From also-ran to Chhattisgarh Congress star: The meteoric rise of Bhupesh Baghel

Of the five states which will elect new legislatures next month, the primary reason the Congress is most confident of coming on top in Chhattisgarh is due to Baghel, now 62.

Rise to prominence

Call it fate or destiny, Baghel’s rise to prominence in Chhattisgarh had less to do with traditional party politics.

The grand old party suffered a most unexpected and brutal blow in Chhattisgarh in 2013 when a bloody Naxalite ambush wiped out virtually the entire Congress leadership in the rice bowl of India.

Even though Baghel was included when the Congress hurriedly tried building a second-rung of leadership, he largely remained an unknown face until the 2018 assembly elections.

After 15 long years of uninterrupted rule, the BJP in 2018 suffered a humiliating drubbing, winning just 15 of the 90 seats. The Congress, banking on farmers’ anger against the government, scooped an incredible 68 seats.

Rising graph

No one credited Baghel for the victory nor did he claim it was his baby. He, however, emerged the winner in the tight race to lead Chhattisgarh, narrowly pushing aside TS Singh Deo.

There has been no looking back since then for Baghel, who has provided a stable government in Chhattisgarh during the last five years and has by various accounts solidly built a largely rural voter base for the Congress.

“The man has given Chhattisgarh exceptionally good governance,” said a Raipur-based bureaucrat who otherwise keeps a safe distance from political parties. “He has not committed any mistake all these years,” he added.

Realising the crucial role that the farming community played in the BJP’s defeat, the Congress government in Chhattisgarh began courting farmers in a big way from day one.

It helped that Baghel himself comes from a family of agriculturists.

Baghel’s government has pumped in crores and crores of rupees into rural areas to build a solid base among farmers, landless workers, village women as well as tribals with a cocktail of economic policies and his own charisma.

People-friendly policies

Those who own cows have never had it so good. The Baghel government purchases cow dung at ₹2 a kg and provides it to women self-help groups, which convert them to manure that is sold to farmers for a pittance.

Now no one who has cattle lets the cows stray – since every bit of dung means money. It has eradicated the menace of stray cattle. Women groups are happy to earn cash. Farmers end up getting cheap but friendly manure.

Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the unique programme – the first of its kind in the country.

The Baghel government has also steeply increased the money paid to tribals for the forest produce they collect and sell to the government.

Tribals account for 29 per cent of Chhattisgarh’s population and dominantly reside in the state’s northern and southern regions. Baghel is from the Other Backward Class (OBC) group, which constitutes more than half of the state and dominates the thickly populated central region. Muslims and Christians form just 2 per cent each of the population.

Baghel has opened innumerable government-run English-medium schools across the state where even poor families can afford to send their children. He has also given pride of place to Chhattisgarhi language and culture – like no other chief minister has done until now.

Winning streak

To blunt the BJP’s Hindutva narrative, Baghel has promoted tourism linked to ‘Lord Ram’, who the chief minister claims spent most of his 14 years of exile in the forests of what now is Chhattisgarh.

Naturally, Baghel is so confident of himself that at the end of half his term, he refused to hand over the chief minister’s post to his rival, TS Singh Deo, who complained this was agreed to by the Congress in 2018. To mollify him and to prevent a Rajasthan-type crisis, the deputy chief minister’s mantle has been given to Singh Deo.

The father of four, a post-graduate in humanities from Raipur, began his political career in the Indian Youth Congress. He was elected to the assembly in undivided Madhya Pradesh the first time in 1993 from Patan, now in Chhattisgarh. He has won elections from Patan five more times, losing it only in 2008. He was also defeated the next year in the Lok Sabha battle.

Fondly known as ‘Kaka’, Baghel was the president of the Chhattisgarh Congress Committee from 2014 and gave up the post one year after he became the chief minister in 2018.

Today, be it Prime Minister Modi or Home Minister Amit Shah, the BJP’s ire in Chhattisgarh is directed at Baghel – an indirect tribute to a man who has grown and grown politically in five years, all the time enjoying the confidence of the Gandhi family. Not many Congress chief ministers can, in that sense, stand up to Baghel.