Chhattisgarh polls: Congress basks in a resurgent Bastar but not all is well

Five years after it swept Chhattisgarh’s Bastar division in the Assembly polls, the ruling Congress faces a curious irony as it seeks a fresh mandate in the upcoming elections. While the state government, led by chief minister Bhupesh Baghel, is palpably popular across Bastar’s 12 Assembly segments, several of the party’s candidates, incumbent MLAs, and their replacements alike are battling stiff anti-incumbency factors and challenges specific to their constituencies.

In 2018, the Congress won 11 of Bastar division’s 12 Assembly seats, most with impressive margins. A year later, it also won the bypoll for Dantewada, the lone seat in Bastar the BJP had managed to win a year earlier by a narrow margin of just over 2,000 votes.

Five years on, Baghel’s government is widely being credited for Bastar’s transformation from an unsafe, impoverished, and economically backward region besieged by Naxalite violence to one that is now visibly more secure and on track for socio-economic progress. For the first time in decades, over 150 polling booths will be set up inside villages of the 12 Bastar constituencies and not, as had been the norm, on the highway — a clear sign of a robust participative democracy finally trumping the fear of and intimidation by Naxals in the region within just five years of Baghel’s reign. Yet, there are enough signs in constituencies like Narayanpur, Dantewada, Jagdalpur, and Kondagaon, among others, that worry the Congress electorally.

Fighting anti-incumbency

That the Congress isn’t ignorant of these challenges either was evident in its candidate selection for these 12 seats that will vote in the first of Chhattisgarh’s two-phase election, on November 7. The party denied tickets to its incumbent MLAs, Shishupal Shori, Anoop Nag, and Rekhchand Jain, for the Kanker, Antagarh, and Jagdalpur assembly segments, respectively.

In the Dantewada constituency, the Congress has replaced sitting MLA Devati Karma — widow of party stalwart Mahendra Karma, who was among the Chhattisgarh Congress veterans killed by Naxalites in the 2013 Jheeram Ghati massacre — with her son, Chavindra Mahendra Karma. For the Bastar Assembly seat, the Congress has benched its incumbent MLA Rajman Venjam and fielded its state unit chief Deepak Baij, who had won the seat in 2018 but vacated it the following year after being elected to the Lok Sabha.

Congress sources told The Federal that Shori, Nag, and Jain were denied tickets after the party’s internal surveys revealed voter resentment against them. Nag is now contesting from the Antagarh seat as an independent candidate and has been expelled by the Congress for his “anti-party activities”.

In Dantewada, party insiders claim Chavindra was made the candidate after he threatened to rebel if the Congress fielded his mother. Meanwhile, Baij’s candidature has put the Congress in a quandary since the party had been taunting the BJP for fielding several incumbent Lok Sabha MPs in the assembly polls for Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan.

By fielding fresh faces such as Roop Singh Potai, Shankar Dhruva, and Jitin Jaiswal in Antagarh, Kanker, and Jagdalpur, respectively, and its Bastar strongman Baij from his native seat of Chitrakot, the Congress has tried to dilute anti-incumbency against individual MLAs. However, the party is now up against a bigger challenge than anti-incumbency in several of these seats — that of changing social dynamics and worsening polarization.

The new demon

“Across the division, particularly in constituencies that lie under south Bastar, Naxalism has been replaced by communal polarization as the biggest challenge. Large numbers of tribals across Bastar have, over the past many years, converted to Christianity, and the altered social dynamics have allowed the BJP to polarise voters between ‘Hindu tribals’ and ‘Christian converts’. This has led to frequent communal clashes, particularly in areas like Narayanpur and Kondagaon, and the BJP is exploiting this for electoral gain,” said Jagdalpur-based journalist Hemant Kashyap, who has covered socio-political issues in Bastar since 1992.

Contrary to the BJP’s claims of tribals adopting Christianity because of the Congress’s tacit support to Christian Missionaries, Kashyap says large-scale conversions across Bastar began during the 15-year BJP rule of Raman Singh “as a convenient way for poor tribals to avoid expenses that their religious and social customs, such as hosting feasts at weddings, birth of a child, or death of a family member, demanded… those who converted could simply say that their new faith didn’t require hosting such gatherings”.

The Baghel government’s massive push for schemes that pumped in large cash transfers to Bastar’s population — among them, widening the net of forest-produce items procured by the state government at MSP, unprecedented hikes in MSP for various crops, more streamlined economic inclusion initiatives like women-run processing units for the little-known Bastar cashew, tamarind candies, and incense sticks, among others — robbed Hindu tribals of “the excuse of converting to Christianity to avoid social expenses”, says Kashyap.

Burial politics

But a different challenge arose soon. “What changed over the past five years was the tactics adopted by the Sangh (RSS) members,” says Chetram Usendi, a resident of Narayanpur. “Sangh workers began encouraging Hindu tribals to object to the burial of Christian tribals on common burial grounds across villages. In many villages, bodies of Christian converts were dug out from graves and the families were told to bury the deceased on their own land. Many Christian tribals then started burying their dead either on their farmland or within the courtyard of their homes but Sangh workers began objecting to this, too, by saying burial on farms would pollute the land and affect the crop in adjoining farms owned by Hindu tribals,” said Usendi, asserting that Congress leaders in the region made “no effort” to counter this narrative.

In constituencies like Narayanpur, where incumbent MLA Chandan Kashyap is facing a stiff fight against the BJP’s Kedar Kashyap, the Congress’s problems have increased because the unrest over religious conversions — Narayanpur also saw the torching of a church by local BJP leaders and their supporters in January this year — comes coupled with the unpopularity of its candidate. Chandan had won the 2018 elections against Kedar by a lean margin of 2,647 votes. Locals in Narayanpur variously describe Chandan as “corrupt”, “ineffective”, or “inaccessible” as opposed to the hardline Hindutva votary Kedar, a former MLA, who voters say is “humble and helpful”.

Missing MLA

In the adjoining Kondagaon seat, the Congress has fielded incumbent MLA Mohan Markam, former Chhattisgarh Congress chief and currently a minister in the Baghel Cabinet, who had won the 2018 polls by a narrow margin of 1,796 votes against BJP’s former MLA Lata Usendi.

“Markam has been an MLA since 2013 but he has not visited us even once in 10 years. He has not even come to campaign this time. Bhupesh Baghel has truly transformed Bastar but we don’t want Mohan Markam as our MLA. The Congress could have won this seat had it chosen a fresh candidate because people here don’t like Lata Usendi either, but at least she is accessible,” said Maniram, owner of a small eatery in Kondagaon.

A senior Chhattisgarh Congress leader from Jagdalpur conceded to The Federal, “We may lose three or four seats in the Bastar division because of communal polarization and the fault of our own sitting MLAs who failed to live up to the expectation of voters; we have fielded new faces in some seats to control electoral damage but in others, there is a lot of anti-incumbency against our candidates. We can only hope that extensive campaigning by our top leadership (Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, who have been addressing rallies in Bastar’s assembly segments over the past few days), and Bhupesh Baghel’s guarantee of waiving farm loans, further increasing MSP for various crops, and ensuring Bastar’s overall progress will help the party win the seats where the fight is very close.”