<marquee style="width: 100%;" width="100%" scrollamount="1"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"><strong>News By : Amit</strong></span></marquee>
The day Obama won the US presidency trouncing John McCain, the great Indian middle class has been talking about whether and when India can have its ‘Obama moment’. Unfortunately, if the evidence of the ongoing state assembly elections is anything to go by, we may have a long wait.
The point about Obama’s victory, we must remember, is not that a black man won but that he won in a constituency that was overwhelmingly non-black. India’s real moment by that yardstick will be when Dalits or tribals can win in unreserved constituencies, not just when a Dalit, Muslim or tribal becomes prime minister. After all, India’s PM is not elected directly by popular vote unlike the US president.
The point about Obama’s victory, we must remember, is not that a black man won but that he won in a constituency that was overwhelmingly non-black. India’s real obama moment by that yardstick will be when Dalits or tribals can win in unreserved constituencies, not just when a Dalit, Muslim or tribal becomes prime minister. After all, India’s PM is not elected directly by popular vote unlike the US president.
Details of candidates are now fully available on the Election Commission website for all constituencies in the assemblies of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. Between them, these three assemblies have 179 non-reserved seats. All of these are being contested by the BJP and congress apart from other parties and independents.
So guess how many Dalits are contesting from these seats on the ticket of either of the two main contenders for power? The answer is just three – one each in Chhattisgarh and Delhi from the BJP and one in MP from the Congress. Even among these three, Jaijaipur in MP from where the BJP has a Dalit candidate has a 25% SC population, higher than in six of the 10 SC reserved seats, while Ballimaran in Delhi has a 22% SC population, among the highest proportions in any non-reserved seat.
The message the two major national parties are sending out is fairly clear. They obviously do not believe that Dalits can win in unreserved constituencies unless there is a substantial chunk of Dalit votes.
Even the BSP, seen as a largely Dalit party trying with some success to expand its base into other caste groups, has only one Dalit candidate in a general seat in Delhi and none in Chhattisgarh. Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), which fancies itself as a serious competitor for Dalit votes with the BSP, has two Dalit candidates in the general seats in Delhi and none in Chhattisgarh.
In MP, on the other hand, the BSP, LJP and the factions of the Republican Party have a substantial number of Dalits contesting from general seats – 26 from LJP, 11 from RPI and 9 from BSP – but the results when they come are likely to show that almost all of them were non-serious contenders.
The Left parties, CPI and CPM, among themselves have six Dalit candidates in general seats in the three states, but considering that they are contesting only 42 general seats, that means one in seven candidates in unreserved seats in their case is a Dalit, which is roughly equal to the proportion of Dalits in these seats.
How about tribals? Delhi, which has no ST reserved seats, unsurprisingly also does not have any tribal candidates. But in MP, the BJP and congress have just one tribal each contesting from a general seat. In the BJP’s case, that’s from Vijaypur, which has a 42% tribal population, the highest for any unreserved seat. The Congress’ lone tribal contender from a general seat is from Bargi where tribals constitute 26% of the population.
There are more tribal candidates from the BJP and Congress, 3 each to be exact, in Chhattisgarh’s unreserved constituencies. Again, the three seats in BJP’s case have tribal populations of 42%, 41% and 33%, while those in the case of the Congress have 31%, 29% and 23% of tribals.
The message for tribals, as for Dalits, is loud and clear – you can’t be our candidate unless there is no choice or there are enough of you in a constituency to form a winning block. Looks more like India’s Nobama moment, doesn’t it.
Date : 24/nov/2008