught on federalism by the Centre. At best, the Bundelkhand issue can be characterised as a ‘secession of the rich’, to quote Artatrana Gochhayat, a political science professor, who says that when the rich parts of a state draw big private investments and register impressive growths, they resent the dependence of their poor country cousins for revenue transfers to keep them afloat. It would suit MP’s relatively affluent Malwa, Vidisha and Mahakoshal regions to get Bundelkhand off their back and thrive even more.
What is Chouhan’s ploy about? His ambitions soared before 2013 when LK Advani and Sushma Swaraj projected him, rather futilely, as PM Modi’s competitor. Like Modi, he won elections serially and was believed to practise a more ‘people-friendly’ development model than what Modi subscribed to in Gujarat. After 2014, he kept his job but was in danger of fading away once the BJP lost the Assembly election in 2018. By a stroke of luck, he got his CMship back. Is he looking to turn the curve when his BJP peers are quite content to relegate themselves to the background? If he is, getting vocal for the local might not be the most appropriate strategy. Of the 24 seats that go to the bypolls, 16 are in the Gwalior-Chambal region, where the number of unemployed persons was pegged at 1.39 lakh.
MP’s own economic survey for 2018-19 didn’t sound robust: it ranked 27 out of 29 states on the poverty index while its per capita income was Rs 90,998 against the national average of over Rs 1 lakh.
In 2018, eight months before MP voted, Chouhan enhanced the retirement age for government employees from 60 to 62. Certain data is telling. Young people (between 18 and 30) comprise 17.86% of the government sector, where 66.57% of the staff is over 40 in a pool of over 4 lakh employees, according to the Directorate of Economics and Statistics.
MP’s growth continues to be driven by the primary sector which includes mining and quarrying and agriculture. Their share in the gross state domestic product rose from 33% in 2012 to 38% in 2018. Agriculture continues to be its economic mainstay, with 72% of its population living in rural areas. It is the hinterland that needs a serious relook if Chouhan wants to develop the local human resources and not a modest-sized government principality.
