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Kumar Ketkar is a senior journalist, political commentator, globe trotter and author. He has covered all Indian elections since 1971 and significant international events. He is a frequent participant on TV debates.)
Well, the quake did take place in Maharashtra, though it was a little short of an 8 on the Richter scale. In Haryana, it was more forceful. Haryana is a neo-rich state. 30 years ago, the state was poor. Then came the idea of non-agricultural land for huge real estate development. The prices of land in the last three decades have gone up several thousand times.
The landlords - kulaks, to use the right term - sold their property which was then used to construct magnificent shopping malls, luxurious high-rise and high-price residential buildings, expensive restaurants, posh clubs, and European franchises of fashionable pubs. Ironically, all this so-called westernized modernity co-exists -seemingly in comfort - with the state's horrifying Khap Panchayats, where inter-caste marriages are punished with brutal death sentences.
The obscene wealth in Haryana lives with more obscene poverty. It is difficult to identify the class divide in the voting pattern.
The wealth generated by unearned incomes in Haryana began being used for capturing political power, and that is how dizzy heights of corruption were scaled by the ruling classes there. That wealth led to fratricidal and internecine, murderous conflicts. The political class in Haryana, irrespective of the parties, is allegedly involved in some of these billion-rupee deals or crimes!
In Maharashtra, most exit polls had predicted a clear majority for the BJP with between 150 to 160 seats. The BJP could not go beyond 123 and now has to hitch an ally - it may have to remarry one it had divorced.
Narendra Modi and Amit Shah can take satisfaction for conquering two states, both politically and commercially very significant. But for all the talk of the success of the strategy of going it alone, they may do well to examine it.
But for Modi's larger-than-life self-image and Amit Shah's arrogance, the "Yuti" would have survived. They tried to put the blame for the split on the Shiv Sena, but there is an impression that the duo wants a strategy to make India not only "Congress-Mukta" but also free of the grip of all regional parties.
That perhaps is the first step towards establishing the "Hindu Rashtra ". But actually it is a very subtle undermining of the plurality of India. The regional parties may be treated as "Nuisance" value for the central government, but they fill huge gaps left by the national parties. One cannot ignore the role of various identities in India--be they regional, linguistic, caste or community, ethnic, religious or even multi-national. The Idea of India is a manifestation of that fascinating and truly fantastic plurality. Narrowing those identities to a uniform Hindu Nationalist identity will lead to disintegration of our society.
Maharashtra is a state which has all these identities, cultivated by the freedom movement, by the socio-political networks created by Mahatma Gandhi and later by the Co-operative Movement. Therefore Maharashtra is not easy to govern. It is a fractured state with regions that are totally dissimilar. There is Marathwada, which has its socio-cultural roots in the Hyderabad state of Nizam; there is Vidarbha (which wants separate statehood like Telengana) and has a geo-political linkage with Madhya Pradesh (formerly Central Provinces and Berar). They have nothing in common - neither crop patterns nor land-holding systems. Western and South Maharashtra have a vast network of sugar factories and cooperative institutions. North Maharashtra has large tribal belts, and Konkan has a distinctly independent literary culture (and also horticulture-Alphonso mangoes). Mumbai, the capital, is truly a global metropolis, a kind of melting pot. Each region has problems which are mutually exclusive, ones that defy uniform solutions.
The BJP has neither social roots in these regional societies nor an understanding of their people. All problems cannot be reduced to just one parameter of "development". The RSS world view that defines the ideology of the BJP is incapable of dealing with complex situations. Electoral success cannot automatically lead to so-called good governance.
That is why the analogy of a quake perfectly illustrates the disruptive situation in Maharashtra today.
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