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Political Notes

	July 19, 2004

Parties gear up for Maharashtra Assembly polls

Maharashtra Assembly elections slated to be held after two months. The election is going to be a direct battle between the National Democratic Alliance(NDA) that includes the BJP and the Shiv Sena and the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party combine. It is very difficult to predict which party would win the elections. Going by the recent Lok Sabha elections results, both the alliances have more or less won equal number of seats. Out of 45 Lok Sabha seats, the NDA has won 25 seats whereas the Cong and NCP combine has won 23 seats. But one thing that no one can ignore is that when compared to the Lok Sabha elections of 1999, the party position of the Congress led alliance has improved a lot.

In 1999 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress won only 16 seats out of 48 but in 2004 it won as many as 23 seats. But the fact that Congress-NCP combine has been in power for the last five years, the anti-incumbency factor would play a major role in this. The Congress-NCP combine is too aware of this factor and they have been trying to convince the voters that the same parties ruling at Delhi and Mumbai will mean easier fulfilment of promises. During the Lok Sabha polls, it was made out by the NCP and Congress that the BJP-led Government would let Maharashtra down.

The Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government at Centre has been taking steps to woo the Maharashtra voters. The large representation of the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party MPs from Maharashtra in the Manmohan Singh Ministry has already proved this. By appointing ministers from the state, the party believes that it can deal with the voter’s desires, hopes and expectations. Out of nine NCP MPs, three have been given the post of ministers. Sharad Pawar has been made the Cabinet minister for Agriculture and Food. Suryakanta Patil and Praful Patel have been made Minister of State for Rural Development, Parliamentary Affairs and Civil Aviation respectively.

It is expected that the veteran leader Sharad Pawar will lead the campaign for the Congress-NCP combine for the coming elections. Pawar has a great hold over the state and he understands the state more than anybody in the Congress-NCP combine. The Maratha leader left the Congress a few years ago when Sonia Gandhi took over as head of the Congress Party. It was Sharad Pawar who raised Sonia’s foreign origin issue again and again. He joined the present ministry only after Sonia Gandhi refused to be the Prime Minister. The Congress also understands it would be very difficult to face the BJP-Shiv Sena combine unless it takes the help of the NCP. The Maharashtra Assembly has 288 seats and to get the majority, the either combine has to get 145 seats.

The Shiv Sena and BJP have been also busy chalking out their strategy for the coming elections. It is believed that the Shiv Sena will play the Hindutva (Hindu activism) card with a view to attracting non-Marathi voters in Mumbai. These voters had turned away from the Sena in the last Lok Sabha polls since the party had run a campaign against the migrants from other States.

The Shiv Sena and the BJP have shared the 288 Assembly seats in the State, with the Sena having the larger chunk of 171 seats and both the parties have stuck to the arrangement for the past several elections. Analysts feel that the loss of the urban constituency in the last Lok Sabha polls has made the Sena rethink about the division of the seats and it would like to renegotiate the arrangement with the BJP with a view to introducing the ‘winnability’ factor.



Arguments over removal of governors

Last week, Parliament was busy discussing the issue of the removal of four Governors by the United Progressive Alliance Government. The Leader of the Opposition, L.K. Advani, accused the Congress-led Government of launching an assault on the multi-party system in the country and weakening federalism. Advani said a Governor’s ideology could not be held against him. “The doctrine of committed ideology is dangerous,” he said.

The Government defended its decision to remove the Governors in four States, saying it was “constitutionally right and legally correct.” The Union Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, said the Government had “scrupulously followed both the law and the procedure,” while dismissing the Governors in Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat and Haryana. Patil denied that the Government’s actions were “politically motivated” and that it had not consulted the State Governments while appointing the new Governors. The four Governors who were removed, he said, were taking orders from a political party and had “loudly proclaimed their affiliation to the RSS.” “If some Governors are not prepared to follow the ideals of secularism and socialism as enshrined in the Constitution and choose to take their orders from the political parties or organisations that they belong to rather than from the Government, what are we expected to do,” he asked.

Citing the example of Gujarat, he said the Government did not want to face a situation “where the Governor, shackled by his ideological considerations, was not prepared to give a factual report of what was happening on the ground.” The UPA had won a mandate to provide a secular Government and to take everybody together. “However, if some Governors do not want to cooperate with us on the subject, how can we then fulfil the mandate,” Patil asked.

Dwelling on the constitutional validity of the Government’s decision, Patil said that Article 156 of the Constitution stipulated that the Governor should hold office at the pleasure of the President. In 1998, the Vajpayee Government had removed the Governors of Gujarat, Mizoram, Uttar Pradesh and Goa soon after coming to power. The Janata Party Government, of which Advani was a member, had sacked several State Governments. “The National Front Government supported by you [BJP] had sacked all the State Governors appointed by the previous Government,” Patil said.



India ranks low in Human development index : UNDP report

India ranks quite low at 127 - the same rank as last year - in the list of 177 countries in human development index. In this year’s Human Development Report commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme, released by Information and Broadcasting Minister Jaipal Reddy on July 15, among the South Asian countries, India ranks third after Maldives (84) and Sri Lanka (96). Pakistan is the worst performer in the region with a rank of 142. Globally India figures between Namibia and Botswana, much lower than smaller countries such as Gabon, Tonga, Antigua, Berguda and Astonia. Norway, Sweden and Australia are the top three performers when it comes giving their citizens good quality of life. Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone have the worst Human Development indices (HDI).

India’s ranking has stayed static due to decline in GDP per capital in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) because of drought though there has been an improvement in the literacy rate. The HDI is measured in terms of life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate, gross enrollment ratio for schools and per capital income. Life expectancy ratio improved to 63.7 in 2002 from 63.3 in 2001, while the adult literacy rate went up to 61.3 from 58 in the previous year. Mumbai and Delhi figure in the 35 cities the world over that have a high crime rate. Data from 1995 shows that 31. 8 per cent of the citizens of Mumbai and 30.5 per cent in Delhi have been victims of crime. Delhi and Mumbai have high corruption rates of the 35 cities listed.

Despite not showing any improvement in HDI this year, India has been placed for its initiatives in religious tolerance, legal pluralism and socio-economic policies, including reservation for minorities. The report calls the many central holidays a celebration of the diversity of its religions. It says, India officially celebrates five Hindu holidays but also four Muslim, two Christian, one Buddhist and One Jain and One Sikh in recognition of diverse population. India is held as an example of how “poor and diverse countries can do well with multi-cultural policies”. A survey cited by the UNDP report shows that over 80 per cent Indians support democracy, over 50 per cent trust institutions and almost ninety per cent are proud to be Indians which is higher than Spain, Switzerland and Germany but lower than US and Canada.

The report however, said that the rise of Hindu groups, which seek to impose a singular religion in the country posed a threat to social harmony. Describing growing distrust and hatred as threats to peace, development and human freedom, the report says that sectarian violence killed thousand of Muslims and drove thousands more from their home in Gujarat and elsewhere in India, but it continues to be a champion of cultural accommodation.