Rudderless in Jaipur

The Rajasthan cabinet has been dissolved,allowing Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot to start fully afresh. This reboot is the only option left to a government so besieged on multiple fronts. Though the immediate backdrop is the resignation of two ministers over separate scandals,there is a larger narrative of drift and bumbling that has brought the state’s Congress government to this pass.

In three short years,Ashok Gehlot has frittered away every imaginable political advantage. He began his term in 2009 with a decisive mandate,a divided,delegitimised opposition and his own reputation for administrative initiative to see him through. However,his dithering over Ram Lal Jat and Mahipal Maderna’s resignations cost him heavily with those who value integrity and governance over caste calculations (the Jat community these ministers represent is a decisive force in Rajasthan,one that Gehlot is reluctant to provoke). However,his decision to finally demand their resignations may have now alienated the Jats anyway. In short,Gehlot may get neither the caste calculus nor governance right in this episode. In September,the Bharatpur killings were the lowest ebb for the government,with the national minorities panel and the Congress high command both holding it to account for police and administrative excesses. Nor does it have a solid development record so far to offset its error — it is fighting several corruption cases,and reeling from significant losses in the power sector. The Rajasthan high court has also been severe in its indictment of its inefficiency,asking the Gehlot government to “behave like a government”,when it dawdled over an order on arbitrary caste-based promotions.

This rapid slide in Rajasthan is one that will extract a heavy price on the Congress — it is the one big state that the party had managed to wrest back from the BJP,one that is crucial for the party’s state arithmetic. It certainly cannot afford to estrange Muslims and Jats,as it has in recent months. Jats are a numerically and socially powerful constituency,and their loyalties can go in any direction between the Congress,the BJP (which gave them OBC status in its term) or even a third force. And in a larger and more worrying trend,the collapse of the state’s politics over the last decade into petty,personalised fights also threatens Rajasthan’s longtime reputation for administrative responsiveness.