Chouhan faces the political battle of his life

When the largely rural-agrarian middle communities first made an organised political assertion in North India before and after the Emergency in the mid-1970s, the top leadership of the Sangh Parivar realised that they would have to break their largely Brahmin-Baniya mould to remain a relevant force in Indian politics.

The Hindu right’s initial failure in meaningfully embracing the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) had already rendered it irrelevant in the four southern states where the process of backward consolidation got under way with Periyar’s Self-Respect Movement as early as 1925, the year the RSS was founded.  Having missed the bus down south, the Sangh Parivar did not want to let go of the OBCs in the north.

Thus began the painstaking process of identifying potential political talent from among the backward communities in the dustbowls of northern and central plains which could be pitchforked into leadership roles in the future. The process of political “Sanskritisation” of the middle communities was to prove a roaring success, especially in Madhya Pradesh as it threw up two future chief ministers, Uma Bharti and the incumbent Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

 But the fast-track leadership programme was just a political endeavour. It sought to groom charismatic Hindutva leadership with great oratorial powers whom the numerically dominant OBCs could identify with. For the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which became the BJP, training future OBC leadership within its ranks in issues of governance or ethics wasn’t a priority.

It created hugely popular leaders who could mesmerise the masses but failed once it came down to everyday governance after their mass appeal had brought the BJP to power. Uma Bharti almost single-handedly delivered Madhya Pradesh to the BJP in 2003, only to provide so anarchic an administration that the entire top brass of the BJP was happy to see her step down from the chief minister’s post after a court in Hubballi, Karnataka, charged her in a criminal case.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who rivals Uma in popularity sweepstakes and has built on her electoral success, is now trying to survive a raging firestorm in the form of Vyapam scam, one of the most shocking and widespread recruitment and admission scandals of India. He is no stranger to controversies, having fought off allegations of quid pro quo to a top corporate house in the Dumper Scam at the begging of his reign. But wriggling out of the Vyapam mess would be a far tougher enterprise.

 The extent of malfeasance is staggering. Thousands of suspect admissions to medical, dental and other professional courses in entrance exams run by Vyapam. Hundreds of dubious recruitments to government posts. Over 2,000 accused. Top politicians and IAS and IPS officers have seen their names pop up in connection with the scam. Even the former Sarsanghchalak of the RSS, the late K C Sudershan’s name figures in the list of those who had their cronies recruited to government posts.  
While the broad sweep of the scam would be sufficient to make any chief minister jittery, it’s really the cloud around his personal staff and wife Sadhna Singh that is giving Chouhan nightmares. The Congress alleges that his initial reluctance to hand over the probe to the CBI was out of the fear of getting personally embroiled in the scam.

CBI inquiry
 After the Madhya Pradesh High Court, and subsequently the Supreme Court, trashed petitions seeking a CBI inquiry, it took a spate of deaths of accused and witnesses in the probe for Chouhan to finally relent.

Once the national media became alive to the meandering nature of the Special Task Force (STF) investigation following the deaths - some four dozen on last count - it became impossible for Chouhan to resist the pressure any more, especially as the party top brass in Delhi prodded him on.
Having stonewalled the issue till then, Chouhan suddenly became amenable to the idea of not just a CBI probe, but one that’s monitored by the apex court.
If the CBI probe unearths attempts at cover-up in the STF investigation, or worse still, implicates Chouhan, he would be the third successive BJP chief minister of Madhya Pradesh to go down in a blaze of ignominy after Uma Bharti and later, Chouhan’s immediate predecessor Babulal Gaur. They had both lost the confidence of the party’s central leadership and with L K Advani being sidelined, Chouhan does not have many supporters in Delhi either.

The ungainly mess in Madhya Pradesh is part of the larger pattern within the BJP, where the party chief ministers in one state after another over the last decade have faced serious allegations of corruption, starting with B S Yeddyurappa in Karnataka. And that makes the task of the BJP leadership a lot tougher.

The party cannot sack them all without massive internal strife and a public loss of face especially because the gains of getting rid of a tainted chief minister is uncertain as evident in Karnataka, where the party lost the subsequent Assembly polls.
 Besides, there is no replacement in view who can seamlessly acquire the mantle of the next popular OBC chief minister in Madhya Pradesh. This twin-dilemma will perhaps shield Chouhan from any leadership switch for now. His future, however, will hinge on the CBI investigation.

(The writer is a senior journalist in Bhopal)