Saurashtra is the key to Gujarat

If there is an area which could upset the plans of Narendra Modi, it is Saurashtra, which went to the polls on Thursday in the high–profile, first phase of elections in Gujarat.

Every party is giving its own spin to the enthusiastic voter turn out in the 48 seats in drought- hit and water-scarce Saurashtra in the 87 constituencies where polling was held on Thursday.

Since Saurashtra is being considered  the `karmabhoomi’ of Keshubhai Patel and his Gujarat Parivartan Party, much will depend on the extent to which the Keshubhai factor dents the Modi support. In 2007, for all the hype about the Patel revolt,  the BJP managed to notch up 38 seats out of 53.

What is different this time is that Keshubhai, known as ‘Bapa’ in Saurashtra, has come out with his own party, and it will get a chunk of the votes of his community. The water scarcity and the drought conditions have also not helped and many in the rural areas talk about “Modi helps only  the rich businessman”.

On the flip side, many youth among Leuva Patels do not want to “waste” their votes, because they do not see the GPP coming to power, and would like to go with the “winner”. There are also signs visible of a consolidation of the OBCs in favour of Modi in Saurashtra.

Aware of the disaffection amongst the Leuva Patels, Modi has gone out of his way to win over the  support of  the Kadwa Patels and the Kolis, also found in sizeable numbers in Saurashtra. He gave them prominence and projected Purushottam Solanki in his government.

The BJP also calculates that the GPP will cut into the dissatisfied  votes which would have otherwise gone to the Congress. In all probability, the GPP will cut into the votes of both the BJP and the Congress. If the Leuva Patels move away from the BJP to the GPP, then it means trouble for the saffron party.

Clearly, Keshubhai is tacitly cooperating with the Congress. The Congress has not put up a candidate against him in Visavadar in Junagadh, nor has the GPP fielded anyone in Maninagar where Congress candidate Shweta Bhatt is taking on Modi.

However, many believe that the GPP’s strategy is not to bring the Congress to power. Keshubhai Patel is rooted too much in the RSS ideology — he has been a swayamsevak since 1945 — and many in the Sangh and its front organisations are openly working for him, and against Modi, in Saurashtra.

In Rajkot, 76-year-old Pravinbhai Manniyar, who has worked all his life with the RSS and only  gave up being a `pracharak’ to work with Keshubhai, was quite unambiguous when he said,  “Change is coming to Gujarat, nobody can stop it. Keshubhai has had the biggest role in creating the environment for this change.”

But before he launched his GPP, Keshubhai is believed to have had consultations with the BJP’s national leadership, and had also met with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. The rationale behind  forming his party was to ensure that the restive Patel community did not move away from the saffron force.

 Naresh Patel, who heads Kodaldham, the temple built around the deity worshipped by the Leuva Patels, is a little more cautious in his articulation, since he represents Leuvas of all political hues but he too hints at “a lot of anti-incumbency this time”.

The GPP strategy is to facilitate a BJP government which is not headed by Modi. If the new party can get 20-25 seats, it will bargain with the BJP, offering its support  in exchange for someone other than Modi heading the next government.

Ironically, some Congress leaders, who have had their channels open to Keshubhai, confirm that ‘Bapa’ is unlikely to do business with the Congress. 

During the freedom movement, the Patels were a backbone of the Congress. They started to break away from the Congress after the early eighties  when Congress leaders Madhav Sinh Solanki and Jenabhai Darji fashioned a winning combination called KHAM (made up of Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims) which brought the Congress to power in 1985.

They started to turn towards the BJP at the time, swerving to its side after the Ramjanmabhoomi movement that followed, and after LK Advani’s Somnath to Ayodhya movement in 1990, which was architected in Gujarat by Modi. When, in  1995, Keshubhai Patel became the CM at the head of a BJP government,  Saurashtra became a stronghold of the BJP, with the support of the Patels. This now has become shaky.

But as a community, the importance of the Patels is increasing, with every party bending over backwards to win them over, and there are 190 Patel candidates in the fray today in Gujarat. It is early days, but whatever the final seat tally,  2012 may herald the beginnings  of new political alignments at the ground level.

The writer is a political and social commentator