'Revadi' culture in Gujarat: AAP making BJP sweat

BJP's juggernaut in Gujarat is still rolling, but there is a perceptible change in the popular approach toward AAP

When the craving is power, lemons taste sweet, and grapes turn sour.

So it was that the seasonal sweet 'revadi' found itself catapulted to a cancer-inducing culture, dangerous for the entrails of India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was carping in his criticism of his political opponents who, he felt, were promising freebies in exchange for votes. "Adherents of this culture will never build expressways or airports. Defeat this thinking, remove this culture from the politics of the country," he was quoted as saying.

The rebuttal was swift, with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal redefining what the PM defined. "When you provide undue benefits to some corporates, forgive thousands of crores in loans of your friends, or use a foreign trip as an excuse to settle contracts for them with foreign governments, then it is 'revadi'. It is not so when we provide free quality schooling to 18 lakh poor and middle-class children, get 99 per cent results and have four lakh children leaving private schools for government ones. Some splurge on buying airplanes, and I save to make bus travel free for women. And after all this, the AAP government remains a CAG-certified surplus state," he countered.

The immediate provocation for the 'lob' by Prime Minister Modi and the prompt 'volley' from Kejriwal is the looming elections in Gujarat later this year. That it took the PM to do so gives vent to the unease in the ruling BJP as the AAP earnestly seeks to turn the heat on a party that has held power in the state for 27 years barring a 17-month break. Lost in the cacophony of cross-charges is that his own reign in his own state and those of his successors have not been free of this taint.

After consolidating its hold in Delhi and snatching Punjab from the Congress, the AAP's intent was to concentrate on Himachal Pradesh which goes to polls along with Gujarat in December and then turn the heat full throttle in Haryana in 2024. The AAP strategists have long been eyeing a contiguous land mass diverging out of Delhi, and their appetite stands whetted after bagging Punjab.

The AAP's initial forays in Gujarat were more in the nature of flag planting with the aim of building a presence to create an organisational structure until it hit pay dirt in Surat during the 2021 municipal corporation elections. The BJP swept with 93, AAP dented with 27, and the Congress was wiped out of existence in the 120-member body. The BJP sat smug, AAP ecstatic and the Congress in despair. Seven months later, in October, the BJP, for the first time, swept the Gandhinagar civic body, which it had hitherto ruled largely through defections. That the prime minister sought it fit to tweet on the results underlined its importance. The BJP bagged 41 of the 44 seats, the Congress 2 and AAP 1. That the opposition stood reduced to an auto-rickshaw load was not the news, nor was the Congress loss. The significance was that the votes percentage of Congress-AAP was more than the BJP (46.5) and that the AAP had secured 21 per cent votes against the Congress' 27.9 per cent.

The civic poll results goaded the AAP to boost its Gujarat efforts and its Punjab steamroller of 92 of the total 117 seats in March this year to intensify it further. However, it was the vandalism at Chief Minister Kejriwal's residence on March 30 by the Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha and the subsequent arrest of Satyender Jain, an AAP minister, by the Enforcement Directorate(ED) on May 31, that led to changes in the AAP strategy. Jain was the key leader who headed the party's electoral foray in HP. Thereafter it was decided to go full frontal against the BJP and beard it in its own den in Gujarat.

Thus Kejriwal's retaliatory barbs at the surplus budget of Delhi are aimed at the deficit of Gujarat, whose public debt has crossed Rs three trillion, eliciting a CAG warning of a debt trap (Gujarat will have to pay off 61 per cent of its Rs 3.08 lakh crore debt over the next seven years). Similarly, he is on record stating that the "Gujarat government spends Rs 191 crore on buying a plush plane for ferrying its VIPs, I spend to make public transport free for women."

This is a clear notice of intent of the AAP's aggressive, no-holds-barred electoral pitch in Gujarat.

Five days after the PM's jibe, Kejriwal was in Gujarat, promising up to 300 units of free electricity per month per billing cycle if voted to power. "We promise 24x7 power supply without disruption or power cuts, but if the consumer uses even one more unit above this, he foots the full bill. This is not a freebie; it encourages people to cut consumption. We do not announce manifestoes and term it 'jumlas' after getting elected. We give guarantees and if we renege on them, just throw us out," said Kejriwal while talking to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and businesses in Jamnagar on Saturday about the problems they were facing.

The AAP national convenor has paid four visits in July and two in the opening week of this month. Besides free power, his guarantees include 10 lakh government jobs, and a Rs 3000 monthly allowance for the jobless young. More to follow.

The juggernaut is still rolling, but there is a perceptible change in popular approach from one of indifference to that of interest, as evident from the attendance and the issues raised. In Jamnagar, Kejriwal made a pointed mention of how GST officials had been unleashed to prevent business and trade representatives from attending. He promised an end to raid 'raj' and the reign of fear and a consultative committee of trade, industry and professionals to guide the government if the AAP came to power.

Is the Prime Minister's reflection on 'revadi' culture a mirror of the ruling BJP's discomfiture at the AAP's pre-poll guarantees? Is the AAP's new-found electoral aggression and rapidly rolling membership drive causing anxiety in the Modi-Shah citadel? Will the' guarantees 'prove a game-changer?

While these remain questions that only the election results can answer, but the buzz is perceptible, both among the people and within the government. After the predictable election optics of the BJP weaning away AAP office-bearers began, the AAP moved swiftly to dissolve the state unit, retaining the state president and fleshed out the entire structure afresh with over 7000 appointments right from the grassroots to the national level, simultaneously putting the new machine to work with a statewide membership drive. It had earlier taken out a Parivartan yatra to map the contours of the 182 state assembly constituencies.

While the PM was quick to charge the opposition with doling out freebies, his own chief ministerial stint, as well as his successors, have much to answer for dishing out the same sweet. The registration process for a housing scheme for the urban poor women ('ghar nu ghar') announced by the Congress in the run-up to the 2012 Gujarat Assembly elections elicited such an unprecedented response that chief minister Modi himself countered it with a commitment document (Sankalp Patra) that promised 50 lakh house for the urban-rural poor and 30 lakh jobs for youth. The BJP won the elections and went amnesiac on its poll promise. Forget the pipe dream, the Gujarat government even failed to meet the annual targets of Prime Minister Modi's flagship programme, Pradhan Mantri Gram Awas Yojna (PMGAY), though by 2017, it had been lowered to one-fifth of what it was in 2012-13. According to official sources, a total of 1.63 lakh houses were constructed between 2015 and 2018 under the 'housing for all by 2022' scheme in Gujarat.

Again in 2017, a fortnight before the elections were declared, and the code of conduct came into force, the BJP government in the state went on a spree announcing projects and sops worth Rs 11,000 crore, with at least four major schemes and numerous other benefits being announced within the last 24 hours. The list is long, and with elections due this December, the same vicious cycle of announcements and inaugurations has kicked in with leaders on a merry-go-round and dream-sellers in demand.

In electoral reckoning, the taste of the fruit lies in the feeding.

(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.