Opinion The battle in Bundelkhand,the war in UP

On earlier visits to Bundelkhand,Rahul Gandhi had focused on the problems of Dalits. At the Banda rally,he attacked the BSP government for lacking an economic vision and neglecting backward regions like Bundelkhand. The rally is part of his endeavour since the early 2000s,and more seriously,2007,when the BSP captured power,to revive the organisation and base of the Congress party in the state. This effort has assumed greater political significance after the Congress obtained 21 seats in the 2009 national elections,the poor performance of the SP and the continued decline of the BJP,which has brought the Congress into direct confrontation with the ruling BSP.

According to a report by the Giri Institute of Development,Lucknow,Bundelkhand is not the most backward region of UP — it has shown remarkable progress since the early 1990s in reducing poverty,and recorded relatively satisfactory growth. Rather,the region was selected by Gandhi because it has 21 assembly and four Lok Sabha seats,and is a former Congress bastion,which it hopes to recapture from the BSP. Beginning his 2009 election campaign from here,Gandhi had demanded the establishment of a Bundelkhand Autonomous Authority,a financial package for large-scale irrigation,the trifurcation of UP and the establishment of a separate state of Bundelkhand to upstage this demand by the BSP. Taking this forward at the Banda rally,Gandhi argued that Bundelkhand had progressed when the Congress ruled the state and even now, it was the Central government that was attentive to the needs of its people,while the state government had failed to implement the development package provided by the former in 2009. This,he promised,would change once the Congress returned to power. The PM,on his first visit to the region,announced a slew of projects: rural drinking water,an agriculture university in Jhansi,a super-thermal power plant at Bargarh,upgrading the government medical college at Jhansi and setting up of five more Central schools and a development package that could be split between Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh to overcome water shortage and improve agricultural potential.

The sharpening political contestation between the two parties is evident in Mayawati’s strident response. In 2009,strongly criticising Gandhi’s remarks as Central interference,she had announced a number of welfare programmes for the region including the revival of the defunct Bundelkhand Vikas Nigam. Following the recent Congress rally,the UP government held the Centre responsible for the region’s backwardness,as it had ignored the CM’s request in May 2007 for a special area package of Rs 80,000 crore covering Bundelkhand and Poorvanchal. While the PM had promised a separate package of Rs 7,000 crore for Bundelkhand,only Rs 3,500 crore had been released in the last three years. Nor had the Centre provided BPL cards,and it was the UP government with its limited resources that had provided help under the Mukhyamantri Mahamaya Gareeb Arthik Madad Yojna. Much of this competition between the Congress and BSP over development stems from Mayawati’s actions since 2007,as she undertook the revival of major metropolises and 43 other cities in the state with special emphasis on sewage,garbage disposal,drinking water facilities,roads,etc. Apart from programmes for scheduled castes and the minorities,a considerable part of the budget has been spent on the social security of backward classes,women,children and the rural and urban poor.

Thus,the next 12 months will witness an aggressive battle between the Congress attempting to regain lost ground as a broad-based party and the BSP attempting to consolidate its position as a party of disadvantaged sections but with a Dalit core. Identity politics has not disappeared — it is being used with an inclusive agenda of growth and not for any specific social group as in the past. After almost two decades of instability and economic neglect,two major parties are facing each other in a contest where questions of development are placed front-and-centre. While it is too early to discuss outcomes,it is hoped that this battle will bring concrete progress to a state long-engulfed by identity politics.

The writer is professor at the Centre for Political Studies,and rector,at Jawaharlal Nehru University,Delhi