Udayan Hazarika
(The writer can be reached at udayanhazarika@hotmail.com)
The recent visit of the Union Home Minister to the State was considered of crucial importance in view of the forthcoming elections to the State Assembly. However, the visit has left no important marker in the minds of public which can be viewed as a big achievement for the party in power. The organizers perhaps had expected much more than what they have realised finally from the meeting. State Finance Minister Shri H.B. Sarma perhaps had given a good thought before selecting the venue for the meeting in his constituency where he has full control over everything including ensuring presence of a good gathering. However, as usual people from Guwahati and nearby places were collected and taken to the meeting by bus and they had attended the meeting. Newspaper reporting of the meeting was critical taking into account of Mr Shah's speech in which he preferred not to mention some very crucial issues of the State. There was no mention of NRC, no Para-6 of Assam Accord report or no six community tribalization issues. However, the newspapers were found confused as to how a government meeting where even the Chief Secretary of the State had attended could turned out to be an election meeting. However, like many other crucial questions, this too was also left unanswered. Among other confused were the audience who doesn't even know what is Law College and why all nine of them are required at a time, or the second medical college in Guwahati when AIIMS is coming up and GMC is already there along with MMC. Mr Shah might be a happy person to have distributed some government fund for religious pursuits – a scheme which has already been taken off. The other things that he did are of routine nature – only just announcing the opening of the schemes which no one can ever say as to when these projects will come to reality. In each of these projects, that the Government has recently either laid foundation stones or made announcements, one important point worth noting is that Government was loud enough to disclose the fund involved in the scheme but what is unfortunate is the fact that nowhere is it disclosed how and from where that fund will come?
The speech that the Home Minister has delivered was disappointing in the sense that it was a type of very common speech containing no concrete element while attacking his opponents. Like any ordinary political person, the Home minister attacked his opponents with sweeping statements. His speech had no gravity of that of a Home Minister of a nation like India. What is lacking in his speech is the touch of a confident political executive who has ability to convince and assure people with his oratory. Through his speech he conveyed two major directions that the BJP will maintain in their future election strategies - first while mentioning the anti-CAA agitationists, he branded them as being influenced by separatist forces indicating thereby that they are either backed by nations like China or Pakistan. He used the words separatist linkage while mentioning the leaders who are threatening to re-launch the agitation against implementation of CAA. Behind this attempt to malign the images of the leaders was the idea to frighten the common people in participating the agitation. In a poorly drafted speech, he did not hesitate to say that protests and agitation programmes could do only two things –1) it only increases martyrs – indicating thereby that government would not hesitate to come down heavily on the agitationists and 2) its outcome never lead to development- meaning -he is not aware of the history in general and Assam in particular where examples abounds of protests and agitation which fetched important rights and realised genuine demands.
Mr Shah is well aware of the fact that a call for the anti-CAA agitation will unite the people and disrupt all the efforts that the party has gained so far as a result of implementing various individual beneficiary schemes through which crores of government money has been drained out in the name of financial assistance to various communities. There must have been detailed internal party deliberations about the probable serious situation that may emerge due to a fresh anti-CAA agitation. Being the Home Minister of the country, he also has full access to intelligence feedback about the possible outcome of such an agitation.
The second direction that Mr Shah has provided through his speech is that of the stand to be taken by his party with reference to the newly launched political parties which he branded as the creation of secessionist forces. This branding of the newly launched political parties is indicative of the fact that the BJP leadership is not comfortable with this launching and a feeling of insecurity is cropping up. They know it for sure that the State is not at all happy with the way the things have been handled by the government but the unfortunate fact is that no alternative leadership is in sight on whom people can rest their trust. The State is desperately looking forward for a new leadership in the political arena who could steer the State to a better social integration. What BJP has done is only diffusion of constituents of the great Assamese society which is on the verge of polarization. People are carefully looking at the emerging AASU leadership who have joined the new political party and vowed to end the critical crises that the State is passing through.
The party in power has visualized the coming up of the new political parties as a threat to their vote bank. They look upon this threat as a serious one which will sure to divide the votes in upper Assam where there is stronghold of both AASU and Krishak Mukti through their political wing now in the form of AJP and Raijor Dal. Moreover, with all possibilities, there will be the spread of anti-CAA movement and that will affect the upper Assam most. Therefore, the combined effect of these three forces will eventually erode the BJP vote bank substantially. BJP feels, this will help wining Congress; but it will not be easier for Congress too this time especially in absence of any leader, their voters turnup will be low. Moreover, their vote banks in the tea gardens too have eroded after the BJP has poured in both cash and kind in their coffer under various schemes. The AASU sympathiser among tea and ex tea tribe will also take the sides of the AJP. So there is every possibility that in many Upper Assam constituencies from which the BJP is expecting good results will be returned with disappointment.
The issues which Mr Shah did not touch upon in his speech were i) the promise of providing employment to lakhs of unemployed youths? How much unemployed have so far been provided with jobs and what new avenues have been created for further absorbing the ever-increasing unemployed. There is no data with the State Government about it. State government is insisting on filling up of the vacant government jobs which is not even 5 per cent of the total unemployed in the State. Government have not created any avenues for absorbing this huge workforce. MSME sector has not been revamped despite the fact that the sector has the capacity to absorb huge labour force. Funds diverted to the individual beneficiary schemes cannot create any long-term good to the beneficiaries. Government is clearly in deep slumber in this job creation front and Mr Shah being the Home Minister of India seems complacent enough with the report that he has received from his State government.