A quick look at Assam election result
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Out of 9 seats that BJP
won in Assam, six are from Brahmaputra Valley, two from Barak valley and one from N C Hills
Autonomous District Council. The center of gravity of anti-cab movement was upper Assam and the people with east-Pakistani origin in Barak Valley were
emotionally attached with the pro-CAB policy, while affected people due to the
complex NRC process and skewed tribunal process are mostly from Lower Assam.
The bellicosity of a section of chauvinists, Jatiyatabadis and left
nationalists to fight against the CAB without talking about the rights of the
effected citizens who are mostly linguistic and religious minorities left
enough space for the BJP to use CAB to fan communalism and chauvinism
simultaneously. The communal and chauvinist psyche was pampered by meticulously
designing the political discourse against illegal migrants targeting the
Muslims and the grassroots cadres launched the campaign for an overarching
Hindu unity surrounding the instrument of CAB with the simultaneous assurance of
protecting Assamese language and culture by implementing certain provisions of
Assam Accord, and thus the left nationalists, who were silent on the issue of
blatant violations of human rights and unimagined harassment of citizens in the
NRC and Tribunal process was sidelined. But this brand of politics was not
very effective in lower Assam where the non-BJP parties performed well in the
election. Another important factor that worked in favour of BJP in both Upper
Assam and Barak valley was the almost total swing of tea-garden votes in favour
of them. The congress despite having the presence of their union in tea-gardens
failed to address the longstanding desire of the tea-workers for wage-hike and
minimum wage. BJP with their two-pronged strategy could successfully win over
the hearts of the Teagarden community. The RSS Pracharak could instill a crude
form of Hindu pride through their diverse forms of social activities launched
by their tea-garden sakhas and BJP Government offered a meager one-time cash
transfer scheme for each account-holder of Teagarden people.
But this is one part of
the story. Assam is predominantly an agricultural and industrially backward
state. But as the agricultural economy is in tatters and due to the dismantling
of big industries like HPC and the shrinking of job avenues, there is a
meteoric rise of internal and external migration of workers in the service sector.
The opposition failed to address the vulnerable and precarious economic
situation prevailing in Assam. BJP and Sangh Parivar could successfully
resuscitate the suppressed ego of those precariats, who were uprooted from
their community village life, with a sense of muscular national pride which was
epitomized by Mr. Modi. The BJP could attract the middle-class people with a
mixed bag of Hindu nationalist ideology and superficial development work like
construction of Highways, urban roads, etc.
But it is important to
note that the people of lower Assam rejected BJP's politics and voted
overwhelmingly against Bodo chauvinism, minority bashing and harassment of
citizens in the name of NRC and Tribunal process because various
mass-organizations were involved in constantly organizing the protest movement
against the Government policy of both state and centre, and the people were
disgruntled by the BTC rule. But their protest movements failed to transcend
the geographical and community barrier for constructing a discourse against the
Government policy on the citizenship question both at the centre and the state and
to generate a sense of collective assertion to establish the rights of the
people due to the overemphasis on the piecemeal solution of the Citizenship question. It
is true that lower Assam has a concentration of Muslim minority population who
voted overwhelmingly against the BJP, but without the votes of other
communities including the Assamese speaking people, the victory of non-BJP
parties would not have been possible when all the non-BJP opposition parties
were pitted against each other.
