Campaigning for the Jharkhand assembly elections has picked up pace, with voting in the five-phase schedule beginning on November 25. The Congress- and BJP-led alliances have released manifestos promising everything from cheap foodgrain to job creation. Nonetheless, nine years after Jharkhand was formed on expectations that the hopes that sustained its long struggle for statehood would now be realised, two of the biggest national stories today profile all that went wrong in this period: Maoist violence and the Madhu Koda corruption case. Jharkhand, by the administrative record of these years and the rapid changes of government, has been particularly ill-served by its politicians.

In these years independents have wielded inordinate clout — and Koda actually became chief minister in 2006 as an independent, having been a minister in the NDA’s Babulal Marandi and Arjun Munda governments, he dislodged the latter to lead a government supported by the UPA. The record of promiscuity and quid pro quos is illustrated by Shibu Soren’s latest tenure as CM, after dislodging Koda and gaining UPA support for having supported the trust vote last July. President’s rule was subsequently imposed when Soren lost a by-election to the assembly. But for all this political space occupied by mavericks and merchants of chance, Jharkhand politics has been an arena for BJP- and Congress-led alliances to square up against each other. So it is now, with parties like the RJD and diverse independents too waiting in the wings. The BJP, after a few hiccups, is persisting with its alliance with the JD(U). But having won eight out of 14 Lok Sabha seats this summer, they cannot take anything for granted. The opposition is less scattered this time, with the Congress in alliance with Marandi’s Jharkhand Vikas Morcha. (Marandi, a popular state leader, had in 2006 left the BJP.)

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