The political
developments in the last 30 days may have surely given Goans a sense of déjà
vu. With BJP’s Laxmikant Parsekar appearing to revolt, and two Congress MLAs
joining the BJP, Goans may have remembered the decades of political instability
from the 1970s. The logical question to ask, therefore, is why has Goa
witnessed such fragile political regimes? Is there something deeper than merely
opportunism and avarice in Goan politics?
If one looks at
the earliest elections held in Goa under Indian rule, primordial ties of caste
and sub-castes determined the outcomes of elections. They still do, of course. Religion
played a part too in the propaganda, but underlying the religious propaganda
were the intricate tentacles of caste and sub-caste alliances. Goa’s first
chief minister, Dayanand Bandodkar and his MGP came to power by routing a
largely Saraswat caste-led Indian National Congress. While the defeat was
humiliating for the Congress, for Bandodkar and his MGP, the victory heralded a
new configuration of political power and reforms. Bandodkar’s regime was made
up of a conglomeration of bahujan castes positioned against upper caste
interests, which in due course of time, as Goa University’s Parag Porobo writes
in India’s First Democratic Revolution (2015), started disintegrating as
the alliance partners, sub-castes within a larger bahujan class, vied for power
with each other.
The manner in
which Bandodkar’s MGP fragmented due to internal schisms and how politics was
structured post-Bandodkar teaches us a thing or two about Goan politics. Recent
events suggest that the age-old pattern of fragile political alliances is
firmly in place. One can suggest that the fragmented nature of the society allows
dominant caste groups to form strategic alliances with one or two of these
bahujan sub-castes, in the absence of a consolidated bahujan class. ‘Catholics’
and ‘Muslims’ can also work in a similar way in certain circumstances. For a
small state like Goa, within the Indian electoral system of simple majorities,
this caste and sub-caste alliances mean that governments can be toppled with
one or two ‘rebel’ MLAs.
The rot goes
deeper as the social, economic, and political power is concentrated in the
hands of a few. Those who already have money and social privilege have been the
most successful in capturing political power and also concentrating it in the
hands of their coteries. After all, even Bandodkar could mobilize such support
because he had the means to; he was an established businessman in the mining
sector. Essentially, if we are to understand the role economic capital, or
money, plays in elections one should not simply think of it as “greed” but the
ability of various groups to pool their resources together.
While
Bandodkar’s regime was the only one that can be considered to push for social
justice by extending land and education rights to sections of society that were
hitherto denied these, successive government seem to be undoing these reforms.
There is no need to look any further than the politicking over the Medium of
Instruction controversy and the massive land grabs in recent times. Arguably,
such a political and social setup does little to bring about positive change.
The voters have to depend on a strong
leader, i.e. an autocrat-like ruler, largely to
ensure that they get government jobs and their “work” gets done. The voters
here are not equal citizens, whose right it is to enjoy the benefits of
democracy, but they are clients to, and supplicants before, the leader who is
the patron.
Wasn’t it a
short time ago, February 2017 to be precise, that the office of the Election
Commission, through its Chief Electoral Officer, launched
a media campaign encouraging the citizens of Goa to vote in large numbers?
Given how the current BJP government was formed and the current chaos, the
campaign by the election commission, in hindsight, appears to be a cruel joke
on the people of Goa. One could argue that the brief of the Election Commission
does not go beyond ensuring free and fair elections. But who is to be held
responsible for the chaos and uncertainty into which Goa descends after the
elections? While elections appear to be a good start towards the control of our
own destiny, the unaccountability and shameless backtracking from campaign
promises would suggest otherwise. Moreover, short-term and strategic political
alliances – all beneficial to the political class and their small coterie of
supporters – give us cause to believe that our votes in reality are not
valuable at all.
I do not want to
suggest that all is lost. As O Heraldo columnist Amita Kanekar suggested
a while ago, fragile alliances, leading to fragile governments, are actually
useful in stopping the complete annihilation of the Goan people and landscape
that the ruling establishment seems currently bent on. One could agree or
disagree on the usefulness of fragile alliances for safeguarding Goa. The
reasons for such alliances emerging are complex, fragmented social condition
being the chief amongst them. At the end of the day, most people in Goa feel
cheated with the political situation and the succeeding generations will bear
the cost of damages created by the recent governments.
(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 7 November, 2018)
