It is a sign of the isolation in which the Bharatiya Janata Party’s state units are beginning to perceive their political self-interest that Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan created a controversy where none need have existed. At a function in Satna last week, he said: “Locals should be given preference in employment in the industries being set up in the state. It should not happen that people should come from outside...

Bihar and get the jobs here.” Predictably, and naturally, there was a political uproar. And the only thing that can be said for Chouhan is that he tried, however clumsily, to backtrack: he didn’t intend to shut the state’s welcome to people from any other state, he submitted, but to make the point that locals need to be provided skill training too, to take advantage of new employment opportunities.

Chouhan’s clarification, however, carries little conviction. It is too soon after Raj Thackeray’s anti-outsider campaign perverted Maharashtra politics, with other parties (including the BJP and the Congress) failing to frame an alternative political narrative. Skilling local populations is in any case part of a government’s mandate , and Chouhan is too experienced a politician not to know that mention of Bihari migrant workers would be seen as a ploy to stoke anxiety. Why Chouhan, who last year bucked anti-incumbency, would resort to, and be seen to be resorting to, such crude parochialism is intriguing. But for the BJP, the question posed by such incidents is much larger.

... contd.