Analysis

Hemant Soren and Himanta Biswa Sarma Lock Horns in Adivasi Heartland

The INDIA bloc alleged that the Assam chief minister has been falsely accusing the Jharkhand government of inviting Bangladeshi infiltrators to boost the electoral prospects of the alliance.

The sentiment which emerged after the ouster of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on August 5 and subsequent targeting of Hindus, on the allegations of being the supporters of her Awami League party, is being cashed in on by the Bharatiya Janata Party in poll-bound Jharkhand.

Although the saffron party is apparently trying to woo Adivasis, who are mostly followers of Sarnaism (12.52%) and Christianity (4.31%), yet actually it has the 67.83% Hindu votes in mind while raising the bogey of Bangladeshi infiltrators.

Usually, the alleged influx from Bangladesh is made an election issue in Assam, West Bengal, Tripura and Meghalaya, which share international borders with it. The BJP also makes infiltrators a poll issue in the Seemanchal region of north-east Bihar, though it has no common border with Bangladesh.

A narrow strip of land in West Bengal separates Bihar’s Kishanganj district from Bangladesh. On October 18, union minister Giriraj Singh launched his five-day Hindu Swabhiman Yatra in this region – considered as a pre-poll exercise for next year’s assembly election in Bihar.

Similarly, the Sahebganj district of Jharkhand is much further away from Bangladesh. Yet the BJP has suddenly been reminded about the change of demographic balance in Jharkhand.

BJP’s failure to guard borders

As Jharkhand has 14.53% Muslims who, combined with 26.21% Scheduled Tribes form about 41% of the electorate, the BJP was politically compelled to drive a wedge between these two social groups. Recent developments in Bangladesh provided the BJP an opportunity to raise the issue of Bangladeshi men allegedly marrying Adivasi women.

Even if BJP’s charge of infiltration is accepted anywhere in India, the state government is not primarily responsible as the international boundary is being guarded by the Border Security Force, which is under the control of Union home ministry, headed by Amit Shah, who on November 3 kicked off his poll campaign with the promise of throwing out the infiltrators. He also promised that the BJP would implement Uniform Civil Code, but would exclude Adivasis from it.

The chief minister of Jharkhand, Hemant Soren, was quick to respond by stating that the BJP is blaming the state government for infiltration when the Narendra Modi government itself has given shelter to none else but Sheikh Hasina. He also assured that neither the UCC nor the NRC would be implemented in Jharkhand and that only the Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act and Santhal Parganas Tenancy Act would be implemented to protect tribal land.

Adivasis in Assam

Himanta Biswa Sarma, the chief minister of Assam, has been assigned the task of leading the BJP’s campaign in Jharkhand. This is simply because he specialises in raking up the issue of infiltrators in his own state.

But what Sarma is not discussing is the sorry plight of lakhs of Adivasis, mostly Santhals, who were forcibly uprooted by the British imperialists from the same land now called Jharkhand to be settled in tea gardens of Assam in 19th century. More than 150 years later, they are yet to get the status of Scheduled Tribes there. Tension between Adivasis and aboriginal tribes of Assam is very palpable. Bloody Bodo-Santhal clashes are quite common – the latter had to pay dearly in most of them.

Instead, Sarma and other BJP leaders are busy raising the emotive issue of Bangladeshis engaged in the alleged “land jihad” and “love jihad.”

Also read: BJP’s Poll Promises for Jharkhand: Tribals Exempt from UCC, Action Against ‘Infiltrators’

Adivasi-outsider tussle

The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha was formed more than five decades back, among others by Shibu Soren, father of Hemant Soren. It was a movement against the dikkus (outsiders) and money lenders who had come from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Gujarat etc and settled here. A sizeable number of them are from upper castes or belong to affluent trading communities. The tribals accuse them of exploiting the poor original population of the mineral-rich region.

The tussle between Adivasis and outsiders continues till now. During the last BJP rule between 2014 and 2019, the relationship worsened further. The BJP made Raghubar Das the first non-tribal chief minister of the state created in the name of Adivasis. Like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he is a Teli. Das’s ancestors are from Madhya Pradesh.

His policy helped the corporate lobby further consolidate its position. The tribals went on a warpath against him.

The BJP was voted out in 2019 and Das lost from his own constituency. The BJP could win only two out of the 28 ST reserved seats, down from 11 in 2014.

The poor performance continued in the Lok Sabha election held five months back, when the saffron party lost all five reserved seats. This included the then union minister and former chief minister Arjun Munda from Khunti. Hemant Soren, who was then in jail, is once again playing the victim card in the Assembly election campaign. He is repeatedly asserting that he had to undergo so much trouble simply because he stood for tribals’ rights.

Apart from the 28 ST reserved seats, the state has nine Scheduled Castes seats.

It is in the remaining 44 general seats where the National Democratic Alliance is in a relatively comfortable position. It is here that communal polarisation and the issue of Bangladeshi infiltrators really work. The NDA won all nine non-tribal seats in the last parliamentary election.

This time around, the BJP is contesting in 68 seats, the All Jharkhand Students’ Union party in 10, Janata Dal (United) in two and Lok Janshakti Party in one. AJSU is considered as the party of Kudmi Mahato, an OBC having substantial population in the state.

Complaint against Sarma

Meanwhile, the INDIA bloc (JMM, Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal and CPI ML) on November 2 complained to the Election Commission against the divisive speeches of Himanta Biswa Sarma. It alleged that the Assam chief minister has been falsely accusing the Jharkhand government of inviting Bangladeshi infiltrators to boost the electoral prospects of the alliance. The INDIA bloc has threatened that it would take up the matter in court if the Election Commission fails to take notice of the complaint.

Soroor Ahmed is a political commentator.

LG Sinha Just Backed Restoration of J&K’s Statehood and Constitutional Guarantees. What Does This Mean?

As per constitutional practice, the words he read out were drafted by the popularly elected government and not him. At the same time, given how the Modi government has played fast and loose with constitutional propriety in J&K, Sinha could also have chosen to be difficult.

Srinagar: Lieutenant governor (LG) Manoj Sinha’s speech to the Jammu and Kashmir assembly has drawn attention after he sought to endorse the National Conference-led government’s call for the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s “statehood and constitutional guarantees”.

As per constitutional protocol and practice, the words he read out were drafted by the popularly elected government and not him. For this reason, some political analysts and legal experts see Sinha’s endorsement of the NC agenda as “standard parliamentary practice” – in which the LG, by nominally throwing his weight behind the elected government’s policies and programmes in the first meeting of the assembly, plays his role as the formal head of the Union territory.

At the same time, given how the Modi government has played fast and loose with constitutional propriety in J&K, Sinha could also have chosen to be difficult.

While some political analysts argue that it is “too early” to see this as a softening of the LG’s stance – he had only last week taken the chief minister and his cabinet colleagues to the cleaners for staying away from the Union Territory Foundation Day celebrations – his formal endorsement of the Abdullah government’s positions on statehood and the restoration of constitutional guarantees may be an oblique admission by the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP)-led Union government of its failure to control political dynamics in Kashmir.

Sinha’s assertion that “my government” would “make all efforts for restoration of full Statehood and Constitutional Guarantees available to the State” also comes at a time when J&K has witnessed a dramatic uptick in violence after Omar Abdullah-led coalition government was sworn into office last month.

The purported climbdown also comes at a time when India’s diplomacy is in a rough patch after Canada accused the Union home minister Amit Shah of involvement in plots to engineer violence and kill Canadian nationals on its territory.

Also read: First J&K Assembly Session: National Conference Speaker Turns Down Resolution Against Article 370 Move

Whither constitutional guarantees?

Sheikh Showkat Hussain, Srinagar-based author and human rights scholar, pointed out that Sinha’s use of words ‘to the State’ in his speech could imply that he was advocating the restoration of J&K’s special status “in a subtle way”.

“Instead, had he used the word ‘to a state’, it would have meant the guarantees as provided for every other state in the constitution. Whether it implies the restoration of statehood and other constitutional guarantees that were granted to J&K previously remains to be seen,” Hussain, former Head and Dean at the School of Legal Studies, Central University of Kashmir, said.

Analysts said that the reference to “constitutional guarantees” could imply Article 371-like provisions which would restore the exclusive rights of people of Jammu and Kashmir on their land, resources and jobs, as has been the case in the North East and Himachal Pradesh.

Rekha Chowdhary, author and former professor of Political Science at the University of Jammu, however, doesn’t read too much into the speech. She said Sinha’s remarks should be interpreted against the backdrop of speculation that the Centre could grant a Delhi-like constitutional status to Jammu and Kashmir.

“When a state is turned into a Union territory, some of the constitutional provisions that apply to the state don’t apply to the Union Territory . My reading is that the LG is referring to the constitutional guarantees that come with statehood for every other state in the country,” she said.

Tempering effect?

Jammu-based analyst and senior editor, Zafar Choudhary, argued that Sinha’s speech was aimed at lowering the “unnecessary potential tensions” that had broken out between Raj Bhawan and the ruling National Conference (NC) party over the issue of UT Day celebrations last week.

“The reference to constitutional guarantees seems to be an attempt to allay the fears that the Centre might retain control on some subjects, such as Home, Finance, etc, even after restoring J&K’s statehood. Therefore, the use of words ‘constitutional guarantees’ implies federal autonomy as is available to every other state,” he said.

A Srinagar-based political analyst, who didn’t want to be named, said that the course of the relationship between Raj Bhawan and Abdullah government was going to be determined by the “precedents that are going to be set and the situations that could arise” in coming months and years in Jammu and Kashmir.

“It is too early to make an assessment (of Sinha’s speech),” the analyst said, “It is a precarious relationship where Abdullah has been speaking of cooperation with the Union government on one hand and there are no conciliatory remarks from the centre on the other, but no hostility either, which used to be the hallmark of the BJP’s politics in Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.

Also read: Omar Abdullah’s Statement Creates Doubts Over Whether NC Will Move Resolution Against Article 370 Move

The analyst added: “The LG has the discretion to edit the speech, which is drafted by the government following the parliamentary procedure. If he has done so, then it would mean that he is sending some message. But I believe nothing of that sort has happened”.

NC versus BJP versus an electoral dividend

Analysts also said that the ambiguous phraseology in Sinha’s speech could provide a “dignified political exit” for both the NC as well as the BJP to walk out of the ‘Article 370’ conundrum.

The restoration of J&K’s special status and Article 370 forms the bedrock of NC’s political ideology but it could also become the party’s Achilles’ heel in its negotiations with the Union government led by the BJP which has milked the Article-370 cow for electoral dividends.

However, Hussain observed that Sinha’s speech reflected the failure of the BJP in getting electoral dividends from the reading down of Article 370. Sources said that the Abdullah government was moving ahead with the special status resolution which is likely to be introduced in the assembly later this week.

“One should not overlook the fact that the remarks (of Sinha) have come in the backdrop of the precarious plight of India’s foreign policy after the US joined the call by Ottawa and other Five Eyes partners for a credible probe into the assassination of Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar,” he said.

Six Factors That Helped BJP Defy Anti-incumbency to Win a Third Term in Haryana

The BJP seems to have reaped the benefits of a slew of course corrections, consolidation of non-Jat voters and the spoils from Congress rebels turned independents.

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has defied 10 years of anti-incumbency, exit poll predictions and seemingly course-corrected from its losses in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as it is poised to form a third consecutive government in Haryana.

Of the total 90 seats in the state, the BJP comfortably crossed the half-way mark and won 48 seats, recording its best performance in the state. The Congress too secured its best result in Haryana in a decade, winning 37 seats, while the Indian Nationalist Lok Dal (INLD) won two and the independents won three seats.

Despite the 9-seat margin between the Congress and the BJP, in terms of vote share, the gap between the two is merely 0.85%. Both the parties saw an increase in their vote shares in comparison to the 2019 assembly elections. While the BJP’s vote share increased from 36.49% in 2019 to 39.94% this time, the Congress recorded a higher improvement in its vote share by getting 39.09% in 2024 against 28.08% in 2019.

Buoyed by its performance in the state in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, where it held the BJP to five of the total 10 seats in the state, against the saffron party’s clean sweep in 2019, the Congress was pipped to be the favourite in the election. This, as the BJP was battling 10 years of anti-incumbency, farmers’ discontent, including ongoing protest at the state’s borders demanding a legal guarantee for MSP among other demands, disenchantment against the Agniveer scheme, rising inflation and unemployment.

So how did the BJP achieve this turnaround?

The answer, according to Rahul Verma, fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, lies in a combination of factors.

“Counter polarisation, where the Congress played the Jat card which produced a counter polarisation among non-Jats. Second, with the INLD and the JJP [Jannayak Janata Party] getting squeezed further, this led to favourable vote-seat conversion for the BJP. Third, the BJP recognised that it was on a weaker wicket and tried to overturn it,” he said

Course correction by the BJP

Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP took course-corrective measures which seems to have paid heavy dividends in this election. The first and most decisive move in this direction was to remove now Union minister Manohar Lal Khattar, who had led the Haryana government for two terms, earlier this year. The Khattar government faced criticism after its crackdown on the farmers’ Delhi Chalo march in February and poor governance. The BJP replaced Khattar, a Punjabi, with Nayab Singh Saini – former Kurukshetra MP and Other Backward Castes (OBC) leader – who was later also made the party’s chief ministerial face.

Saini, who ran a minority government in the state and served for only 56 days after the Lok Sabha elections, proclaimed that he had taken “126 historic decisions” in this short while. He also announced a slew of populist measures in the weeks before the assembly elections including procuring all crops at MSP, compensating farmers for less rains, increasing reservations for OBCs in line with that of the centre’s to 27% and the annual income limit for OBC creamy layer from Rs 6 lakh to Rs 8 lakh, formalising over 1 lakh contractual jobs and 10% reservation for Agniveers in government jobs among others. Many of these measures announced by Saini were subsequently included in the BJP’s poll manifesto.

Saini’s elevation as CM face and non-Jat consolidation

Subsequently, the move to make Saini the chief ministerial face was also an effort to blunt the Congress’ Jat-dominant campaign run by former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, as the BJP sought to consolidate other non-Jat communities in the state.

Jats constitute 27% of the population in Haryana and historically the state has been led by chief ministers from the community. Both in 2014, and 2019, the BJP managed to consolidate a majority of 35 communities of the state in its favour and pitted them against the dominant Jats. The BJP’s slogan “35 banaam 1 (35 against 1)” in the last two assembly polls in the state captured the imagination of a large chunk of non-Jat caste groups. In this election, the Congress, under Hooda, pitched a campaign of unity and said that 36 biradris are with the party. But with Saini being made the chief minister as well the chief ministerial face for this election, the BJP’s aim was two pronged – blunt the Khattar government’s anti-incumbency and mobilise the non-Jat voters.

In Ladwa, for instance, from where Saini won the election on Tuesday, The Wire found that the strategy had not only appealed to those BJP voters who were disenchanted with the Khattar government, but also effectively mobilised the non-Jat and broader social coalition in its favour.

“Khattar did not do any work in the last ten years and that is why he had to be removed. In the last 56 days alone Saini has done so much work,” said Ram Singh Saini in Ladwa’s Gudha village, who is also a member of the Saini community.

The BJP built its campaign not only around an OBC chief ministerial candidate in contrast to the Congress’ undeclared but assumed Jat candidate, Hooda, but also promised to make Ladwa – a constituency in southern Haryana – a “CM City”. This was in consonance with its larger plank of state-wide development, offering alternative to the norm where previous chief ministers, mainly belonging to the Rohtak, Sonipat belt, concentrated development to those areas.

While the Congress campaigned on broader national issues, like unemployment and inflation, as it has in the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP sought to highlight jobs with “kharchi-parchi” (bribe) under the Congress rule and portrayed the party as one of “baap-beta” in a swipe against Hooda and his son, Rohtak MP, Deepender Hooda. Deepender was also believed to be a contender for the chief minister’s job if the party won.

“We have given jobs without ‘kharchi-parchi’, children are going to school, earlier LPG cylinders would take 20 days just to book, we have changed everything. Earlier we have seen chief ministers only from Rohtak, Sonipat but this time we will have a chief minister from Ladwa. The Lok Sabha election losses won’t affect the party as people vote differently in assembly elections,” said Desh Raj Sharma, the BJP’s Pipli office-in-charge in Ladwa.

The Selja Factor and infighting

After the Jats which account for about 27% of the state population, the Dalits community is the second largest at about 21%.

While the Congress reiterated its pitch of a caste census and claimed that it has the support of all 36 biradris, its actions on the ground belied these claims. Inner party factionalism, particularly the divide between Hooda and Sirsa MP Kumari Selja, a prominent Dalit face in the state, came to the fore after the distribution of tickets. Selja who had publicly made her hopes of being the chief minister clear, disappeared from the campaign trail for over a week, only to emerge hand in hand with Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and Hooda at a campaign stage in the last leg of the campaign.

The BJP, stung by the Congress’ campaign in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections – where it alleged that if the saffron party won 400 seats it would change the Constitution and end reservations – swung into action, calling the party “anti-Dalit” for the treatment meted out to Selja.

In its outreach to voters, the party also reversed the Congress’ Lok Sabha poll narrative of reservations being under threat and used Rahul Gandhi’s comments in the US to claim that it is the Congress that will end reservations if it is voted to power.

“The negative campaign run by the Congress during the Lok Sabha elections that BJP would change the Constitution affected us and cost us 5 seats in the Lok Sabha elections,” said Amit Garg, Yamunanagar district vice president of the BJP.

“This time we have gone to the people and said that as long as Modi is there no one will change the constitution.”

In the 17 reserved SC seats in the state, both the Congress and the BJP won almost equal seats at nine and eight each.

Spoil from rebels-turned-independents

The distribution of tickets, over which Hooda is believed to have held sway in 70 of the 90 seats, also saw Congress rebels contesting as independents, which cut into the party’s votes and helped the BJP’s leads.

While the Congress expelled 21 rebels ahead of the elections, many of them cut into the Congress’ votes aiding the BJP’s victory.

For instance, Chitra Sarwara, who was denied a ticket in Ambala Cantt, lost to the BJP’s former minister Anil Vij by a margin of around 7,000 votes. The Congress candidate Parvinder Pal Pari came third and won 14,469 votes while Sarwara won 52,581 votes.

In Tigaon, Congress rebel Lalit Kumar came second to BJP’s Rajesh Nagar, while the Congress candidate Rohit Nagar came third.

Rajesh Joon, an independent who won the Bahadurgarh seat by a margin of over 40,000 votes, is also a Congress rebel who was denied a ticket.

In Ballabgarh, former Congress leader, Sharda Rathore who contested as an independent came second to the BJP’s Mool Chand Sharma, while the Congress’ candidate Parag Sharma came fourth.

Rohita Rewari, former MLA and Congress rebel, who contested as an independent from Panipat City, polled over 15,000 votes on the seat won by the BJP.

In Nilokheri, Congress rebel Raj Kumar won over 5,000 votes in the seat won by the BJP where the winning margin was around 18,000 votes.

INLD, JJP Losses, Congress complacency

The BJP also gained from the losses garnered by the two regional Jat-dominated parties – Abhay Singh Chautala’s INLD and its offshoot, former deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP).

The two tied up with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Azad Samaj Party (ASP) respectively to woo the Dalit vote in the state. While the INLD won two seats, the JJP, BSP and ASP won none. In 2019, the BJP formed the government, with the help of ten seats won by the JJP.

These parties being pushed further to the margins also helped the BJP’s vote to seat share conversion, as pointed out by Verma.

“BJP had not hoped for a victory in this election but I think Congress got overhyped as it did in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh in 2023,” said Verma.

“Perhaps it got complacent. And then that complacency might have led to the factional feud between Hooda and Selja which had also played out in Chhattisgarh between former chief minister Bhupesh Baghel and (his then deputy) T.S. Singh Deo. So the results are Congress’s mistakes plus the BJP recognising [that] it’s on a weaker wicket and putting up a fight.”

Archival Nuggets: Understanding the Discoveries at Mohenjodaro and Harappa

There are little-known facts hidden in the archives relating to the 1920s digs that offer information qualitatively different from what is available in the published tomes.

Today, September 20, is the 100-year anniversary of the announcement of the discovery of the Indus civilisation in the Illustrated London News in 1924. The following is an excerpt from Nayanjot Lahiri’s Finding Forgotten Cities: How The Indus Civilization Was Discovered, a book that marks the centenary of the discovery’s announcement, co-published by Ashoka University and Permanent Black.

Finding Forgotten Cities (2005) ended with the beginning of the first phase of work that was followed by the announcement of the discovery in the Illustrated London News of 20 September 1924. Consequently, the first edition did not encompass the large-scale excavations of the ensuing years, the findings of which were later incorporated into excavation reports on the two city sites.

The first set of volumes on Mohenjodaro appeared in 1931 while the Harappa excavation report was published in 1940. In both instances the results published were distilled accounts, though much archaeological and architectural data also appears there: chapters on the site and its excavated localities, on antiquities and artefacts, and on the scientific analysis of objects. There are narrative descriptions accompanied by a large number of photographs and line drawings of buildings and streets, bones and beads, pottery and metal objects, remnants of food practices, seals and amulets, and a great deal more.

These are publications that continue to be used by scholars interested in India’s antiquity because they provide a fascinating window into the splendid character of those ancient cities across a substantial chunk of time. You could be forgiven for thinking that everything that needs to be known about those digs is contained in these volumes.

Finding Forgotten Cities, Nayanjot Lahiri, Ashoka University and Permanent Black, 2005.

Almost everything worth knowing would be more accurate. This is because there are little-known facts hidden in the archives relating to the 1920s digs that offer information qualitatively different from what is available in the published tomes. Unlike the publications, file notes and correspondence relating to the early excavations were generated as the work progressed. These capture the flavour of the digs and the character of the personalities involved.

Also, since the nature and uses of newly unearthed objects and structures were still being unravelled, the assumptions in these sources are more tentative and provisional than in the publications. A few such archival nuggets that I came upon in the course of research, which highlight the character of the excavations, seem worth outlining.

After the 1924 announcement Marshall ceased playing a role in the field; in fact, as we saw, he first visited the sites only in early 1925 and, most oddly, his detailed instructions on how the digging there should proceed were issued even before he visited the sites. He explained to K.N. Dikshit at Mohenjodaro and Daya Ram Sahni at Harappa how trenching should be done.

They were asked to carry out a network of trial trenches at say 50 or 75 yards apart over the whole site, some running north and south and some east and west. Simultaneously, you should sink trial pits and trenches at various points down to the virgin soil so as to ascertain what strata exist beneath the surface. When this is done, you will be in a better position to decide how to prosecute your works further.

The idea of sinking trenches right down to virgin soil was to get a clear idea of the stratification. As the trench went down, pottery specimens for every two feet were to be put in separate bags.

Sahni and Dikshit, for their part, had begun questioning Marshall’s use of the term ‘Indo-Sumerian’. Sahni constantly asked Marshall about possible Sumerian parallels for designs and objects found at his site – for the terracotta coiled snake at Harappa, and for the pipal tree engraved on a seal found by Dikshit at Mohenjodaro.

On finding a large shell spoon at Harappa, Sahni informed Marshall of the use of something similar in Hindu rituals: ‘In Sanskrit this is called Argha and is used to this day by orthodox Hindus in their morning and evening worship for pouring out water in honour of gods and for the purification of the manes. Gifts of land, gold, etc. to Brahmans are also marked by such libations. This is a very ancient institution with the Hindus and is frequently referred to in Sanskrit literature and inscriptions.’

Sahni also says that while libations in scenes of worship were engraved on Sumerian tablets, spouted jars were in evidence but not the Indian argha. Dikshit broadly echoed Sahni’s sentiments and, among other things, saw an essential difference in the way in which the earliest Sumerian writing was arranged – with pictographs in perpendicular columns, whereas the Indian seals showed linear writing going left to right. From his perspective, the idea of the Indus and Sumerian sites being organically related needed more thought because ‘a careful comparison of the products of early Indian civilization with those of the Sumerian will probably bring out more points of difference than similarity.’

Marshall agreed with Dikshit’s observation and eventually the term ‘Indo-Sumerian’ was dropped. In a note for a small exhibition organised by the Archaeological Department in 1926–7, Marshall wrote that owing to its close connection with the Sumerian civilisation of Mesopotamia, this prehistoric civilisation of Sind and the Punjab has hitherto been designated by the name ‘Indo-Sumerian’. With the progress of exploration, however, it has become evident that this connection was due not to actual identity of culture, but to intimate commercial or other intercourse between two countries. For this reason the term Indo-Sumerian has now been discarded, and the single word ‘Indus’ adopted in its place.

By this time Marshall had also seen for himself certain features at both Mohenjodaro and Harappa which were uniquely Indian. In the same note, he spoke of various rings and phallus-like objects that had been found in various sizes within the Indus cities – some of these objects were no more than an inch in diameter, while others were so ‘large that two men can scarcely lift them’. He added in his description that it was a plausible hypothesis but nothing more than a hypothesis at present – that the rings are symbolical of the yoni and the chessmen-like objects of the linga – the worship of which goes back to a very remote age in India; but whatever their symbolism, it seems clear that their ubiquitousness at Harappa and Mohenjodaro, that the cult was a very popular one.

This subcontinental distinctiveness of the Indus phenomenon subsequently showcased in the publications was, as these letters and note reveal, a consequence of insights offered by Sahni and Dikshit.

Nayanjot Lahiri is a historian and archaeologist of ancient India and a professor of history at Ashoka University.

How Newspaper Op-Ed Pages in Kashmir Are Engineering Pro-BJP Narratives

Content analysis of ‘Greater Kashmir’ and ‘Rising Kashmir’ shows their opinion pages devoid of political topics. We also found opeds that appear to have been written using AI and ‘editorials’ lifted from the Observer Research Foundation and passed off as the newspaper’s ‘view’.

New Delhi: On August 5, the fifth anniversary of the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status under Article 370, the main editorial in the Valley’s largest circulated English news daily, Greater Kashmir, was about the side-fencing of bridges in Srinagar to prevent suicides.

The lead opinion piece was on the recent landslides in Wayanad, Kerala, and included suggestions about how Kashmir can conserve its ecology and escape such a calamity. The opinion page featured two more articles – one on the importance of preserving family values and the other praising the Union budget. The latter had AI written all over it.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

Five years ago, the state of Jammu and Kashmir was stripped of its autonomy, dismembered and demoted into two Union territories, and its people were placed under a total lockdown, cut off from each other and the world.

Greater Kashmir’s silence on its editorial page (and even front page) on the fifth anniversary stood out in contrast with news reports and opinion pieces in the national media critically assessing the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, amid record unemployment, declining economic output and a worsening security scenario in the Jammu region.

One might imagine the newspaper would have published something about the abrogation – praise, criticism, analysis, anything – the following day. But the August 6 edition was just as silent.

Restrictions on dissent

The 2019 decision had provoked anger and resentment in Kashmir but this could not find much expression on account of the political crackdown. Figures disclosed in Parliament recently suggest that Jammu and Kashmir accounts for 36% of all UAPA cases filed in the country between 2020 and 2022.

Fact-finding missions and advocacy groups have decried what they claim is the ongoing abuse of law and the restrictions on civil rights and democracy in the erstwhile state. The Forum for Human Rights in Jammu and Kashmir (TFHRJK) last week expressed concern over the recent enhancement of the lieutenant governor’s powers – a decision clearly timed to come soon before the Election Commission announced dates for the assembly election. Just week before that, Human Rights Watch (HRW) had denounced “repressive policies including arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings, and other serious abuses” in the region.

Despite this, the opinion pages of the widely read English newspapers in Jammu and Kashmir, do not reflect these concerns. Instead, content analysis suggests an effort to rework the regional narrative so that it either actively perpetuates the Bharatiya Janata Party’s political messaging or does nothing to disturb it.

A content analysis of two newspapers

The Wire reviewed content in the opinion section of the Valley’s two most circulated English newspapers – Greater Kashmir and Rising Kashmir – between July 20 and August 5. During this period and in the run-up to it, a series of political developments took place in Jammu and Kashmir that sparked critical commentary in sections of the national press. The Union Territory’s own newspapers, which should help the inhabitants build informed opinions, however steered clear.

Geeta Seshu of the Free Speech Collective, who co-authored a survey on the state of the media in Kashmir in September 2019, said the present situation is worse. “Back then, our survey flagged the absence of editorial voice in newspapers. Instead, they ran soft subjects such as vitamin consumption,” she said. “But it seems the media policy of the J&K government is having its desired effects.”

Enacted in 2020, the J&K Media Policy vows to penalise newspapers by withdrawing advertisement funds if they publish “anti-national content”. The policy prods the local media to instead “highlight the developmental activities” [sic].

Manufacturing consent

During the period under review, Greater Kashmir published 10 editorials, none of which had anything to say about the political developments in the Union Territory. Instead, they were about road accidents; drinking water shortage; change of school timings; the need for more tourist destinations; duty of the citizens towards their parents; dry weather; the Ring Road project in Srinagar and more.

Curiously, a majority of the editorials that Rising Kashmir ran as its own comment, The Wire found, were articles on geopolitics published originally on the website of the Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF), which is partly funded by Reliance Industries. The newspaper, however, did not credit these to ORF.

The Wire investigation reveals that many articles published in local newspapers appear to have been put together with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). A case in point is the August 5 article in Greater Kashmir authored by a local BJP politician who praised the Union budget and said it “will create economic growth and spur social cohesion” in Kashmir.

Since the syntax appeared too mechanical, The Wire decided to run the text through ZeroGPT, a tool that determines the use of Large Language Models (LLMs). Except the first line quoting the Urdu poet Parwaz Jalandhari, the entire article was AI-generated, the results said.

While Rising Kashmir has yet to respond to questions sent by The Wire, the opinion editor of Greater Kashmir ascribed the presence of AI-generated text in op-ed pages to the “challenge” of sifting through content because AI detection tools don’t work with full accuracy, adding that the paper was “trying to weed out such a stuff.” But The Wire’s analysis of the article in question relied on at least four different AI detectors, all of which concluded that it was extracted from mediums using LLMs. Rising Kashmir, however, is yet to respond. We will update the article as and when they do.

With a few exceptions, the edit pages of the two newspapers appeared to host a curated assortment of opinion pieces that hammered home a particular political viewpoint. This was punctuated by amusing – sometimes bizarre – write-ups by local contributors.

On July 30, Greater Kashmir featured a column by a faculty member at a local engineering college that was an encomium to his former director who retired in 2016. Among the contributions enumerated by the author was that his senior gave two, instead of just one, gulab jamun to students participating in the internship programme at the college.

On July 25, Rising Kashmir carried a full-page op-ed on how one can rear pigeons at home. On July 27, it featured a piece on fights between siblings. On August 4, there was a full-page op-ed on vitiligo. On August 5, the anniversary of the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, the paper gave enormous space to a fictionalised story commemorating ‘anti-corruption week’.

The opinion pages also trumpet the narrative of economic prosperity in Kashmir although the TFHRJK report released on August 4 observed that the net state domestic product (NSDP) growth rate has declined from 12.31 % five years ago to 8.41 % in 2024.

Few ‘honourable’ exceptions

Only a handful of articles printed during this period bore a semblance of critical appraisal. Among them was an op-ed, “Kashmir’s ‘Used Future’ Trap”, by Greater Kashmir’s senior editor. The article voiced subtle criticism of the “development activities” in Kashmir’s urban spaces since 2019, especially for the costs on the environment they have inflicted.

Some articles purported to offer a careful overview of recent political developments but are full of attributions such as “they describe it” or “they want to tell people”, implying the author’s disavowal of any inconvenient detail that might have crept in.

A July 25 op-ed by a retired IAS officer in Greater Kashmir stood out for its demand for the restoration of statehood. But the author made sure he moderated this with the use of ingratiating language: “People of Jammu and Kashmir do not deserve to be left out of PM’s Sab ka Saath, Sab ka Vikas, Sab ka Vishwas and Sab ka Prayas.”

In Rising Kashmir, one op-ed published on July 21 flagged “concerns about the erosion of democratic principles” in the context of the MHA amendment in July giving more powers to the lieutenant governor at the cost of the elected chief minister.

Engineering pro-government narratives

The highlight, of course, are the articles suffused with politically loaded language, nearly all of which conform to the ruling party’s worldview around the political situation in Kashmir.

On July 20, Greater Kashmir published a column by a local politician who drew a causal link between the spate of militant incidents and the “electoral outcomes” of the Lok Sabha polls, in which all three parliamentary seats in Kashmir were bagged by non-BJP parties. But the logic was counterintuitive because much of the militant upsurge is centred around Jammu where the BJP had emerged victorious.

Although the author did not specify who exactly said what, he nevertheless berated the media for perpetuating “extremist ideologies” responsible for the renewed wave of militant attacks. “It is time to call out these deceitful agendas for what they are—a deliberate attempt to destabilise the region and thwart national unity and security,” he wrote.

It is interesting that instead of seeking accountability from the government over serious security lapses, the author crafted a vaguely-worded, conspiratorial article that made a scapegoat out of the press, pushing dangerous narratives about the nexus between terrorism and media.

This, even when the terrorism cases against media-persons in Kashmir have collapsed in the face of judicial scrutiny. Kashmiri journalists like Kamran Yusuf, Fahad Shah, Sajad Gul, Aasif Sultan and Mannan Dar have all got bail from courts on the grounds that evidence against them was either too weak, or did not exist at all.

Further analysis of this article reveals that it was also completely AI-generated. All leading detection tools, GPTZero, QuillBot, Scribbr and ZeroGPT, have pointed to its AI origins. That makes it one of the rare cases where AI technologies have been harnessed to mount politically motivated attacks on the last surviving avenues of critical journalism in Kashmir by connecting them to militancy.

Kashmiri observers who spoke to The Wire said that young readers were increasingly growing suspicious of the local newspapers. “Whether true or not, it is a conventional belief here that security agencies vet the content of these newspapers,” said a scholar from Pulwama town in South Kashmir. “But if there’s no parallel documentation, these papers will become archives, and that is what will do long-term damage. It will completely warp the truth about this place.”

More pro-BJP content creators

Another element that came up in The Wire’s analysis was the overrepresentation of columnists associated with the BJP. During the review period, Shenaz Ganai wrote two columns for Greater Kashmir, on July 29 and August 5; Ajay Kumar Chrungoo wrote for Rising Kashmir on July 22; Abhijeet Jasrotia wrote for Rising Kashmir on July 26; and G.L. Raina wrote for Rising Kashmir on August 3. All of them are spokespersons for the BJP. There wasn’t any column, however, by their counterparts from the regional political parties.

A spokesperson for a major regional party told The Wire that they had been regularly writing for both these papers previously. But over the past few years, the papers have discontinued their columns. “We mail them our articles. But they are not published,” he said.

When it is not the BJP spokespersons writing, there is content syndicated from the government’s Press Information Bureau (PIB). For instance, a PIB-issued column published on August 2 discussed the Modi administration’s efforts to root out tuberculosis in India.

Sinister spin-doctors

Even when the contributors appear to be neutral observers and experts, they feed into the narrative of “development” and “progress” since 2019. A case in point is a July 30 column in Rising Kashmir authored by one Raj Nehru who shares an anecdote about a meeting with some Kashmiris who were sceptical of the Modi government’s development spree in Kashmir.

Nehru pathologised them as people afflicted with a “psychological curse” who are unable to appreciate the benefits of “economic growth” that Prime Minister Modi has made possible. He reels off the list of indices showing improvement in the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP), Human Development Index (HDI), Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR), and per capita income to authenticate his argument.

Yet, when The Wire spoke to senior economists in Kashmir, they pointed out the flawed nature of the data. “Our per capita income was already ahead of states like Punjab way back in the 1970s,” one Srinagar-based economist, working with a prominent bank, said. The figures being bandied about now are based on current prices, as a result of which the data is on the higher side, he said.

“Real value of GDP is estimated when we calculate it from 2011 and discount the inflation,” he explained. “As the recent review of the J&K budget by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh showed, the current dispensation has been borrowing heavily to finance developmental initiatives, many of which are primarily meant to serve defence, or create better optics through Smart City projects.”

Ramesh in a recent news conference had accused the finance minister of fiscal mismanagement in Jammu and Kashmir. “The FM got approval from Parliament to borrow Rs 12,000 crore last year. This year, Budget documents reveal that the actual borrowings were twice the amount, at Rs 24,000 crore. Borrowings have risen five-fold in the last two years,” the Congress leader said, adding that Jammu and Kashmir’s share in the national GDP had declined in the past 9 years while unemployment has gone up.

This is also corroborated by the recent CAG report that revealed that Jammu and Kashmir’s liabilities are at an all-time high of Rs 1.12 lakh crore. “It is this debt-driven development which is reflected in these figures,” the economist added.

A lost opportunity

Media analyst Seshu said the press in Kashmir was complicit in altering the very paradigm of news itself. “You are now rearing an entire generation of people who will not have any critical opinions, and who will not be allowed any free debates or discussions,” she said.

It is the responsibility of the media to give space to a plurality of opinions, she said. “But here there is a clear attempt to peddle only a certain kind of opinion. Ultimately, people will make up their own minds. But it is a huge lost opportunity for the media in Kashmir,” Sheshu added.

Note: This article was updated on August 21 to include the response from Greater Kashmir.

The Indian Economy Is Being ‘Destabilised’ by Cronyism, Not Hindenburg or Soros

US-based short seller Hindenburg Research has released another report. The earlier one in January 2023, exposed the extensive financial manipulations by the Adani group. This one though related to the earlier one focuses on the possible nexus between the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI’s) chairperson, Madhabi Puri Buch, and the Adani group. It points out that while SEBI has issued it a show cause notice in June 2024, it has not investigated the wrongdoings of Adani group.

The latest report gives a plausible reason for why this may be so, with whistleblower documentary evidence presented in the report to prove its point.

The SEBI board, some brokers, investors, lawyers and corporates, including Adani have come to the defence of the chairperson. She has presented her defence, suggesting that a) the money invested abroad was out of the savings from working abroad, b) she has not invested in Adani companies, c) she has been transparent about her financial dealings.

The ruling party, though not an accused, immediately came to her defence. This due to the closeness of the party leadership with industrialist Gautam Adani. If the SEBI chairperson gets implicated, then the matter of wrongdoing by Adani, which at present is dormant, would get reopened. The earlier accusations against the Adani group were buried after the Supreme Court pronouncements based on the clean chit by the expert committee it set up.

To understand why even weak links in the financial world matter, it is necessary to appreciate the complexity and the secrecy involved in financial manipulations indulged in by businesses.

Financial architecture helps opacity

The suggestion of a possible link between Buch and the Adani group, however weak, points to a conflict of interest. This undermines the credibility of SEBI’s actions in the Adani matter. The Supreme Court-appointed expert committee based its observations largely on the basis of SEBI’s observations. Since they have come under doubt, the credibility of the expert committee’s report also gets undermined.

Buch should have revealed her link with the Adani group to the Supreme Court as well as the public and recused herself from the case. Even if the link was in the past and in her personal capacity, before she joined SEBI, it was a reason for recusal.

After all, SEBI expects the financial institutions it supervises to follow strict norms. Following the dictum ‘Caesar’s wife has to be above suspicion’, the SEBI chief had to be spotless. This is necessary because the world of finance designs complex systems to hide its trail of wrong doings. Innumerable ways are available for the purpose, like, havala, shell companies, layering and more recently cryptos.

In the world of finance, past, weak and obscure links point to relationships hidden behind a veil of secrecy which is used to hide the real financial status and any possible illegality.

Also read: After Hindenburg Allegations, SEBI Chief’s Blackstone Connection Raises New Questions: Report

International financial architecture has been created for opacity to thwart official investigations. Tax havens are used both for their low taxes and for the promise of secrecy. So, even if the returns are low, businessmen are assured that they will not be caught. Names of Indians holding money abroad have neither been revealed under the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAA) with 87 countries nor Tax Information Exchange (TIE) treaties with 37 nations. These have come from stolen data from tax havens. Like, from Liechtenstein, UBS Geneva, British Virgin Island, Paradise and Panama.

Nested companies in Bermuda or Mauritius are often a part of a chain for transfer of illegal funds. The SEBI chief and her husband, Dhaval Buch, putting their savings in a company that had Vinod Adani as a major depositor is suspicious. Such companies do the bidding of their major depositors and it being helmed by Dhaval Buch’s friend is no guarantee of clean business. The deposit in such a company could have been with the motive of building links with powerful people for future benefits.

In that case, the deposits being made prior to the appointment(s) in SEBI is immaterial. The links may have helped land key appointments in India. All this needs full investigation.

Cronyism

Top appointments neither in the public nor in the private sector are based solely on merit. The pliability of the appointee and the knowledge that the person would not only do the bidding of those at the top but would not rock the boat when trouble arises, is crucial.

This is the case with public sector top appointments, especially in the financial sector. Chairpersons and directors are trusted people who should not have a straight spine. In fact, climbing the ladder, the smart imbibe the art of playing the system. Today, few have the integrity to give precedence to the rule of law over their self-interest. Such people are hard to find even in the bureaucracy and the judiciary which have considerable autonomy.

Watch: ‘Zero Credibility in SEBI’s Hindenburg Response’: Sucheta Dalal

The Adani group of companies is a favourite of the current regime. This has enabled them to acquire profitable assets, easily obtain bank loans and crucially, their manipulations listed in the first Hindenburg report have gone un-investigated. Red flags had been raised six months earlier by some financial institutions.

Cronyism, the nexus between businessmen and politicians, enables the former to have their people in key positions in financial institutions and the bureaucracy. This gives them protection.

Political moves

The opposition has demanded both, an impartial enquiry and a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the matter. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has strongly opposed these demands. The opposition has even said that the Supreme Court should take suo motu note cognisance of the new exposés since the SEBI report may not have been fair if Buch had (even weak) links in the past with the Adani group. She neither mentioned this to the Supreme Court nor recused herself. Any number of judges recuse themselves from hearing cases if they had a link with one of the parties before they became a judge.

To divert attention from the allegations against Adani and his links with the leadership, the ruling party has said that foreign powers and the opposition are trying to derail India’s rise as a world power. In this context they often name Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.

The reality is that India is way behind the US and China in both world economic rankings and military power. We are heavily dependent on them for technology and trade. Further, the USA has been building a strategic partnership with India to thwart China. So, why would the US want Soros to destabilise India? Regarding China, the more damaging aspect is the $85 billion trade deficit with them which reflects our dependence on them.

Clearly, if there is any destabilisation, it is internal and not external.

Stock market impact

If the stock market was impacted strongly by the revelations in January 2023, it was due to the expose of the ongoing manipulations. Short selling is a legitimate activity which helps bring down the stock prices from their stratospheric levels to their real value. This does not necessarily destabilise the market.

The overvaluation was apparent in the very high price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of the Adani companies. For most companies this ratio is in the range of 15 to 25 but for some Adani companies this ratio was 100 and 200. Such high priced shares create the risk of a fall in share prices and the markets.

This extraordinary high value of Adani shares should have been investigated by SEBI. Other exposes by Hindenburg were OF related party investments and public holding and funds coming from abroad. The subscription of the follow-on public offer (FPO) in January 2023 also points to manipulation. Why would investors subscribe to the FPO when the share was available at a lower price in the market, subsequent to the Hindenburg expose? The subscription by big businessmen on the last day of the FPO showed the clout of Adani group.

The recovery of the Adani stock prices after their steep decline in early 2023 is another example of financial clout. Funds could be arranged. Now, after the second report, the stock market was hardly impacted. Possibly, public financial institutions were told to cushion the fall.

It has been argued that the decline in the stock market leads to losses for investors and puts off foreign investors as the country’s reputation suffers. But the unduly high valuations make the stock market into a casino and risky for small investors. The stock markets are controlled by less than 1% of the population. They are the big gainers and losers when the markets rise and fall.

The undue rise in the stock market affects real investments in the economy and bank deposits. If a 20% return can be made quickly, why invest in real factories that take time to set up and turn a profit? For the same reason, bank deposits earning 7% become unattractive. As banks struggle to raise deposits, they slow down lending, especially to small investors.

Foreign direct investment in 2023-24 is variously estimated at 5-7% of the total investment and not that crucial to the macro economy. It is the internal investment that needs to increase but that is being set back by cronyism which is scaring away investors who worry about being forcibly acquired. Consequently, rather than investing they are leaving the country.

Conclusion

The Hindenburg report pointed out that short selling in Adani stocks was due to cronyism and stock market manipulations. That is what is spoiling the investment climate, not the exposés by Hindenburg reports. The reports pointing to the illegalities are offering a chance to clean up and put the market on a healthy footing. This requires a clean slate and for that the SEBI chairperson should step aside, at least, for now.

Another court monitored enquiry would have the same limitation as last time. A JPC is needed to expose the manipulations due to the international financial architecture, cronyism and machinations in the stock markets.

The ruling party is unlikely to agree to a JPC unless the opposition presses hard both in parliament and outside. While the previous three JPCs had little impact, this one could be more successful if the public understands the link between Hindenburg reports and their issues of concern – unemployment, inflation and inequality.

Arun Kumar is the author of, the Indian Economy’s Greatest Crisis: Impact of the Coronavirus and the Road Ahead.

West Bengal: Elephant Attacked by ‘Hula Party’ With Flaming Iron Stick Dies

In 2018, the Supreme Court had banned the use of fireballs on elephants to drive them away from human habitation and croplands

Bengaluru: Despite state forest department officials treating its wounds, a female elephant – that was part of an elephant herd that strayed into Jhargram town in south-western West Bengal – died on Friday (August 16) succumbed to its injuries after a flaming iron rod, allegedly thrown by members of a ‘hula’ party, pierced its back on Thursday (August 15).

Hula parties are a team of people who use means such as beating drums to chase elephants away. However, some hula parties – such as the one on Thursday – can get violent. Members reportedly threw fire-tipped ‘mashals’ – sharp iron rods set on fire – on the elephant. The incident occurred after a man died in an encounter with a tusker that was also part of the same herd to which the female elephant belonged.

A 2018 Supreme Court order prevents the use of ‘fireballs’ on elephants. However, mashals do not qualify as fireballs and that is a loophole, said local conservationists. They also told The Wire that the formation of hula parties has now become a “racket” because the forest department engages them on their payrolls through a tendering process to chase elephants away.

The ‘hula parties’ of West Bengal

People often use methods such as beating loud drums and bursting firecrackers to drive away wild elephants from human habitation and cropland. In some cases, people also throw objects set on fire – including burning rubber tyres – on elephants to drive them away. In a shocking incident in 2021 in Nilgiri district in Tamil Nadu, an elephant bled to death after people threw a burning tyre on the animal. The state forest department apprehended two people for the attack: the Asian elephant, Elephas maximus, is afforded the highest protection as per Indian law under the Wildlife Protection Act (1972) due to its decreasing populations across the country and because it faces numerous threats including poaching.

In some parts of West Bengal, teams that drive away elephants are called ‘hula parties’.

‘Hula’ refers to the long metal pole with gunny bags dipped in burnt engine oil; the other origin of the word comes from the Hindi “hulla” which means to make a lot of noise, said wildlife biologist Aritra Kshettry, who has studied elephants in West Bengal. Local communities in the Chota Nagpur region have used these fire torches or ‘mashals’ for generations to keep elephants away from human settlements, he added.

“A hula party typically will involve 25-50 people with these flaming hula sticks and flashlights who will chase elephants away from human settlements throughout the southern districts of West Bengal,” said Kshettry, National Lead for Elephant Conservation, WWF-India.

The state forest department also employs hula parties to prevent encounters between people and elephants in West Bengal.

Female elephant dies from wounds

After a disturbing video of a violent hula party in Medinipur, West Bengal, went viral on social media last year, officials from the state forest department stated that such violence towards elephants would not be “tolerated” and initiated an internal inquiry into the matter, the Hindu had reported.

However, the violence in hula parties still hasn’t abated, as the recent death of the female elephant on Friday shows.

On the morning of August 15, a herd of six elephants entered a residential area in the town of Jhargram in south-western West Bengal. In the melee that followed, a man died in the encounter. Local sources said that a hula party quickly came to the scene to drive the elephants away; officials of the state forest department were also on site and tranquilised a tusker in the herd. However, members of the hula party allegedly threw a mashal tipped with fire at a female elephant that was part of the herd. The rod caught the female on its back.

In one video shot by onlookers that The Wire accessed, the mashal can be seen burning on the back of the elephant, as the voice of a little girl pleads with her dad in Bengali in the background, distraught, asking him to tell them to “let her [the elephant] go”. In several other videos, the female elephant can later be seen dragging her lifeless hindlegs through the vegetation in an attempt to get away from people.

Local sources on condition of anonymity told The Wire that the incident occurred in the presence of forest department officials as well as the police. Forest officials later took the elephant away to the nearby deer park to treat it: however, this happened a full eight hours later, activists alleged. The female elephant finally succumbed to its injuries on the afternoon of August 16.

“We will find out the person who inflicted the injury on the animal. We will see the end of it,” The Telegraph quoted Debal Ray, the chief wildlife warden of West Bengal, as saying.

Disturbing illegalities

Throwing fireballs at elephants is illegal.

A 2018 Supreme Court order in response to a petition filed by conservationist Prerna Singh Bindra prevents people from throwing fireballs at elephants in an attempt to chase them away from human habitations or croplands. However, there’s a loophole here: mashals do not qualify as fireballs. Moreover, they are usually not thrown at elephants. The original intent behind using a fire-tipped iron stick is to wave it around the elephants to scare it away, local conservationists told The Wire.

In 2018, the West Bengal Forest Department “categorically informed” the Supreme Court that hula parties are “being controlled by the department staff and they are not using any inhuman methods, especially fireballs”. The Forest Department also assured the top court that “any illegal activities in driving away elephants will be dealt with stringently”. So in a subsequent order in 2019, the Supreme Court permitted the use of mashals as an emergency measure in hula parties, as long as they were not being thrown on elephants:

“As an emergency measure, under the direct control of the Forest Department, mashals may be used for the time being only to avoid any deaths and crop damage that may take place and ensure the proper movement of elephants in the corridors. The mashals be used only in an emergency.”

However, a local source who did not want to be named, as they work on ground with communities to conserve elephants, said that the employment of hula parties by the forest department has now become a “racket”.

“The department pays a certain fee to the hula party for every night it operates,” the source said, on condition of anonymity. “There is even a tendering process for appointing hula parties. So it has reached a stage where members of a hula party block the elephants’ paths and prevent them from going back into the forests because only if the animals remain in the vicinity will the hula parties be engaged for work the next night.”

“Throwing mashals at elephants has been happening despite the order, and this recent case too “is a clear case of contempt of Supreme Court orders,” Bindra, also a former member of the National Board for Wild Life, told The Wire. “This — and other violent actions – are abhorrent, unacceptable, serve no purpose and only exacerbate conflict. Where is the accountability: What is the environment ministry doing to monitor compliance? Where is Project Elephant – when we cannot provide safety for elephants, or protect their habitat,” she asked. “West Bengal should have been taking remedial and alternative measures to stop using fire as directed by the SC, but they haven’t.”

‘Aggression will lead to aggression’

Any incident that leads to an avoidable injury/loss of human or elephant life is always unfortunate and represents the extreme manifestation of human-elephant conflicts, Kshettry told The Wire.

“Elephants are a long-lived, sentient species with well-developed memory and cognition. Aggressive tactics towards elephants also lead to high aggression from them towards people leading to more damages,” he said.

Therefore, managing these conflicts would require more “empathy-based approaches and a landscape-level planning for conserving elephants,” he pointed out.

Teams safeguarding people and property from elephants will have to be sensitised with clear SOPs and guidelines. And at the same time, West Bengal needs a vision plan on where elephants can persist in the long term in the southern districts, Kshettry added.

“The state can then adopt measures to enrich long term habitats and also remove elephants from non-viable habitats to minimise the impacts on people as well as elephants.”

Kshettry added that a combination of these short and long term approaches will likely yield positive results for both elephants and people.

Faizan’s Custodial Death Is the Collective Failure of Our Society and the Judiciary

“Even assuming that there was no custodial violence, the very fact that the police kept Faizan at the police station when he was evidently in need of critical medical care itself smacks of criminal neglect of duty, if not something worse,” the Delhi high court had said.

Four years ago, at the time of the historic anti CAA/NRC protests, a shocking video went viral. The video shows a group of five Muslim youth – Faizan, Farhan, Kauser, Rafique and Wasim – dragged, encircled, taunted and beaten up with lathis and kicked mercilessly by the police. The men were also forced to sing the national anthem to ostensibly prove their patriotism.

Subsequently, one of them, Faizan, died in custody. Four years after his death, Delhi high court’s Justice Bhambhani gave a searing order acknowledging the failure of the Special Investigative Unit of the Crime Branch to do a timely and impartial investigation. In its July 23 ruling, the court ordered that the case be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Faizan’s case is ultimately a collective societal failure to express adequate outrage for justice even when a helpless fellow citizen is surrounded by police and subject to brutal violence captured on video, merely, for being a Muslim. It is a reflection of the continued failure of institutions in addressing police violence. Yet, the order is an urgent reminder of the potential power of the current jurisprudence to prevent police violence and torture in the early stages of custody.

Faizan was a 23-year-old young man who worked in a meat shop in Ghazipur Mandi. On February 24, 2020, he went out to look for his mother Kismatun who had not returned from an anti-CAA protest: a movement that was memorable for the leadership roles played by Muslim women. Faizan and his friends were arbitrarily targeted and beaten up by the police. Later, the police took them to GTB hospital where Faizan got some basic treatment, including some stitches in the ear and head, and was referred for some specialised treatment involving orthopaedics and neurosurgery.

By the time the family came to know that they were in the hospital, Faizan and others had already been taken to the Jyoti Nagar police station. When the family went to the police station, they were told to go away. Despite theIR constant efforts to get some answers, it was only at 11 pm the next day, February 25, that the family was called to take him home.

The court order noted: “The police handed-over her son in a severely injured condition, barefoot and stitches on his head and ear, in blood-soaked clothes and torn trousers.” His mother mentioned that “she was alarmed to find that her son was severely injured; his body was badly bruised; and his hands and feet were swollen so acutely that he could barely walk.” And it was in that condition, through laboured breaths, that Faizan was able to narrate his experience to the family. The next day, when a local doctor saw his critical situation, he was immediately taken to the Lok Nayak hospital where he died.

Over the years, the courts have tried to ensure oversight on the first 24 hours of the accused after arrest, especially in police custody, to check illegal detention and ensure the absence of torture, a routine occurrence often normalised. The lasting impact of the 1996 D.K. Basu case is seen in the arrest memo meant to ensure proper arrest with witnesses and a medical exam/MLC (Medico Legal Certificate) to protect the safety of a person in custody. Judicial magistrates have to oversee these constitutional safeguards which is the focus of our recent study. The irony and normalcy of getting a medical exam is visible in Faizan’s case where it is likely that the same police personnel who brutally beat him up may be the ones who ultimately took him to the hospital.

Recognising that the D.K. Basu guidelines did not ensure complete oversight inside the police station, the court, in Paramvir Singh Saini case (2020) even came up with a way to insist on the implementation of CCTVs in all parts of the police station. While there was much scepticism about the practicality of this move, the Delhi high court’s order in Faizan’s case reiterates its utility. It is thus no longer adequate to claim that the CCTVs weren’t working or suddenly malfunctioned.

The Supreme Court judgement requires the SHO to inform the non-functioning of the CCTVs to the District Level Oversight Committee (DLOC) and report all the arrests and interrogations to the DLOC during this period. At the very least, such a step puts enormous pressure on the police to explain the absence of CCTVs on a particular night.

The Delhi high court’s judgement goes beyond these pre-existing safeguards in recognising the crucial role of the police in protecting the physical safety of the accused. For instance, the court notes the difference in the injuries mentioned in the first MLC and the post mortem report. The “Post-mortem report.. recorded the cause of death as :’… cerebral injury associated with multiple blunt injuries over the body’; and that ‘all injuries are ante-mortem, 2-3 days in duration and caused by blunt force impact.’” It is likely that Faizan was beaten up once again in custody. Even if the video of the police beating Faizan didn’t exist and the police version of injuries due to “rioting and stone pelting” was true, the court does acknowledge that the police were still responsible for ensuring proper medical treatment. The order notes “Even assuming that there was no custodial violence, the very fact that the police kept Faizan at the police station when he was evidently in need of critical medical care itself smacks of criminal neglect of duty, if not something worse.”

Finally, the police wanted to hand over Faizan to his family before he died. Clearly, beating him and others, humiliating them, forcing them to sing and prove their loyalty – all on video in public – and later possibly beating Faizan up in the police station did not scare the police as much as the possibility of a dead body. As a police officer I interviewed once told me, “[The suspect’s] safety is in your custody. You don’t want him to die, so you take care of him…You are scared of death.”

As Faizan’s mother, the petitioner in the case, put it, “only when Faizan’s medical condition became precarious, did the police release him to his family, perhaps to avoid Faizan dying inside the police station.” She contends that just because Faizan died outside the police station premises does not absolve the police officers of his custodial killing. The court’s insistence of the role of the police in ensuring safety and transparency about what occurred that night is a crucial elaboration of what protection of right to life and safety in custody truly might mean. Protection against custodial violence refers both to the direct use of force against an accused as well as withholding critical medical attention.

One only wishes that the court order had also briefly mentioned the limits of the forensic tests that explicitly appear in the case: the use of polygraphs and newer kinds of “truth machines” such as layered voice analysis. These tests have been mentioned by the police as evidence of their proactive role in the investigation. However, these should not be considered advanced scientific tests, given their lack of reliability and validity, while displacing more effective ways of conducting investigations.

However, since the main Supreme Court judgement Selvi (2010) only mentioned the importance of consent of the accused and the inadmissibility of results of these truth machines as evidence, it is perhaps not surprising that even the otherwise powerful Delhi high court order does not address these flawed forensic tests. Only time will tell whether justice for Faizan’s custodial death will be realised in this case. Alongside, it raises the significance of crucial judicial oversight of the protections accorded to the accused the moment they step into police custody to ensure justice before the violence is even committed.

Jinee Lokaneeta is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Drew University, New Jersey. She is the author of: The Truth Machines: Policing, Violence, and Scientific Interrogations in India (University of Michigan Press, Orient Blackswan, 2020).

The 2024 Lok Sabha Election is a Tale of Egregious Errors and Wanton Violations

The flurry of violations coupled with total blocking of end-to-end verifiability leads one to believe that General Election-2024 has been conducted with lies clothed in truth.

For once if the word ‘pyrrhic’ had any meaning, it is in the recently concluded general election to India’s Parliament. Some are celebrating the ‘victory,’ some the ‘defeat’ and many are licking the ‘wounds’ of both. In the process, hardly any attention is being given to the conduct of the most incompetent and unfair election in history and its outcome, which saw serious and severe violations of laws, codes and Supreme Court judgments.

Former Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah puts it mildly when he wrote: “In “Electoral Democracy: An enquiry into the Fairness and Integrity of Elections in India,” a retired group of civil servants researched with the assistance of experts at home, including the IITs, and abroad, broaching the possibility of the electoral process in India being compromised. The nature of elections in Delhi, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh, and even in some parts of Uttar Pradesh make these elections worthy of review.”

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

To start with, Section 59 of the Representation of People’s Act, 1951 (RPA) which mandates the conduct of elections through ballot paper has been violated with impunity. This is what the provision says: “Manner of voting at elections:- At every election where a poll is taken votes shall be given by ballot in such manner as may be prescribed and, save as expressly provided by this Act, no votes shall be received by proxy.”

This was followed by non-compliance of Section 61A which provides for voting machines at elections subject to conditions: “Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act or the rules made thereunder, the giving and recording of votes by voting machines in such manner as may be prescribed, may be adopted in such constituency or constituencies as the Election Commission may, having regard to the circumstances of each case, specify.”

It is to be noted that while Section 59 uses the word “shall”, Section 61A says only “may” making the legislative intention clear–conduct of elections in India should be with ballot paper and EVM may be an option if that was not possible.

Therefore, as per administrative protocol, Election Commission of India (ECI) is required to issue a constituency-wise ‘notification’ explaining the circumstances under which elections could not be conducted with ballot papers and electronic voting machines (EVM) would be used for the purpose.

No such notifications were issued by the ECI either before or after the announcement of election schedule on 16 March, 2024. This makes the election ab initio illegal.

Next comes the ECI’s total inaction on the violation of (a) the Model Code of Conduct, (b) Sections 123(3) and (3A), 125 of the RPA, and Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

At an election rally in Rajasthan’s Banswara on April 21, 2024 Modi claimed the Congress manifesto had promised to seize and redistribute private wealth of Indians among “infiltrators” and “those who have more children”–a dog whistle reference to India’s Muslims.

In the same speech, the prime minister claimed that the Congress would snatch away the mangalsutras worn by married Hindu women in its bid to distribute wealth among Muslims. Nearly 20,000 individuals had collectively penned letters to the ECI, urging action against the PM for these devastating comments made against Muslims.

But there was not even a wimp from the ECI on this and other similar ‘poisonous arrows.’ Emboldened by this, Prime Minister went on making more inflammatory statements that clearly violated the MCC and RPA.

In fact, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar gave a self-incriminating explanation to this impotent inaction when he said that the Election Commission had deliberated over poll code violations during the 2024 general elections at length and had decided to not admonish two top leaders each from the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress–Narendra Modi and Amit Shah of the BJP and Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra of the INC.

“We deliberately decided–this is such a huge nation-that the top two people in both the parties we did not touch. Both party presidents we touched equally. Why did we leave two this side and two that side? The persons in position in this huge country also have responsibility. We reminded them of their responsibility,” Kumar had said.

This is clear discrimination and constitutional violation by the CEC.

As rightly observed in this piece, “Part III of the Constitution of India is titled Fundamental Rights. It says, “The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India. Article 14 of this part of the Constitution, titled “Equality before law”, reads as follows: “The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.” It is the provisions of Article 14 that the Election Commission prima facie appears to have violated.”

This is a very serious matter.

Now, let’s come to the ECI’s wanton defiance of Supreme Court orders. In its judgment dated 8.10.2013 in Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of India, (2013) 10 SCC 500, Supreme Court had clearly laid out the purpose of introducing the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) along with EVMs.

“From the materials placed by both the sides, we are satisfied that the “paper trail” is an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections. The confidence of the voters in the EVMs can be achieved only with the introduction of the “paper trail.” EVMs with VVPAT system ensure the accuracy of the voting system. With an intent to have fullest transparency in the system and to restore the confidence of the voters, it is necessary to set up EVMs with VVPAT system because vote is nothing but an act of expression which has immense importance in democratic system,” the judgment had said.

Apex Court’s purpose was to make the EVM voting/counting to comply with the essential ‘Democracy Principles’ of End-to-End (E2E) verifiability i.e. voter should be able to verify that her vote is cast-as-intended, recorded-as-cast and counted-as-recorded.

This ipso facto meant that EVM should be used for voting and all the printed slips in the VVPAT machine should be counted before declaring results. Pursuant to the 8.10.2013 order and other directives, ECI arranged for all EVMs to be accompanied with VVPAT for the 2019 general elections. Without counting of VVPAT slips in a significant percentage of polling stations in each assembly constituency, the objectives of verifiability and transparency in the democratic process would remain unrealised.

But, in defiance of this basic principle, vide its letter dated 13.02.2018 ECI directed state chief electoral officers to mandatorily verify VVPAT paper slips in only one randomly selected polling station in each assembly constituency.

This being around 0.5% sample size which is pathetically low, defeated the very object of installing VVPATs in all EVMs which tantamount to non-implementation of Supreme Court Order. But ironically Supreme Court endorsed this gross violation when a Bench comprising of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Sanjay Khanna passed this order on 08-04-2019: “…….our considered view is that the number of EVMs that would now be subjected to verification so far as VVPAT paper trail is concerned would be 5 per Assembly Constituency or Assembly Segments in a Parliamentary Constituency instead of what is provided by Guideline No. 16.6, namely, one machine per Assembly Constituency or Assembly Segment in a Parliamentary Constituency…..”

SC had just increased the sample size from a microscopic 0.5% to miniscule 2 % whereas the demand was for a reasonable 30% to 50% based on sound statistical principles. E2E verifiability had thus been intentionally denied, a typical case of ‘fence eating the crops.’

In its report titled “Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT System Fit for Democratic Elections?” released in January, 2021 and submitted to ECI, Citizens Commission on Election (CCE) had said that EVM system does not provide provable guarantees against hacking, tampering and spurious vote injections and the VVPAT system as practiced does not allow the voter to verify the slip before the vote is cast and the absence of E2E verification would lead to voting and counting manipulation and had suggested remedial measures.

ECI did not bother to respond.

Therefore, in August-September 2023 civil society submitted a memorandum to ECI signed by about 10,000 voters making a specific demand: “The VVPAT system should be re-calibrated to be fully voter-verifiable. A voter should be able to get the VVPAT slip in her hand and cast it in a chip-free ballot box for the vote to be valid. These VVPAT slips should be fully counted first for all constituencies before the results are declared.”

ECI did not even acknowledge this Memorandum.

The matter therefore went before the Supreme Court in W.P (C) No. 184 of 2024 wherein the above demand was rejected thus fully facilitating the ECI to trash its own order in Swamy case.

ECI had nefariously succeeded in effectively blocking the E2E verifiability thereby paving the way for voting and counting manipulation on a selective and secretive basis. And CEC Rajiv Kumar was celebrating this defeat of “essential democracy principles”! This is the reason why despite the results for the Lok Sabha 2024 elections being out, the controversy around the election process persists.

The 2024 Lok Sabha elections data shows discrepancies in almost all PCs. A close look at EC data from 543 PCs shows that except for a few PCs like Daman & Diu, Lakshadweep and Attingal in Kerala, the number of EVM votes counted differs from that of EVM votes polled. In more than 140 PCs, the number of EVM votes counted surpassed the number of EVM votes polled.

ECI is unable to give any satisfactory response to this apparent fraud. Is something rotten in the halls of Nirvachan Sadan?

And there is more. In the same judgment delivered on 26.04.2024 Supreme Court opened two windows for verification through these directions:

“76. (a) On completion of the symbol loading process in the VVPATs undertaken on or after 01.05.2024, the symbol loading units shall be sealed and secured in a container. The candidates or their representatives shall sign the seal. The sealed containers, containing the symbol loading units, shall be kept in the strong room along with the EVMs at least for a period of 45 days post the declaration of results. They shall be opened, examined and dealt with as in the case of EVMs,” said the Supreme Court judgment.

(b) The burnt memory/microcontroller in 5% of the EVMs, that is, the control unit, ballot unit and the VVPAT, per assembly constituency/assembly segment of a parliamentary constituency shall be checked and verified by the team of engineers from the manufacturers of the EVMs, post the announcement of the results, for any tampering or modification, on a written request made by candidates who are at SI.No.2 or Sl.No.3, behind the highest polled candidate…. The actual cost or expenses for the said verification will be notified by the ECI, and the candidate making the said request will pay for such expenses. The expenses will be refunded, in case the EVM is found to be tampered,” the Supreme Court judgment added.

Both these directions were not carried out in letter and spirit by the ECI and direction (b) was sabotaged and wilfully disobeyed. Whereas Administrative SOP for the ‘burnt memory/microcontroller’ was issued on June 1, 2024–just three days before the date of counting and announcement of results charging a hefty fee of Rs. 40,000 plus 18% GST per EVM–no Technical SOP to make it operative as mentioned in Para 7 was issued till June 11, 2024 thereby effectively preventing candidates from availing of this window provided by the Supreme Court. The suspicion is that ECI did this to prevent detection of possible spurious injection of votes to steal the mandate in favour of a particular party.

These and other egregious errors and wanton violations coupled with total blocking of E2E verifiability leads one to believe that General Election-2024 has been conducted with lies clothed in truth. Things have come to such a pass that post the Lok Sabha elections, a substantive criminal complaint has emerged, filed by Advocate Mehmood Pracha, which alleges extensive manipulation and misconduct in the election process.

The complaint seeks immediate registration of cases under Section 129 of the Representation of the People’s Act, 1951, Section 65/66/66F of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and Section 171F/409/417/466/120B/201/34 Indian Penal Code and investigation into the roles of all involved, including ECI officials, BEL and ECIL engineers, and BJP office bearers.

If allowed to go on in the present pace, electoral democracy will perish in the world’s most populous country where in live one-sixth of humanity. Can this be countenanced?

M.G. Devasahayam is coordinator, Citizens Commission on Elections.

Read all of The Wire’s reporting on and analysis of the 2024 election results here.

Post Election Results, a Change in Policies Would be Good For the Nation and Modi

A change in policies would be good for the nation and Modi, because the alternative would be a government buffeted by crisis and instability.

The new cabinet seems not very different from its predecessor with the most important portfolios going to the same ministers as earlier. This is taken to be a sign of continuity in policy. Is that likely, given that the 2024 general election results have signalled to Mr. Modi that his policies have not delivered?

The political trajectory has changed even compared to November 2023 when the BJP won three important state Assembly elections. Are there no lessons to be learnt and no course correction to be carried out for future winnability?

Many members from the coalition partners have been accommodated in the cabinet to make it one of the largest cabinets. Some of the former BJP CMs have been adjusted, even if they have not been given the most important portfolios.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

Will the presence of these leaders and of the coalition partners not change the dynamics in the cabinet where different points of view maybe voiced much more than has been the case till now? Will none of them draw lessons from the election results?

Takeaways from 2024 General Election

There is a message for Mr. Modi and BJP in the loss of majority in parliament. Even though BJP’s overall vote share fell marginally from 37.3% in 2019 to 36.6% in 2024, this hides major shifts. Seats have been lost in UP, Maharashtra, Haryana, Rajasthan, etc. But there have been gains in southern and eastern states. Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana were BJPs targets in the south and West Bengal and Odisha in the east. The vote per cent has increased in the southern states and it has captured Odisha from its former ally, BJD. Andhra has gone to the NDA and JD(U) has held its own in spite of a resurgent INDIA.

It is said that the 2024 general election did not have a single theme nationally and it was like several state and local elections taking place simultaneously. For instance, the caste combination in Bihar and UP are said to be important determinants of the results in these two states. In Maharashtra it is said that people did not like the manner in which the opposition political parties were split to attain power.

However, there is a unifying theme in the election results–anti-incumbency at the state level, actively taken advantage of by the opposition. There were exceptions like in Gujarat or Madhya Pradesh where the ruling BJP held on because the opposition has been weakened and could not exploit the situation. In Tamil Nadu and Bihar, the ruling party won with reduced vote share. BJP was in the opposition in Odisha, Delhi and Karnataka and a part of the NDA in Andhra Pradesh and took advantage to win.

The INDIA grouping also mobilised people on the issue of the BJP wanting to change the Constitution to end reservations. The BJP leaders’ denial did not cut much ice with the public since in the past some of them had spoken against reservations.

While the content of the Constitution is not widely known by the general public, the marginalised groups understand that reservation in public sector jobs and in educational institutions is important for their upward mobility. They do not have faith that they would benefit through the market. In fact, they also want reservation in the private sector.

Mr. Modi did not factor in that a cornered cat fights back. INDIA alliance fought back pretty unitedly in several parts of the country. There was delay in forging the alliance, but February 2024 onwards, they effectively mobilised the public against the government.

This was something they had not done earlier perhaps for fear of being targeted by the government. The arrest of Chief Ministers was a signal that no one would be spared if they came in the way of the BJP juggernaut. So, the option for the opposition was to either surrender (and be cleaned by the washing machine) or fight back.

The alliance mobilised on the real issues to counter BJP’s divisive and emotive appeals. Public awareness which was disjointed on these issues was given concrete shape. This approach had delivered in the Karnataka Assembly elections in 2023 where the civil society groups had helped out.

The Real Issues to the Fore

The ground for mobilising the people on the real issues has existed for long. Inflation has been hitting the family budget given various forms of unemployment and declining real wages. Unemployment among educated youth and women has been acute and leads to distress in the family.

Furthermore, while the marginalised have been suffering, there has been visible display of ostentatious life-style and the call to celebrate wealth. This has made the growing inequality apparent to all. The PM justified his pro-rich policies leading to growing disparity by asking, do you want to distribute poverty?

Farm distress has persisted. Protests have been organised from time-to-time all over the country. But the attempt to hand over the agriculture trade to the corporates via the three farm bills led to the biggest recent sustained mobilisation of farmers in the country. After the farm bills were withdrawn, the government has done little to aid the farmers which has further angered many of them.

The unorganised sector, the biggest employer, has been isolated by policy and many of the small and micro units have closed down leading to unemployment and loss of incomes.

This dissatisfaction of large segments of the population–women, farmers, workers, youth, dalits, Muslims, etc.–was waiting to be effectively mobilised by the opposition.

Mobilisation by the opposition: Changing Dynamics

The opposition finally managed to mobilise people by talking about these important issues. The BJP brushed aside these issues, arguing that India was doing well, had become the fifth largest economy in the world, that poverty had been almost eliminated, etc. This was like a slap on the face of the poor and unemployed–a bit like the ‘India shining’ campaign of 2004.

The INDIA alliance raised these core issues and found resonance. In the states where BJP and NDA were in the opposition they simply pointed to the deficiencies and argued that the government at the Centre had done well and `double engine ki sarkar’ would help the State. Many of the elite, middle classes and upper castes believe there is no alternative to Mr. Modi and vote for him.

The weak mobilisation of support based on dissatisfaction against the government by the non-BJP opposition was visible in the UP election in 2022. They could not mobilise the public in spite of the mismanagement of the pandemic which caused acute distress to not just the poor.

The lockdown and the initiation of vaccination drive were greatly mismanaged in 2020-21. In contrast, the BJP has been aggressively mobilising everywhere and this has borne results in those places where it was in the opposition.

Apart from the threat of use of agencies against the INDIA alliance leaders, the media did not provide them a level playing ground. Most media houses controlled by businessmen toed the official line. All this underlined the importance of the 2024 elections for the survival of the INDIA alliance leadership. And, this activated them.

The road ahead

The results of the 2024 elections have diminished Mr. Modi’s appeal, strengthened NDA partners, boosted INDIA alliance and emboldened other leaders in the RSS-BJP group. Mr. Modi would have to consult NDA allies other BJP leaders lest there be internal dissension and instability. INDIA alliance would continue to aggressively campaign on the real issues which will take time to resolve, that too if government changes its policies. If not, the real issues will persist and give the opposition a chance to remain strong with public support.

Mr. Modi is a master of real politic and would like to regain lost ground even if listening to the opposition has not been in his DNA. A change in policies would be good for the nation and Modi. The alternative would be a government buffeted by crisis and instability. Whichever way it plays out, Indian politics will see a major shift compared to the last 10 years.

Arun Kumar is a retired professor of JNU. He authored Indian Economy’s Greatest Crisis: Impact of the Coronavirus and the Road Ahead (2020).

Read all of The Wire’s reporting on and analysis of the 2024 election results here.