New Gujarat model: Forget Amethi, PM Modi's home state should be Rahul's battleground

For all his feverish hopping around the country, from Punjab to Vidarbha via Uttarakhand, and belligerent posturing in Parliament, Rahul Gandhi can’t hope to revive the Congress unless he turns his attention, and efforts, to wrest Gujarat from the BJP. On the face of it, Gujarat seems a tough state for the Congress to crack. India’s grand old party last won the Assembly election here in 1985, lagging behind the BJP by 10-11 percentage points in every Assembly election from 1995. But look at the advantages for the Congress in focussing on Gujarat. This is the home turf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has turned Gujarat into a symbol of his ideas of development and governance. It’s the famous Gujarat model he invoked to win the 2014 mandate so handsomely. Modi may have shifted to Delhi, but his shadow looms large over the state. To take the battle to Gujarat is akin to bearding Modi in his den. It will convey Rahul’s daring isn’t confined to impassioned rhetoric and caustic taunts, and set the tone for a thrilling showdown reminiscent of the kind Arvind Kejriwal mounted against Sheila Dikshit, triggering an unmistakable buzz. [caption id=“attachment_2241466” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi. PTI.[/caption] Then again, Chief Minister Anandiben Patel is no Modi. Neither is she expected to grow into a towering figure, nor will she be allowed to, not the least because the prime minister wouldn’t want a competitor for the affection and admiration of the Gujaratis. This renders the battle for Gujarat easier for Rahul two years hence. He has to discover a face for the Congress that will match that of Anandiben, a not too difficult proposition. Think Gujarat, not Bharat Indeed, it makes no sense for Rahul to undertake a whistle-stop tour around the country as his party no longer commands a national presence – or eminence. In the states which are to have Assembly elections between now and 2017, there are a good many in which the Congress is predestined to come a cropper. Bihar is the only state which will have its Assembly elections this year. The Congress is so far behind there that its hope of improving its tally to, say, 20 MLA, from the current four it has, would be akin to a team chasing 700 runs in the second knock in cricket. Four states – Assam, West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu – go to polls in 2016. The Congress simply doesn’t count in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, particularly now that Jayalalithaa is back in the fray. Kerala alternates every five year between the Left- and Congress-led coalitions. It’s the Left’s turn to grasp the baton of power. In Assam the Congress will have to countenance the adverse impact of triple incumbency. It bagged just three out of Assam’s 14 parliamentary constituencies, with the BJP bagging seven. Badruddin Ajmal’s AIUDF won 18 seats in the 2011 Assembly election and then went on to bag three seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Seven states go to polls in 2017. Victory or defeat in Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur and Uttarakhand will not acquire national resonance. By contrast, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat, for a variety of reasons, tell a national story in a précis. In a largely quadrangle contest in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress won’t count. In Punjab, AAP could put the skids under the Congress wheel, as it did in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, bagging as many as 4 seats. Go down the list of the states that will go to polls over the next two years, and Gujarat quickly emerges as the best hope for a Rahul revival. Why Gujarat? Gujarat neatly dovetails with Rahul’s decision to portray his party as the protector of farmers’ interest, articulated through his vehement opposition to the Modi government’s land ordinance. Despite the rapid urbanization of Gujarat, 98 out of the 182 Assembly constituencies are rural. More significantly, the Congress isn’t an electoral write-off in rural Gujarat. It bagged 49 rural seats in the 2012 Assembly elections, edging ahead of the BJP’s 45. In fact, it was in the 84 urban and semi-urban constituencies that the Congress was a washout, managing to win only 12 of them. Rahul’s pro-farmer pitch should therefore have an echo in rural Gujarat, which is deeply anguished at the appropriation of land for industry. Agrarian distress in rural Gujarat, as in other parts of India, is reflected in a more or less consistent rise in the suicide of famers. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, barring a couple of years, suicide among farmers has hovered above the 500-mark. In 2002, 570 farmers committed suicide; 578 in 2011. These deaths are symptomatic of the malaise which Modi failed to treat as chief minister. A generalized expression of rage, however, will not suffice. Rahul and his team have to get into the specifics of rural Gujarat, which has directed its wrath against the Gujarat Special Investment Region Act, 2009, ironically abbreviated to read SIR, the Gujarat Irrigation and Drainage Act, 2013, and denial of canal irrigation through the process of de-notification of parts of the Narmada Command Area. A Gujarat model for Congress revival Farmers find the SIR Act particularly noxious. Once an area is brought under the SIR Act, land use is determined by the Gujarat Town Planning and Urban Development Act, 1976. Under it, the town planning officer can reserve a plot of land for public purpose. Half of the plot of land so reserved is assigned to the owner elsewhere, often a few kilometers away. The monetary compensation for the remaining half is at government rates, much lower than the prevailing market price and nowhere near what the UPA’s land acquisition law provided for. It is through the SIR Act that a 920 sq kilometer land was appropriated in Dholera, sparking farmer protests. The Gujarat Khedut Samaj’s secretary, Sagar Rabari, underlines the injustice inherent in the SIR Act, “First, you give the farmer only half of the land he owns. But can he take his well, borewell or water-pipes to where he is assigned the new plot?” This Act was also invoked for carving out the Mandal-Bechraji Special Investment Region, where Maruti is building a plant. The farmers here encountered a double whammy – not only were their farms relocated, but with the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd (SSNNL) also de-notifying 2,922.68 hectares in 2012-2013, they were summarily deprived of their right to the Narmada waters. The de-notification of the Narmada Command Area, according to estimates, could ultimately take out as much as four lakh hectares from the 18 lakh hectares earmarked for canal irrigation. Simultaneously, under the Gujarat Irrigation and Drainage Act 2013, the “canal officer” has started to resemble a water-czar. He can impose a levy on farmers whose land is within 200 meters of the water canal, regardless of whether or not they draw water from it for irrigation. The logic presumably is that the canal helps recharge the water table. Farmers are also miffed at having to register their existing wells and tubewells and secure licences for digging new ones. For all these reasons, protests have erupted across the state, from Mandal in north Gujarat to Saurashtra to Surat in south Gujarat. The Congress needs to stitch these protests into a coherent and cohesive state-level narrative and a plan of action, particularly as it isn’t quite dead in rural Gujarat. Not just farmers But this doesn’t mean Rahul can’t make inroads into urban Gujarat. The Anandiben Patel government recently told the Assembly that 2.66 lakh children up to six years were found malnourished in 18 of the state’s 33 districts. The maximum number of underweight children was found, believe it or not, in Ahmedabad district. The government has also admitted to 50 per cent of urban areas lacking basic infrastructure like water supply and sanitation. In a report submitted to the 14th Finance Commission, the state government said only 67 out of the 167 municipalities have sewerage facilities. Plummeting standard of education worries people – between 2011-12 and 2012-13, Gujarat slipped from 9th to 18th position in the latest national education development index prepared by the National University of Education Planning and Administration. Then again, the state’s education minister informed that 201 government schools at all levels were closed down between 2010 and 2014. Six government schools in the Capital city of Gandhinagar were handed over to a private trust for Re 1 for 30 years, sparking off fears about the increasing privatization of the education sector. But to exploit the successive BJP governments’ failings, Rahul has to overcome the energy-sapping factional competition in the Gujarat unit of the Congress, in which Ahmad Patel still calls the shots, rather disastrously. He has to then put together a team which could wage the politics of the streets and build the organisation from the booth-level. And yes, Rahul has to be seen more often in Gujarat, to appear as a general willing to take the fight to the rival’s camp. Rahul’s belligerence in Parliament and public rallies generate headlines, but don’t necessarily win the admiration of people and footsoldiers who stamp their approval for those leaders who dare – and triumph. There is no greater opportunity for national triumph on the horizon than Gujarat. Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores. Email: ashrafajaz3@gmail.com