Cash, charity or caste may not help unless your constituents see you and your tangible development work in the constituency.
Article
Source BS
: Caste? Cash? Charity?
Take
Gautam Buddh Nagar (or Noida) Lok
Sabha constituency in Uttar Pradesh, which goes to the polls on
11 April. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s sitting candidate is
Dr Mahesh Sharma, an amiable doctor who owns a huge hospital in the
heart of NOIDA and is currently Union Minister of Culture.
In
2014, there was universal endorsement of Sharma. ‘He really takes
care of us’ said a constituent fervently. ‘whenever there is any
medical crisis, we know we can fall back on Kailash Hospital (Dr
Sharma’s hospital) for treatment.’ Sharma would offer treatment
at highly subsidised rates to people for his constituency, especially
if they came with local references.
It
was charity.
It
worked in 2014. Sharma won by a margin of over 3 lakh votes,
defeating Samajwadi Party’s Narendra Bhati, on the back of charity.
There was also the Modi wave.
In
theory the Modi charisma should work this time too. But last week,
when Sharma visited rural areas, specifically Mirzapur village in
Dankaur district, he was told to go back – that he had done nothing
for the villages. Rural areas – Dadri, Jewar and Dankaur - hold the
key to victory in Noida.
Against an average turnout of 67 per cent, the urban areas in Noida
-residential colonies around the malls and the cinema halls –
reported a turnout of around 51 per cent, telling its own tale about
the lack of interest in politics in urban India.
Caste
too plays a big role. The biggest chunk of the rural population of
farmers is Gujjar. This time, Satveer Nagar is the joint Samajwadi
Party-Bahujan Samaj Party candidate – and he is going to file his
nomination on 22 March, a day after Holi. There is some presence of
Thakurs and on the back of that, Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s son
Pankaj won an assembly segment in the UP assembly elections. But his
father has dismissed all speculation of being fielded from Noida: he
will contest from Lucknow, he has said, quite firmly.
Cash
– or rather wealth – has played a big role in the elections.
Holdings in this part of UP are not small: and they are worth a LOT
of money. These are not cowering farmers at the mercy of the
elements. They are wealthy and most of them have other sources of
hefty income, mostly rental income. Many have sold their land and
some own Land Rovers and Audi cars.
