A mandate against hate-mongers in Jharkhand

Defying predictions and notwithstanding shrill pitch hatemongering, the victory of the JMMled INDIA bloc in Jharkhand should be considered an extraordinary accomplishment amid the series of setbacks the fledgling alliance has suffered in a row during the last six months. The opposition bloc owes its victory mainly to the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) which even while adding to its own tally has helped its allies to garner respectable number of seats. The India bloc improved its votebase by 9 per cent while adding nine more seats to its previous tally.

Six months ago when the INDIA bloc partners were negotiating seats, the odds did not favour them. Chief Minister Hemant Soren was in jail under an ED case, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had unleashed a Muslim-phobic campaign behind the thin veneer of ghuspaithiya (Bangladeshi infiltrators) and the Hemant Soren government carried the weight of incumbency in an impoverished state. By improving its tally to 56 in a house of 80, the INDIA allies have wrested a comprehensive victory over the BJP which had only a small ally in All Jharkhand Students Union. The carefully planned toxic Roti-Maati-Beti campaign targeted Muslims fostering fears among the tribals of loss of their daughters, livelihood and land to the infiltrators.

It was basically aimed at driving a wedge between Muslims and the tribals, the two essential social components of the votebase of the INDIA bloc. The victory is evidence enough that the voters saw it just as it is i.e., a bogey and nothing else. It is apparent that there were no takers for the BJP propaganda among the tribals as JMM has strengthened its hold over the tribals what with 27 of the 28 Scheduled Tribe (reserved) seats returning the JMM candidates. In south Chhotanagpur region where the RSS-backed campaign promised to bring in the National Register of Citizenship (NRC), the BJP could not garner even one of the 11 seats up for grab. Even the election-eve defection of Champai Soren the one-time confidant of Hemant Soren who held the CM’s post during Hemant Soren’s detention proved to be of no avail for the BJP as he could bring nothing more than his own Saraikela seat to the NDA. Its ally The BJP’s principal gains have come from urban centres and the mining area dominated by businessmen from outside the state.

The Maiyya Samman Yojana promising Rs. 1,000 for women four instalment of which were paid in months prior to the elections—and emergence of Kalpana Soren, the CM’s wife, seem to have tilted women’s support, towards the JMM and its allies. Soren’s detention which lent a martyr’s halo to his image, too seems to have garnered him sympathy thereby enabling the alliance a handsome victory.

While the JMM and its allies have done an encore, it remains to be seen how it negotiates the next tenure in power amid festering poverty in a state that has seen no investment to turn its mining wealth into industries in recent decades. The State would need to rise over welfarism and policy of giving out doles. The JMM should now strive to delineate a policy to bring the tribals into the social and economic mainstream of the nation.