A cold, almost reluctant, handshake with Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in a marriage party last Saturday night reminded me of the long-thought idea to write a blog on him. The handshake was fortuitous. Shivraj was coming to shake several outstretched hands and I was too upfront in the crowd for him to ignore mine. His plastic smile was firmly in place. It reminded me the contrast with Digvijay Singh’s vivacious guffaws in such public functions.
I had been thinking to write on the Chief Minister well before the Lok Sabha election. For, I am always intrigued what is the ‘Shivraj –factor’ that was credited for the BJP’s return in the assembly election and which, six months later, miserably flopped in the parliamentary polls.
I still believe the credit for the BJP’s return in MP should largely, if not exclusively, go to the Congress under PCC chief Suresh Pachouri.
I strongly feel none of the much-touted achievements of the Shivraj government impressed the voter enough to make a hero of the Chief Minister.
But the dormancy of the Congress under Pachouri ensured that Shivraj emerged a first preference by default. Then, of course, memories of the Uma Bharti’s disastrous eight-months as CM also helped her successor. Like nature, politics abhors vacuum. If Pachouri is to be rejected, Shivraj has to be chosen. No other choice.
The Shivraj- factor was a BJP-created and media-sponsored myth. A large section of the media still seeks to perpetuate the myth even after the BJP debacle in Lok Sabha election in MP. His spin-doctors maintain Shivraj charisma holds though BJP’s might be waning.
Incidentally, this media had similarly caressed Digvijay’s inflated ego when he ruled the State. He too was projected bigger than the Congress. So, nothing unusual about it.
Much as I might try to be generous to the Chief Minister, I can’t recall one enduring, forget spectacular, achievement of his government. I would love to be enlightened by his supporters on this point.
Road, electricity, water, industrialization, law-and-order, social indices, education, health—all these sectors cried for qualitative improvement all these years. What they got in the bargain was a status-quoist system inherited from the Congress. The government is just going on, much the same way as the day follows the night and vice versa. The State is where it was five years ago, if not skidded backward.
I don’t intend to empirically analyse pluses and minuses of this government in these sectors. However, I would still maintain the government’s performance is dismal. I can give not more than 3 marks on the scale of 10 to this government.
Now the million-clichéd question: why, despite his self-evident administrative failure, Shivraj Singh is virtually unchallenged Chief Minister?
My simple hypothesis is that Shivraj owes his phenomenal rise to a great amount of luck he is born with. His stars have never dimmed. His ability to project himself a humble farmer’s son also helped him a great deal.
Let me try to analyse how
An above-average youth from Jait village in Sehore district arrives in Bhopal to study; he is from a lower middle class farmer family without any vaunting ambitions; the urban milieu of Bhopal gradually transforms this rural bumpkin; he discovers that his tongue runs faster than brain-- a gift of the gab imbued in peculiar rustic charm; he is soft-spoken and ready to bow before any one of consequence at the drop of a hat. He is religious-minded too. The combination was perfect for the boy to be drawn to the RSS.
It was early seventies of the last century. Gathering political storm coupled with youth angst convoluted the nation. The collective national unrest spawned a variety of romantic revolutionaries. Left ideology attracted some, socialists fascinated others and quite a few impressionable youths foresaw the glorious past of the Aryavart about to revisit the land soon, if they helped the cause. The last category of starry-eyed youths joined the ABVP. Shivraj belonged to this category. He was a sincere activist who actually believed in the RSS ideology.
By the time post-emergency student politics came into play in Bhopal, Shivraj was in college. He had had an advantage of having spent some days in the jail during emergency as one of the youngest MISA detenues. This (and other factors like the acute dearth of dynamic youths in the ABVP then) catapulted him in the ABVP politics. The oratory stood him in good stead. The characteristic genuflection before elders helped too. Soon, he was an ABVP leader of consequence but not the top one.
Luck began to favour Shivraj when he graduated from the ABVP to BJYM. The Ramjanambhoomi agitation was burgeoning. Advani’s rathyatra had agitated the nation like never before. Shivraj had become BJYM state president. He used his oratory skills to influence the cadres on one hand and played the ‘humble son’ histrionics to win over party leaders, on the other. The BJYM rally in 1989 under Shivraj in Bhopal is still remembered for its vast number.
Now let me recapitulate the subsequent events in short.
BJP comes to power in March 1990; SL Patwa elected CM; Shivraj too debuts in the assembly; CM’s indulgence for Shivraj becomes known to all who matter; Shivraj plays cool and safe, without letting the newly-acquired power to go to his head.
The defining moments in his political career comes when Atal Behari Vajpayee vacated his Vidisha seat. Shivraj fill the seat. Now he is in Central politics at a time when BJP’s stars are on the ascendance. Rest, as they say, is history. ( Part two later).
(Sorry, the blog has become a bit over-sized)
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