Quick-fix formula to contain protests

Manas Dasgupta

Confronted with the unresolved issues of the Patel reservation agitation and the Dalit movement for justice, the new Gujarat Chief Minister, Vijay Rupani, true to his word, seems to have taken the field to play T20 cricket. Soon after his swearing-in last month, Rupani had told the party workers, “I don’t have the luxury to play Test cricket. With only one year to go before the Assembly elections, I will have to play T20, come half down the pitch and hit sixes.”

And within a month, that is what he seems to have started doing. A state government issuing orders of punitive action against more than 3,400 of its employees belonging to the revenue, panchayat and police departments in a single day may well be a record of sorts. On the same day, Rupani also issued orders for a series of senior-level changes of IPS officers after a spurious liquor racket in Surat claimed 21 lives. 

Rupani had said nothing new when soon after taking over from Anandiben Patel he stated that his administration would be transparent, decisive, sensitive and progressive. But no former chief minister, not even Narendra Modi himself, had taken such drastic steps so early in their innings. But while his steps endeared the BJP to the people in the election year, these also highlighted the deep malaise the government was in “model state” Gujarat.

Rupani’s drastic actions followed two consecutive setbacks the BJP suffered in wooing the Patels despite inflicting a vertical split in the “Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti” (PAAS), which is spearheading the reservation agitation. The party’s humiliation in the presence of national president Amit Shah forcing all the top leaders to flee to escape the public wrath at a felicitation function in Surat, followed by a similar ruckus at a function to celebrate the birthday of new state party president Jitu Vaghani in his home town of Bhavnagar, clearly demonstrated that even the truncated PAAS was strong enough to give severe jolts to the BJP.

While on the one hand the Patels continue to remain alienated from the BJP, the numerically strong “Other Backward Classes” (OBC) and the Dalits are also not showing any signs of coming close to the ruling party despite the government’s firmness in refusing to concede any reservation benefits to the Patels at the cost of the existing reserved categories. Both the PAAS and the Dalits have threatened to intensify their agitations.

But shockingly, the Congress seems to be indulging in a rescue act to bail out the BJP. Trouble has erupted in the state Congress at the most inopportune time with at least three senior leaders, including national spokesman Shaktisinh Gohil and two former MPs Jagdish Thakore and Kunverji Babaliya, quitting party posts and encouraging supporters to follow suit in protest against state party president Bharat Solanki entrusting a chosen few the task of preliminary selection of the party candidates for the Assembly elections. The Congress has decided to finalise its list by December, to give about a year’s time to its nominees to properly nurse their constituencies. Fortunately, the problems have surfaced at a very early stage, giving the party high command adequate time for trouble-shooting.    

Saving ‘Pichavai’

Reliance Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Reliance Industries Limited, has taken upon itself the task of protecting the 500-year-old “Pichavai Art” form, almost on the death bed. Foundation chairman Nita Ambani recently organised a workshop in Ahmedabad of the last surviving group of some hundred-odd artistes still drawing “Pichavai” paintings.

The art form derives its name from the fact that these paintings are drawn on cloth with Lord Krishna as the principal theme and are hung on the “back” (Pichavai) wall of the idol in the Shrinathji temple at Nathdwara in Rajasthan. 

The Reliance Foundation has decided to decorate all Reliance buildings, its offices, hospitals, its convention centre coming up in Mumbai and other installations only with the “Pichavai” paintings.