The Hindu Business Line : Election 2004: A study in contrasts

With the entire country in high election fever, Rasheeda Bhagat takes stock of what is happening in the backdrop of the Supreme Court's indictment of the Government that was at the helm in Gujarat during the post-Godhra riots of 2002, an op inion poll that puts the NDA decisively ahead in three States that are having Assembly elections, and the main Opposition party that is yet to get its act together.

Party fortunes on the line.

EVEN more surprising than the Supreme Court's strictures on both the trial court in Gujarat and the High Court for acquitting all the 21 accused in the Best Bakery case is the alacrity with which the BJP leadership has come forward to defend the Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi.

On Monday, the apex court ordered the transfer of the case to the Bombay High Court. In a scathing indictment of the Modi administration that was at the helm during the post-Godhra riots of 2002, the Supreme Court said: "The modern day Neros were looking elsewhere when the Best Bakery, innocent children and helpless women were being burnt, and were probably deliberating how the perpetrators of the crime can be saved or protected."

More dramatic is the court's description of the perpetrators of the crime, in which 14 people were burnt alive, as "fanatics worse than terrorists and more dangerous than an alien enemy." Not often does a Bench of the Supreme Court say that the justice delivery system is "abused, misused and mutilated."

The apex court has charged the lower judiciary of Gujarat (trial court) with being a "silent spectator, mute to the manipulations... and indifferent to sacrilege being committed to justice," as well as the Gujarat High Court for having "miserably failed to maintain required judicial balance and sobriety."

The Best Bakery case has been going back and forth, tossed from court to court, with its main witness Zahira Sheikh, and the NGO supporting her, being threatened with dire consequences if they persisted in pressing charges.

Yet again the Supreme Court has directed the State government to ensure that the victim is not denied justice. No sooner was the judgement delivered than the BJP sprang to Mr Modi's defence, with the Union Law Minister, Mr Arun Jaitley, saying that just because "some witnesses had turned hostile" there was no reason to "drag the Chief Minister" into the whole affair.

This was in response to the Congress-I's demand that Mr Modi should resign as chief minister of Gujarat following the apex court's strictures. It is obvious enough that when the BJP-led NDA juggernaut is on a roll, the BJP leadership would want to defend with all its might one of its icons. After all, did not the same Mr Modi, under the "strategic guidance" of Mr Jaitley, deliver the State of Gujarat lock, stock and barrel to the BJP after the Godhra riots?

In any political party's dictionary, even that of the "party with a difference", heroes are those who can win elections. Surely, in the BJP's view, it must be an overdose of judicial activism that led the Supreme Court Bench to observe: "When the ghastly killings take place in the land of Mahatma Gandhi, it raises a very pertinent question as to whether some people have become so bankrupt in their ideology that they have deviated from everything that was so dear to him. When a large number of innocent and helpless children and women are killed in a diabolic manner, it brings disgrace to the entire society."

Anyway, in a couple of days, this bit of bad news, as far as the BJP is concerned, will be forgotten, swept aside in the excitement of one opinion poll after another and one political analyst after another giving the BJP-led coalition a huge advantage in the coming Lok Sabha polls.

The latest one to do so is the Outlook-MDRA poll, done for the three States of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, where Assembly elections are being held simultaneously. This poll signals a 3-0 victory for the NDA.

Contrary to an earlier poll conducted by NDTV, which found that the voters in Karnataka might vote differently for the Assembly and the Lok Sabha, and end up retaining the S. M. Krishna government in the State while giving a thumbs-up to the BJP-led coalition at the Centre, this one predicts that the infighting and dissidence might ring the death knell of yet another Congress(I) regime.

Even though opinion polls have been known to go wrong in the past, this time around they have an unusual ally working in their favour to ensure that their predictions come true, and that is none other than India's oldest party, the Congress(I). Devoid of long-term vision, bankrupt in ideas and ridden with factionalism and dissidence, not to mention sycophancy and coterie-culture, it is doing all it can to hand over the country to the BJP once again in a more convincing victory than the latter managed in the 1998 and 1999 elections.

In strategic thinking, election campaign management, touching base with voters and, last but not the least, the efficient and deft manner in which it manages the media, the BJP is miles ahead of the Congress(I).

As for the Congress(I)'s prospects in the Hindi heartland, in Bihar, the RJD chief, Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav has given it just four seats and told Ms Sonia Gandhi that if she is short of time, she need not campaign in Bihar, he would do the needful!

In UP, outside the Amethi-Rae Bareilly belt, there is hardly any enthusiasm for the Congress(I). Clearly, the battle will be between the BJP, the SP and, to a lesser extent, the BSP. Poll pundits say the Congress(I) will be in the reckoning in hardly a dozen seats in UP. Feeling betrayed by Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, and not particularly fond of the BSP, UP's Muslims are said to be leaning towards the Congress(I), which, however, has neither the strategy nor the structure in place to harness these votes.

In Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the States the Congress(I) recently lost to the BJP in the Assembly elections, the Lok Sabha polls have come too quickly for any significant anti-incumbency factor to kick in. These States send 174, or a little less than one-third the total MPs, to the Lok Sabha.

Regional satraps like a Laloo Prasad in Bihar or a Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh — anyway, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav is batting on practically the same side as the BJP — have made such a mess in their own States that their presence and the seats they pick up is hardly likely to make a dent in the NDA's fortunes.

Watching helplessly the Lok Sabha match going the BJP's way in such a convincing manner is the 15-odd per cent Muslim population of the country. A section of it might want to be on the winning side. Who does not? But icons like Mr Modi, who might be rapped on the knuckles by the Supreme Court now and then, only to be patted by the Party leadership on the back immediately, are factors that makes the majority of them wary .

The Congress(I) has done with them exactly what the apex court said the Gujarat courts had done with the justice delivery system. It has "abused, misused and manipulated" them in the form of vote banks for so long that it is hardly the natural choice of the entire community.

That leaves a Laloo Yadav and his Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar, where he has told them again and again: "Look, under my rule, have you ever faced anything like Gujarat?"

That may be true, but then Bihar's lack of development, economic backwardness, breakdown of the law and order machinery and a high crime rate hardly makes the RJD an ideal choice. After all, along with physical safety, citizens want opportunities to come up, and do well, in life.

Go to Uttar Pradesh and you have Mr Mulayam Yadav, wooing Muslims with stunts like a half-day holiday on Fridays. As though such sops make a difference in anyone's life. And anyway, he has cosied up enough to the BJP to make co-habitation with his party hardly the ideal choice for UP's Muslims.

Come down south and the BJP is getting ready, in a confident and optimistic mood, to install a government in Karnataka — the land it describes as its gateway to the South. In Andhra Pradesh, the man in the saddle, who is likely to remain there — Mr Chandrababu Naidu — is a staunch ally of the BJP.

So, whether they like it or not, for the moment, and maybe for the next election or two, the Muslim vote has become irrelevant, at least in terms of sending a winning party to the seat of power in Delhi.

In more ways than one, the community is paying the price today for the lack of a strong and visionary leadership and allowing the clericsto dominate their minds and remain laggards in providing education and economic empowerment to their women.

Is it not a tragedy that a Zahira Sheikh can find the courage to come out and fight only after being witness to one of the most gruesome crimes in the history of this country? And yet, there is hope for the Zahiras of the community, because helping her take on an entire State administration is no less an institution than the Supreme Court. India's fate and future, its potential to become a truly great nation by taking forward all sections and communities in its forward march, hinge crucially around such institutions.

(Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in)