In Gujarat, the BJP govt faces a surge of protests

With Modi and Shah looming large in the state, the politically lightweight Patel and his new Cabinet are hemmed-in with little manoeuvring space at its disposal

It is raining agitations and drizzling inaugurations in Gujarat as captains and claimants fight over 'facts' and strip each other's foibles to mutual nakedness. Poll time weighs heavy, and the Bhupendra Patel-led BJP government is sweating streams as employees and allies alike flash the sword in the quest for their pound of flesh.

If all manner of government employees' organisations are on the warpath in support of their demands at one end, the filial Bhartiya Kisan Sangh has raised its fists, threatening a fiercer stir at the other. Sandwiched in between are enraged ex-servicemen, firm road transport employees, angry ASHA workers, feisty forest guards, besides a host of meeker trade and professional bodies, some submissively seeking alms and others attention. A harassed government finds itself deluged under a torrent of demands, all laced with deadlines and threats. The hurried constitution of a five-minister panel to defuse the situation and ensure that stirs do not go out of hand is simply overloaded to exhaustion.

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The agitation-bound are in a hurry, and so is the Patel government as the nine-member delegation led by senior deputy election commissioner Dharmendra Sharma of the Central Election Commission (CEC) was on a two-day visit to Gujarat beginning Sept. 18 with back-to-back review meetings with district collectors and police chiefs. Speculation has made its way into the public domain from BJP sources that the Gujarat polls may take place in November instead of December, thus warranting earlier enforcement of the model code of conduct.

This has a direct bearing on the frenzy of the agitation-bound as well the urgency of the government. Through experience honed over decades, employees, as well as sectoral interests, have come to realise that the only time governments are amenable to their demands is when elections are around the corner. This is more so after the advent of Narendra Modi as chief minister and later prime minister. The most cited example is that of the protracted farmers' stir in which over 700 of them lost their lives, but the government relented only for fear of the adverse impact in the UP polls. It was back to riding roughshod thereafter.

With the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Admi Party(AAP) making a determined foray in the state and the Congress opposition trying hard to hold on to its 2017 best of 77 seats in a 182-member state Assembly as against the BJP's Modi-time low of 99 seats, the state has become a fertile ground for government employees as well as sectoral spearheads to press aggressively in support of their wage and working condition demands.

Also read — PM's aide warning news channels against covering AAP in Gujarat: Arvind Kejriwal

The Congress and AAP support for these stirs has only added oil to troubled waters, and a besieged BJP has been put in a position wherein it is forced to concede. Take the case of the cops agitating for over a year for their grade-pay revision. Initially, the government stone-walled holding that they were being paid as per the seventh pay commission recommendations. Still, as the stir turned serious, it initially filed 10 FIRs against 27 accused, including police personnel and others. It even launched a probe against 229 police personnel and subsequently appointed a five-member committee to go into the demands of the cops.

On August 10, Arvind Kejriwal promised the best pay scales for the police if AAP came to power in the state. Four days later, the government announced a Rs 550 crore package of allowances. However, an official insistence in writing that the cops will not raise further financial demands saw them refusing to give an undertaking. A storm on social media had the government capitulate and drop the undertaking. No sooner were these fires put out that another agreement with the talati-cum-matris (patwaris) was on the verge of coming undone. The patwaris are the crucial implementers of the government's rural development schemes at the grassroots level. Their state-level organisation had long been representing for revision of allowances due for over a decade. At the end of protracted negotiations, it was agreed to revise these allowances from Rs 900 to Rs 3,000 beginning September 2022. However, the insistence on an affidavit has turned the issue contentious.

There was cause for AAP to take credit when the organisations spearheading the agitation of its nine lakh employees called it off following an agreement hammered out with the group of five ministers. The government had agreed to pay the seventh pay commission arrears and bring all those who had joined before April 2005 under the old pension scheme as well as the Government Provident Fund (GPF). AAP had only recently announced support for the agitation. The agreement, however, split the employees with the post-2005 recruits determined to continue the fight, as did the state health workers. Though the umbrella organisations had called off the stir, thousands of employees, including school teachers, joined the mass casual leave and protest march the next day.

Meanwhile, the continuing ex-servicemen's stir took its first toll when one of its protesting members died. With the state capital, Gandhinagar, turning into a virtual police camp, the ex-servicemen are on a dharna in support of their 14-point demand though the government had conceded their demand for increased compensation for the next of kin of soldiers killed in the line of duty. The Congress and AAP have promised to accept all their demands if voted to power.

Earlier, the Par-Tapi-Narmada river linking project announced in the Union Budget was scrapped days after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's announcement at a rally in tribal-dominated Dahod district in May that the project would be junked if the Congress came to power in the state. Chief Minister Patel, who had earlier put the project on hold, said it was being scrapped after the Congress-spearheaded tribal stir began gaining momentum.

Despite the ministerial panel, the RSS-founded Bhartiya Kisan Sangh has been agitating in the state capital of Gandhinagar since August 25 in support of their demand that includes, among others, issues concerning agricultural power to farmers. Criticising the government's delay in negotiating with the farmers, the BKS has threatened to boycott ministers in the rural landscape. Kejriwal recently upped the ante when he made five big poll promises for farmers, which included a 12-hour power supply, procurement at Minimum Support Prices (MSP), Narmada water to every farmer in the command area of the project as well a farm loan waiver.

Prime Minister Modi may have aimed at neutralising anti-incumbency and the Covid-time failures when he sent the entire Vijay Rupani Cabinet packing, but he inadvertently weakened the position of the outgoing as well as the incoming chief minister Bhupendrabhai Patel. With Modi and home minister looming large in the state, the politically lightweight replacement, Bhupendra Patel, helming a new Cabinet and a former cop for a state BJP party president, C R Patil, the government is hemmed-in with little manoeuvring space at its disposal. The sudden divestment of two key Cabinet ministers, Rajendra Trivedi and Purnesh Modi, of the portfolios of revenue and road and Buildings, respectively, on August 20 on directions from Delhi is a case in point as it had an element of surprise even for the chief minister.

While the state administrative machinery is at pains dealing with the demonstratively defiant streak of its own, Union ministers and bureaucrats of all shapes and sizes keep flitting in and out of the election-bound state reviewing one or the other project, making outlandish assertions examples abound. A sample. September 12: Union minister for ports, shipping and waterways Sarbananda Sonowal said the Gujarat government was planning to double the capacity of its lone ship breaking yard at Alang to 10 million metric tonnes per annum (MMTA). This is when 50 per cent of its present 4.5 MMTA capacity is lying idle.

September 13: Railways minister Ashwini Vaishnav reviewed the progress of the bullet train work in Ahmedabad and announced the PM will flag off the Vande Bharat Express between Gandhinagar-Mumbai on September 30.

September 13: Union Home Minister Amit Shah virtually inaugurated and laid the foundation stone for various projects worth Rs 1,200 crore from Gandhinagar. September 14: Shah participated in the All India Official Language Conference on Hindi Diwas in Surat. According to a conservative estimate, the PM has laid the foundation stone or inaugurated projects worth over Rs 40,000 crore during his frequent visits to Gujarat this year. And many more high-profile events are lined up for the coming days as well. Poll time is splash time.

(R K Misra is a senior journalist based in Ahmedabad)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.