[Posted below is full text of editorials from two of India's leading dailies]
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The Hindu
February 03, 2007
Editorial
Saffron rides again
If there is one clear political message from the results of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections, it is that the city's secular parties are so divided by mutual antagonism that they cannot overcome the ideologues of Hindutva. This lack of cohesion among non-communal parties has resulted, in the past, in the ascendancy of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies at the Centre. Successive elections in Gujarat have also shown the edge that a purposefully directed Hindutva campaign has over a disunited secular front. The same scenario has now been played out in India's commercial capital, which the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party coalition that rules Maharashtra had hoped to wrest from the Shiv Sena-BJP combine. That hope was unrealistic, since the Congress and the NCP failed to arrive at a pre-poll seat-sharing arrangement. They thus virtually handed over the elections to the saffron combine: while the secular vote was badly fractured between these two major players, small but cumulatively significant segments of the cake were carried off by Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navanirman Sena, the Samajwadi Party, the various factions of the Republican Party of India (RPI), and rebel candidates from all parties.
Many among Mumbai's middle class had been looking forward to these polls, enthused by the presence of untested but clean, independent candidates supported by citizens' action groups: individuals whose campaigns had emphasised civic issues such as bureaucratic accountability, public hygiene, and the availability of basic amenities. Despite their best efforts, the turnout was below 50 per cent. These votaries of Utopia will be disappointed; the politics of Mumbai is still determined by charismatic demagoguery and ethnic loyalties. The Shiv Sena, claiming the mantle of the `zaanta Raja' (the compassionate monarch), denied tickets to a large number of sitting corporators, in response to complaints from constituents. The Sena also persuaded its patriarch, Bal Thackeray, to roar again in the cause of `Hindu nationalism.' The BJP flew in Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to woo the city's substantial Gujarati voters. This concerted strategy inspired large numbers of Sena-BJP supporters to vote; by contrast, the secular parties had nothing to offer except looming cut-outs of their leaders. The results from Mumbai and the nine other municipal corporations in Maharashtra are viewed, in some quarters, as a foretaste of what the 2009 Assembly elections will bring. While Maharashtra does tend to vote differently at the civic and the State levels, the ruling Congress-NCP coalition will be fooling itself if it made light of its defeat at the grassroots.
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Indian Express
February 03, 2007
Editorial
Sena gets Mumbai keys again
CIVIC POLLS: Message from across the state: Congress the loser, advantage Pawar
Mumbai February 2: After two of its senior leaders, Narayan Rane and Raj Thackeray, walked out with their followers, Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena was facing what was perceived as its worst civic election. But today, the ageing Tiger led his party and the saffron combine to a third successive term at the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.
The Congress could increase its numbers marginally from 63 to 71 over the last polls while the NCP could not add a single seat to its strength of 14. And though the Sena’s strength has come down from 103 to 83 and the BJP’s from from 37 to 28, the saffron alliance has emerged as the single largest combine.
Raj Thackeray’s MNS won just seven, Arun Gawli’s Akhil Bharatiya Sena, two, and the Samajwadi Party, eight. The Sena-BJP combine is set to take the corporation with a little help from friendly Independents in the 227-member House.
The Sena-BJP alliance won the neighbouring Thane and Ulhasnagar and wrested Nagpur from Congress. That was not all for the Congress: In Pune, which was once its bastion, it needs NCP’s support to rule and in neighbouring Pimpri Chinchwad, its junior partner in the state is miles ahead of the Grand Old Party. So if there’s a clear loser in the poll, it’s the Congress.
“Some people had teased the Tiger,” a jubilant executive president of the Sena, Uddhav Thackeray, said after the election results were declared. “Now the Tiger has struck back.” He said that he would give credit to his father, forefathers and Gods _ an indication of the emotive appeal of Marathi Manoos made by Bal Thackeray.
The senior Thackeray attributed the victory to the leadership of heir-designate Uddhav Thackeray. He was dismissive of those who had left the party — Narayan Rane,now the state revenue minister, and nephew Raj Thackeray, who formed his own Maharashtra Navanirman Sena — and described them as “insects.”
He also said he was suprised at the “surge of the saffron alliance.”
The statement faxed to newspapers said he praised senior leaders like Manohar Joshi, Subhash Desai, Ramdas Kadam, Pramold Navalkar and others for their efforts.
For Uddhav this was a test. Leading a poll campaign after facing the revolts from Narayan Rane and
Raj Thackeray, he had his back to the wall. “It was an acid test for me, though I had passed similar tests in 1997 and 2002,” he said.
“But because of the blessings of our forefathers and Gods as well as our loyal supporters, our votes did not split.”
But despite the division in its ranks and its weakening ally, the BJP _ it was going through a leadership crisis after the death of Pramod Mahajan _ Sena did have a few advantages.
The Congress and the NCP had failed to forge a pre-poll alliance; and the Dalit parties had formed a Third Front with the Samajwadi Party and Left parties
The Sena, which had little to flaunt about improvement in civic affairs in the last decade, worked out a clear strategy. Aware of its anti-incumbency factor, it denied tickets to 58 sitting corporators and nominated new young faces. Then, the Sena leaders blamed the central and state governments (read the Congress party) for not giving Mumbai its share of taxes (a whopping Rs 70,000 crore).
During the election campaign, the party decided to focus not on civic issues, but on emotive ones: the ageing and ailing Bal Thackeray (who had the misfortune of witnessing the fragmentation of the party he nurtured for four decades); the declining numbers of Marathi Manoos in Mumbai (which the Sena placed at 32 per cent); the “conspiracy” of the Congress to severe Mumbai from Maharashtra to make it a city-state or a union territory for affluent migrants; the insecurity faced by Mumbaiites in wake of terror attacks; and the assurance that only Shiv Sainiks could protect the citizens from the terror of the “green monster” (read Muslims) as they claimed to have done during the 1993 riots.
To drive home the party’s point, Hindutva’s poster-boy and Gujarat’s chief minister Narendra Modi was brought in to campaign for the Sena-BJP alliance.
The educated and the affluent class did not come out to vote, as usual, while the traditional votebank of the Sena — the Marathi-speaking lower middle-class and those living in slums and chawls responded to the ageing Tiger’s appeal.
The success of the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance in the BMC is a wakeup call for the Congress and the NCP.
In the 2004 assembly polls, the NCP had emerged as the single largest party with 71 MLAs and the Congress had 68 MLAs in the House of 288. The Congress got a boost a year later, when Bal Thackeray’s trusted lieutenant Narayan Rane revolted against Uddhav and joined the Congress.
Rane got re-elected on a Congress ticket to become the revenue minister in the Deshmukh cabinet.
His importance in the party grew as seven of his supporters in the Sena resigned as MLAs and six of them got re-elected on Congress tickets.
This made the Congress overtake the NCP in numbers in the assembly and become the largest party with 75 MLAs. On the eve of the BMC polls, Rane had promised that he would wipe out the Sena, but instead, most of his supporters fielded by the Congress, got defeated owing to infighting.
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