When thirteen Assembly seats go for by-polls just a few weeks after the Lok Sabha elections and the BJP manages only a couple of narrow wins, the by-poll results can surely be seen as a reconfirmation of the 2024 mandate. The results acquire added significance in view of the Modi regime's arrogant rejection of the spirit of the mandate as reflected in the attitude and announcements of the government and the renewed spate of mob lynchings and bulldozer demolitions aimed at intimidating the people.
Six of these thirteen seats witnessed a direct contest between the Congress and the BJP and it is noteworthy that the Congress managed to win four of those direct contests. The BJP also had considerable stake in the Assembly by-polls in West Bengal where it lost all four seats to the ruling TMC. Three of these seats were held by the BJP in the 2021 elections and even in the 2024 parliamentary elections the party had won the respective Lok Sabha seats.
The most significant by-election results came from Uttarakhand. In Badrinath, one of the iconic centres of Hindu pilgrimage and probably the most cogent symbol of corporate-driven precariousness and destruction of the Himalayan environment, the by-election was necessitated by the defection of the local Congress MLA to BJP. Fighting on a BJP ticket, the defector got a resounding rebuff from the electorate. In another Assembly segment in Haridwar, it was reassuring to see a Muslim candidate of the Congress win in the face of brazen harassment of Muslim voters by an openly partisan administration.
This growing electoral support for INDIA actually reflects a strong popular desire for change. The ten years of Modi government have meant unprecedented corporate plunder, communal hate and cruel, repressive governance, an economic and social disaster that has been taking a huge toll on every front of life. Manipur has been burning for a year; corruption in the education-examination system has become so rampant that every examination today runs the risk of being cancelled or deferred; railway travel has become nightmarish and increasingly unsafe for common passengers in spite of continuing hike in fares, and bridges are collapsing like nine pins in a 'double-engine-driven' state like Bihar. Chaos is fast becoming the order of the day.
Just as he has been garnishing this chaos with his frequent foreign trips as a self-styled 'global leader' during the first two terms, Modi began his third term with a trip to Italy in June and another to Russia and Austria in July. Modi landed in Russia just hours after massive Russian bombing killing at least 41 people in Ukraine including several in a children's hospital in Kyiv. While the Modi propaganda machine lauds the PM for 'halting' Russia's war on Ukraine, India has actually been funding the war by importing crude oil from Russia. And while the benefits of the discounted oil imports have not been passed on to common Indian consumers, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance has been minting money exporting the refined petro products back to Europe!
If Modi's foreign policy mocks the global cry for peace by prioritising friendship with Israel and Russia, two of the world's most warmongering regimes at present, over everything else, his domestic policies continue to promote the interests of crony capitalists at the cost of any concern for people's livelihood and environmental protection. The most vulgar display of corporate power in India came in the form of the extended wedding celebration of the youngest scion of the Ambani dynasty. Earlier this year the government turned Jamnagar into an international airport to facilitate the pre-wedding celebration and now in July the Maharashtra government blocked some Mumbai roads for the wedding celebration.
In one of his 2024 election rally speeches, Narendra Modi famously talked about tempo loads of sacks filled with black money being moved from Adani and Ambani headquarters to the Congress office. It was however, apart from the Left, only the Congress leadership - President Mallikarjun Kharge and the Gandhi-Nehru family - that honourably stayed away from this obscene celebration of opulence. It was shocking that at a time when farmers are fighting against corporate takeover of agriculture and India is reeling under historic levels of economic inequality, a private wedding celebration of the richest Indian family was inflicted on the people as an event of highest national significance and several parties of the opposition INDIA bloc too endorsed this obscene exhibition of corporate power by the presence of their leadership.
Ambedkar had identified economic and social inequality as the biggest enemy of political equality in our parliamentary democracy. Currently the level of economic inequality in India is worse than the colonial era. In terms of distribution of wealth and income, the richest 1% today accounts for 40.1% wealth and 22.6% income. The regressive tax system only reinforces this extreme inequality. Nearly two-thirds of the total GST comes from the bottom half of the population, one-third from the middle 40% and only 3-4% from the top 10%. Yet the issue of wealth and inheritance tax was distorted and twisted by Narendra Modi himself in the 2024 elections to generate a false scare that any such idea is a conspiracy against the poor.
As we prepare for the forthcoming round of Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand, it is important to grasp the battle for social equality and justice and the concern and struggle for economic equality and justice as an integral whole. In his own political evolution Ambedkar always combined the two aspects of equality and justice in his ideas and struggles and this unity is also reflected in the Preamble to India's Constitution. The electoral successes of INDIA coalition should inspire more and more forces to uphold the holistic politics of equality and justice and resist the trident of fascist aggression on all fronts - corporate loot and assault on people's livelihood and welfare, communal hate and assault on India's diversity and composite culture, and erosion of political liberty and assault on the basic spirit and values of the Constitution.
