JOIN USAbba Jaan! A desperate cry from Yogi
How do we understand Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's outrageously communal accusations against those who use "Abba Jaan" as a form of address?
He rages against Muslims for unfairly cornering free ration under previous governments. Not only have they "digested" their ill-gotten gains, but he also accuses them of smuggling food-grain subsidised by the Indian state across the borders to adjacent Nepal (the Nepalese Terai abutting UP has a Muslim population) and Bangladesh, should anyone miss the communal metaphor.
His rhetoric invoked Hindutva's trope of the Muslim being undeserving of state largesse and engaged in criminal activities against the nation.
It is not just another instance of communal speech by Adityanath. This time the focus is on the disbursement of sops that have become crucial for his re-election.
Western UP is slipping out of his hands because of the ongoing farmers' agitation. Eastern UP has seen far too many Covid-19 deaths to feel positive about his administration, and the change of leadership in other election going states must have shaken him. However, the central leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has spared him for the moment. A desperate Adityanath is using the state's public relations budget to bolster his developmental successes and welfare initiatives.
The Central government has put its shoulder to giving momentum to the distribution of freebies before the state Assembly elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose to launch the Ujjwala-2 scheme of distributing free LPG cylinders from UP, which is expected to benefit about 20 lakh households in the state. The state is already distributing free food grains – 3 kg of wheat and 2 kg of rice – to about 14.81 crore beneficiaries under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Anna Kalyan Yojna. This will continue till November this year.
In passing a supplementary budget on August 19 this year, the state government announced a Rs 3,000 crore scheme to provide tablets or smartphones to students and a '"preparatory allowance" for students preparing for competitive exams for a maximum of three such exams. Here, Yogi took a leaf out of the Samajwadi Party's book, which had promised free laptops to attract young voters in the 2012 Assembly elections. The details of the schemes are to be announced later, no doubt nearer to the Assembly polls.
The state government has also announced its intention to increase the honorarium of Anganwadi workers and helpers. As the elections come nearer, the state in tandem with the Centre is likely to announce many more welfare schemes.
But the latest exercise of name-calling gives state patronage a communal twist. Adityanath's suggestion is that his government distributes subsidies more fairly to poor and marginalised Hindus than earlier regimes. It suggests that welfare measures will be peddled in a way that will consolidate their support, papering over internal caste cleavages.
However, it has been pointed out that Adityanath's claim of free food grains being cornered by Muslims are not factually correct. At the fag end of the previous supposedly pro-Muslim regime under the Samajwadi Party, four months before Adityanath became the chief minister, the total ration beneficiaries stood at 14.01 crore. Today the total number of ration cards issued in the state stands at 3.59 crore, covering 14.86 crore beneficiaries. By no logic could the majority of these beneficiaries have been Muslim, as according to the 2011 Census, there were 15.9 crore Hindus in the state and only 3.84 crore Muslims. The census numbers do not support Adityanath's claims.
Even if it is factually untrue, the communal rhetoric in which he wraps state patronage could rally the majority community behind him, including those castes that have been the support base of the Samajwadi Party. This kind of communalisation, it is assumed, would coax them to stand with the larger Hindu community against "undeserving" Muslims.
Adityanath, in effect, has turned out to be a good student of Prime Minister Modi. He has picked up all the latter's stratagems in the run-up to the 2014 general elections mobilising the electorate by talking of a "development model" while making egregiously communal remarks in the same breath.
Will this latest attempt to create a horizontal consolidation around state welfare measures amongst Hindus as a community, which pits them against wily, "pampered" and "undeserving" Muslims, work? Will this bring in the rest of the Hindu vote over and above the "core vote" of the BJP? Adityanath surely hopes that "Abba Jaan" will save him.
For the moment, Prime Minister Modi will ensure the largesse of the Centre to promote Adityanath's promises of freebies because he needs a win in the UP Assembly to set the momentum for the 2024 general election. But his cutting Adityanath to size after he wins the UP election would be very much on the cards.
(The writer is a journalist based in Delhi)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.