' Revadi' Culture In Gujarat : AAP Makes BJP Sweat

 BY R.K.MISRA

 When the craving is power, lemons taste sweet, and grapes turn sour.

So it was that the seasonal sweet ’revadi’  found itself catapulted to a cancer-inducing culture, dangerous for the entrails of India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was carping in his criticism of his political opponents who, he felt, were promising freebies in exchange for votes. “adherents of this culture will never build expressways or airports. Defeat this thinking, remove this culture from the politics of the country”, he was quoted as saying.

The rebuttal was swift, with Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal redefining , what the PM defined. ”When you provide undue benefits to some corporates, forgive thousands of crores in loans of your friends , or when you use a foreign trip as an excuse to settle contracts  for them with foreign governments , then it is ‘revadi’. It is not so when we provide free quality schooling to 18 lakh poor and middle-class children, get 99 per cent results and have 4 lakh children leaving private schools for government ones. Some splurge on buying airplanes, I save to make bus travel free for women. And after all this ,the  AAP government remains a CAG-certified surplus state”, he counters.

The immediate provocation for the ‘ lob’ by Prime Minister Modi and the prompt ‘volley’ from Kejriwal is the looming elections in Gujarat later this  year. That it took the Prime Minister to do so gives vent to the unease in the ruling BJP as AAP earnestly seeks to turn the heat on a party that has held power in the state for 27 years barring a 17-month break. Lost in the cacophony of cross-charges is that his own reign in his own state and those of his successors have not been free of this taint.

 After consolidating its hold in Delhi, and snatching Punjab from the Congress, the AAP intent was to concentrate on Himachal Pradesh which goes to polls along with Gujarat in December and then turn the heat full throttle in Haryana in 2024. AAP strategists have long been eyeing a contiguous land mass diverging out of Delhi , and their appetite stands whetted  after bagging Punjab.

AAP’s  initial forays in Gujarat were more in the nature of  flag planting with the aim of building presence to create an organizational structure until it hit pay dirt in Surat during the 2021 municipal corporation elections. BJP swept with 93, AAP dented with 27 and the Congress was wiped out of existence in the 120 member body. The BJP sat smug, AAP ecstatic and the Congress in despair.

Seven months later in October ,BJP, for the first time, swept  the Gandhinagar civic body, which it had hitherto ruled largely through defections. That the prime minister sought It fit to tweet on the results underlines its importance. BJP bagged 41 of the 44 seats, the Congress 2 and AAP 1. That the opposition stood reduced to an auto-rickshaw load was not the news neither was the Congress loss. The significance was that the votes percentage of  Congress-AAP was more than the BJP(46.5) and that AAP had secured 21 per cent votes against the Congress 27.9 per cent.

The civic poll results goaded  AAP to boost its Gujarat efforts and its Punjab steamroller of 92 of the total 117 seats in March this year to intensify it further. However, it was the vandalism at chief minister Kejriwal’s residence on March 30 by the Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha and the subsequent arrest of Satyender Jain, AAP minister, by the Enforcement Directorate(ED) on May 31,  that led to changes in AAP strategy. Jain was the key leader who headed the party’s electoral foray in HP. Thereafter it was decided to go full frontal against the BJP and beard it in its own den in Gujarat.

Thus Kejriwal’s retaliatory barbs of surplus budget of Delhi  is aimed at the deficit of Gujarat , whose public debt has crossed Rs three trillion , eliciting a CAG warning of  a debt trap(Gujarat will have to pay off  61 per cent of its Rs 3.08 lakh crore debt over the next 7 years). Similarly, he is on record stating that” Gujarat government spends Rs 191 crores to  buy a plush plane for ferrying its VIPs, I spend to make public transport free for women ”.

This  is a clear notice of intent of AAP’s aggressive, no-holds-barred electoral pitch in Gujarat.

Five days after  the PM’s jibe, Kejriwal was in Gujarat promising  up to 300 units of free electricity per month per billing cycle, if voted to power .” We promise 24x7 power supply without disruption or power cuts but if the consumer uses even one more unit above this, he foots the full bill”. This is not a freebie ; it encourages people to cut consumption. “We do not announce manifestoes and term it ‘ jumlas’ after getting elected .We give guarantees and if we renege on them, just throw us out’, said Kejriwal while talking to micro, small and medium enterprises(MSME) and business in Jamnagar on Saturday on August 6  on the problems they were facing.

The AAP national convenor has paid  four visits in July and two in the opening week of  this month. Besides free power, his guarantees include  10 lakh government jobs ,and a Rs 3000 monthly allowance for  the jobless young. More to follow.

The juggernaut is still rolling , but there is a perceptible change in popular approach from one of indifference to that of interest as  evident from the attendance and the issues raised. In Jamnagar, Kejriwal made a pointed mention of  how GST officials had been unleashed to prevent business and trade representatives from attending. He promised an end to raid ‘raj’ and the reign of fear, and a consultative committee of trade, industry and professionals to guide the government, if AAP comes to power.

Is the Prime Minister’s reflection on  ‘revadi’ culture , a mirror of the ruling BJP’s discomfiture at AAP’s pre-poll guarantees ? Is AAP’s new found electoral aggression and it’s rapidly rolling membership drive causing anxiety in the Modi-Shah citadel?. Will the’ guarantees ‘ prove a game-changer ?

While these remain questions which only the election results can answer , but the buzz is perceptible, both among the people and  within the government. After the predictable election optics of the BJP weaning away AAP office-bearers began, AAP moved swiftly to dissolve the state unit, retaining the state president and fleshed out the entire structure afresh with over 7000  appointments right from the grassroots to the national level  simultaneously putting the new machine to work with a statewide membership drive. It had earlier taken out a Parivartan yatra to map the contours of the 182 state assembly constituencies.

While the Prime Minister was quick to charge the opposition with doling out freebies ,his own chief ministerial stint as well as his successors  have much to answer for dishing out the same sweet. The registration process for a housing scheme for the urban poor women(‘ghar nu ghar’)   announced by the Congress in the run up to the 2012 Gujarat Assembly elections ,elicited such an unprecedented response  that chief minister Modi himself countered it with a commitment document(Sankalp patra) that promised 50 lakh house for the urban-rural poor and 30 lakh jobs for youth. The BJP won the elections  and went amnesiac on its poll promise. Forget the pipe dream, the Gujarat government even failed to meet the annual targets of Prime Minister Modi’s flagship programme , Pradhan Mantri Gram Awas Yojna(PMGAY)  though by 2017 it had been  lowered to one-fifth of what it was in 2012-13. According to official sources a total of 1.63 lakh houses had been constructed between 2015 and 2018 under the ‘housing for all by 2022 ‘scheme in Gujarat.

Again in 2017, a fortnight before the elections were declared and the code of conduct came into force, the BJP government in the state went on a spree announcing projects and sops worth Rs 11,000 crores with at least four major schemes and numerous other benefits being announced within the last 24 hours. The list is long and with elections  due this  December, the same vicious cycle of announcements and inaugurations has kicked-in with  leaders on a merry-go-round and dream-sellers in demand.

In electoral reckoning ,the taste of the fruit lies in the feeding.

https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/revadi-culture-in-gujarat-aap-making-bjp-sweat-1134148.html