As Tripura voters head to polling stations to deliver their verdict on the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, the big question on everyone's lips is whether there will be a surprise. Because when the Left government fell in Tripura in 2018, few, barring Left leaders, were surprised. For many, years of Left rule had become synonymous first with insurgency-related and, later, political strife. Moreover, the state's remoteness and the general apathy encountered by northeast India meant unemployment was sky-high.
Five years ago, in February 2018, when India's unemployment stood at around 6 per cent, it was over 30 per cent in Tripura. And let us not forget who the Left was up against. The BJP had by then come to power in Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. But Tripura was the battle it most looked forward to. The Left is everything the BJP claims to despise, and promises of a double-engine government coupled with an ambitious manifesto ensured the Lotus crushed the hammer-and-sickle.
Unfulfilled Promises
Five years later, words like 'anti-incumbency' are finding space in local publications considered sympathetic to the BJP. And the BJP has only itself to blame.
There is no party like the BJP when it is going on the offensive. The party has mastered the art of making people believe in change. The promises it makes in the process leave a lot to be desired. Take unemployment for example. In a state with chronic unemployment rates like Tripura, the easiest way to get attention is to promise jobs. In 2018, in the run-up to the elections, BJP made no less than 299 promises in a 28-page booklet.
We have the Tripura government on record, claiming that 41,949 jobs had been given the go-ahead till December 16, 2022, and that people had already got 24,033 of those in the past four-and-a-half years. Nearly 25,000 jobs in 4.5 years translate to about 5,500 jobs a year or about 400 per month. As of February 2023, the unemployment rate stands at 16 per cent, much better than February 2018 but much higher than the national average.
Ire Of The Jobless
In the Northeast, some issues are perennial: water shortage in parts of Imphal, bad roads in Nagaland, the Chakma-Hajong issue in Arunachal, and then there is the never-ending teachers' struggle in Tripura. The 10,323 teachers, who lost their jobs in 2015, and who had so much hope from the incoming BJP government, are no better off in 2023.
That two of the retrenched teachers are fighting the elections as joint candidates of the Left-Congress tie-up is a testament to their unhappiness with the BJP. Ironically, the teachers had lost their job because of CPM’s callous attitude. In the Supreme Court and High Court judgments, it was clear that only 400 teachers' jobs were challenged. However, in its five years, the BJP did nothing to rehabilitate these teachers except provide age relaxation for applying to other jobs.
The BJP also failed to honour its promise of regularising contractual employees in Tripura. In 2018, these workers helped the party garner immense support. But five years later, pump operators, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan teachers, madrasa teachers, daily wage labourers, ASHA workers, etc remain unimpressed.
Not All Doom And Gloom
But it is not all doom and gloom, of course. Most people in Tripura will admit that health services are several times better than in 2018. A super-speciality block was inaugurated at GBP Hospital, Agartala, and the overhauling of several district hospitals is ample proof that the public health system has improved.
In the education sector too, the BJP government built five colleges (three general degree colleges, one P-P-P model college of general studies, and one law college), which is not a bad return. But the party had promised 60 colleges in 60 constituencies. In 2018, there were 20 general degree colleges. Why make promises that you can’t keep?
Despite unhappy teachers, contractual employees and several unemployed people, tribal people, arguably, can claim the biggest grudge against the party. In 2018, BJP's vision document had a dedicated section for the Tripura tribal areas autonomous district council (TTAADC) region. The BJP said it would give more financial autonomy to the tribal district council and address essential needs of people like food, potable water, housing and healthcare along with 100 model villages and mini special economic zones for local resources.
Instead, according to the TTAADC officials, the state government approved only Rs 619 crore for the TTAADC and to make matters worse, in the first six months of this financial year, the Council did not even get 30 per cent of its budget. Tripura’s total budget outlay is over Rs 26,600 crore. But TTAADC officials argue that the region, home to 28 per cent of the population, received 2.37 per cent of the state’s total budget. To say the BJP will have a tough fight in the tribal areas, as a result, would be stating the obvious.
BJP’s Confidence
But even if the BJP is worried, the government's performance is not the reason. Why?
* One, the central government's decision to extend free ration till the end of the year has given a tremendous boost to the party.
* Two, we cannot simply forget that for two of the five years, the state, like the rest of the world, was battling the worst pandemic in the modern age. Given the scale of the pandemic-induced disruption, many would say “Well done BJP” in Tripura.
Anti-incumbency isn’t a factor in a state which voted for the same party for 25 years. So the electorate is unlikely to flip en masse to vote for someone else so soon. Sure, the emergence of TIPRA Motha and the coming together of Congress and CPM, plus the emergence of TMC might pose a formidable challenge. But come March 2, if the BJP is voted out it will not be due to its performance, or lack of it.
Amit Kumar is executive editor of Eastmojo.com, a Northeast-based news portal. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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