BJP faces tough fight in Chhattisgarh's Dongargarh; high anti-incumbency due to lack of jobs gives Congress edge

The loudest cheer at Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s rally at Chhattisgarh’s Dongargarh on 9 November was heard in response to his promise to waive farmers’ loans and increase the Minimum Support Price (MSP) of paddy to Rs 2,500 per quintal.

Dongargarh, one of the six constituencies in Chhattisgarh’s Rajnandgaon district — 70 kilometres from Raipur — is a reserved constituency for the Scheduled Caste where most of the electorate is dependent on agriculture.

In the village of Ghumka on the outskirts of Dongargarh, Uttarabai Patila says every farmer in the village has a debt to pay off. “Irrigation here is in shambles,” she adds.

Like most Dalit farmers, Uttarabai owns meagre plot of land. Her main source of income is agriculture labour at Rs 150 per day. “Rice is hard to cultivate when there is scarcity of water,” she says. “MSP of Rs 1,750 does not recover the input costs. And when farmers cannot farm for various reasons, I do not get work as an agriculture labourer.”

Uttarabai says Chief Minister Raman Singh has taken Chhattisgarh for a ride. “And Narendra Modi, too,” she quickly adds. “They provided a cylinder at Rs 200, but it takes Rs 1,000 to refill it. We used it for a month. Since then, we went back to using firewood. Enough is enough; it is time for a change.”

Raman Singh, after having held the chief minister’s office for 15 years, is facing stiff anti-incumbency in Chhattisgarh, and the sentiment is palpable in Dongargarh. What has kept him in the game so far is his scheme to provide rice for Rs 1 per quintal.

Dongargarh is considered one of the crucial constituencies in Chhattisgarh. It has been overshadowed by the incessant focus on the Rajnandgaon seat, from where Raman Singh is up against Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s niece, Karuna Shukla, who is contesting the Assembly polls on a Congress ticket.

But Dongargarh is a seat the Congress has smelled out. It is one of the seats the party is targeting to wrest from the BJP to get close to the halfway mark of 45 in the 90-member Assembly. The BJP has held the seat since 2003, but the Congress has managed to tighten the margin in the vote share with each election. In 2003, the BJP had won the seat by a margin of around 15,000 votes, which dropped to 7,415 in 2008 and even further to less than 5000 votes five years ago.

The BJP has fielded Sarojini Banjare from the Dongargarh seat again, compounding the anti-incumbency. Local residents believe that a new candidate would have stood a chance at negating the sentiment. The Congress, on the other hand, has fielded a new face, Bhuvneshwar Baghel, replacing Dhanesh Patila, who lost the previous three elections from Dongargarh.

The Congress, however, needs to worry about the Ajit Jogi-Mayawati-CPI alliance, as it can eat into the party’s vote share just enough to ensure that the BJP sneaks through. Congress workers on the ground are aware of this threat.

“The problem with us is that not many people in the party are selfless,” one worker said. “There were 34 candidates trying to get the ticket here. After the party picked one, 30 disappeared. There is anti-incumbency on the ground, but we need to ensure we galvanise every bit of it,” they said.

As we move into the town of Dongargarh, the farm crisis is replaced with the crisis of joblessness. In the town’s Ward 2, where there is a predominance of Dalits, 29-year-old Hemant Bansod says he has to work as a daily-wage labourer to make his ends meet. “There are no jobs,” he says. “There are no factories, no industries. Even those with respectable degrees are working at different shops for Rs 4,000 a month. I have to go to Raipur almost every day and work as a labourer at Rs 200 or Rs 250 per day.”

The strong stench of sewage overwhelms the area where Bansod lives. Open sewers run through the narrow alleys with small houses along them. Kaushal Chauhan, one of the several women sitting on the steps of their homes, chatting about the developments of the day, takes me to the back of her house to show what she has to endure. Right outside her window is a pig walking through the mire.

“Where is Swachh Bharat?” she asks. “The BJP has been ruling the constituency for 15 years, yet they could not construct a sewage line.”

Chauhan is a worker who makes bidis, like several of the residents of her area. “We get Rs 70 after making 1,000 bidis,” she says. “That’s all we can manage. There are no factories here. A contractor assigns work, and then sells them wherever he wants to. Because we have no option and no other work, he can exploit us.”

In a last ditch attempt to woo voters, Raman Singh has doled out mobile phones to the electorate. Chauhan says instead of the freebies, he should focus on increasing the employment in the town. “What is the use of that phone?” she asks. “My son plays games on it.”

For all the anti-incumbency, there are dedicated BJP voters in Dongargarh, as well. Sumedh Shahare, who runs a grocery store in the town, says Raman Singh knows Chhattisgarh well. “Even the MLA here knows the constituency and its people,” he says. “A new MLA will take two years to get to know the area. It is the same with the chief minister. Voting for the BJP is a matter of habit now.”

Yet one of the reasons why it will be difficult for the BJP to save Dongargarh is that the local issues here trump the “national” ones. Sanjay Phule, who gives me a ride to my hotel after I finish the day’s reporting, asks me to highlight the need for job opportunities. I acknowledge, and thank him for the ride. “No problem,” he says. “I am jobless in any case.”