Lessons from Gujarat

Throughout the campaign, Modi consciously pitched Gujarat against the entire nation. All criticism against him was deliberately connoted as being ‘anti-Gujarati’. Public exhortations like ‘Gujarat has won’ and ‘Gujarat will show India’ are signs of a wrong trend emerging. It is the first time in the history of India that a major leader of a mainstream national party fought and won an election by appealing so extensively to parochial sentiments. The use of such politics in the home state of individuals like Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel who built the edifice of Indian nationhood, should be dealt with cautiously.

The claims of Gujarat’s unquestioning acceptance of Modi as its leader are hyperbole. Let’s not forget the fact that lakhs of people who voted against Modi were also Gujaratis. A cursory scrutiny of the poll statistics reveals that out of 182 seats contested in Gujarat, 68 were won by people who fought openly against Modi. On 24 seats, Congress lost by a margin of less than 5,000 votes. In fact, the party lost over 100 seats by a margin of less than 10,000 votes. Sure, democratic principles state that a victory by a single vote is still a victory, but it cannot be said that the whole of Gujarat belongs to Modi.

The eagerness of several regional and marginal parties to share the anti-communal and anti-Modi plank with the Congress resulted in the division of the ‘secular’ vote in the state. Parties like the BSP, Samajwadi Party and Janata Dal parroted the Congress’s campaign lines and cornered a crucial number of votes from the Congress on a majority of seats. The claim, therefore, that the entire Gujarat voted only for the BJP and rejected the Congress outright is both inaccurate and misleading.

Buoyant Kashmir

The anti-terrorism campaign in Kashmir which has been on for years has been yielding positive results lately. Terrorism-related violence often in the name of separatism, has scaled down substantially in the state. Figures suggest that the number of both terrorist acts and their casualties has come down along with the number of security personnel killed in the state. While the state witnessed as many as 3,505 acts of terrorism in 2001, the number has come down to only 684 in 2007. Casualties among security personnel are down from 627 to 118 for the same period. More significantly, the loss of civilian lives has been brought down from 1050 in 2001 to 134 in 2007. The figures this year are not an isolated phenomenon but mark a gradual yet steady trend.

The decline in militancy has coincided with an ever rising number of tourists, both domestic and foreign, arriving in Kashmir. The tourist season has been extended by two and half months. The tulip festival since early spring this year could attract an unprecedented rush of tourists to the valley. Kashmir has become one of the top international spots for winter sports. A few golf courses in the valley have also been ranked among the top 20 international golf courses. The snow festival and the large sloping fields of Kashmir are truly of international standard. The number of religious tourists to Mata Vaishno Devi has also been increasing.

Kashmir is now witnessing an upsurge of development initiatives. The entire valley is going to be connected via a rail network. Construction of the railway track between Jammu and Srinagar is on in full swing. Cultivation and export of saffron has seen a record high this year.

The writer is a Congress MP in Rajya Sabha