DC Edit | Maha poll race hits a new low
Winning the Maharashtra Assembly elections is an important target for both the BJP and the Congress and their respective alliances in the state and hence it is only expected of them to use all legitimate tools at their disposal to achieve that target. The state hosts the nation’s financial capital and sends the second largest contingent of members to the Rajya Sabha, which are reasons enough for a political formation to go the whole hog. The lists of freebies both the fronts have liberally promised the voters have their roots in this desperation to win. But the patently divisive agenda on which the BJP-led Mahayuti has built its campaign in the final phase and the way its national leaders have run it offer a poor comment on their agenda.
It’s not because Maharashtra has its own problems to be solved that the saffron alliance took recourse to a communal agenda. The state has been witnessing rural distress in its worst form for decades. A political party willing to show sympathy to the farming community can, therefore, have the people’s ear.
There is a quota issue which is yet to be settled, and crop failures and unremunerative prices have triggered farmer suicides on a scale not seen in other states. And unemployment, like most other states, is hopelessly high in Maharashtra as well.
But the proponents of the “double engine government” have had other ideas. And slogans like “Ek hai to safe hai (united we are safe)”, “batenge to katenge (divided we fall)” and “dharma yudh (war of faith)”. These were introduced and propagated by senior BJP leaders including Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath, but do nothing except pit one section of the population against another. That is so un-Maharashtrian that even Mahayuti alliance partners stayed away from them.
There is a laxmanrekha in every yudh, dharma yudh included. Victories will taste better when they are won by adhering to the rules of the battlefield.