POLITICS-INDIA: Sari Stampede Shrouds ‘Shining India’ Slogan

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Apr 20 2004 (IPS) - As voting began Tuesday for India’s parliamentary elections, one of the more powerful images of the election campaign is that of scores of impoverished women being crushed and trampled to death in a stampede for cheap, one-dollar saris distributed in Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s constituency of Lucknow.

At least 22 women died in a frenzied rush for the lengths of unstitched cloth, symbolic of womanhood in South Asia, which were being distributed free by Lalji Tandon, top leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in northern Uttar Pradesh state, during the election campaign. Lucknow is the state capital.

Tuesday marks the start of four-phased elections in India that will end on May 10, with some 670 million voters casting their ballots. Thirteen states went to the polls on Tuesday. The BJP quickly moved into damage control mode and disassociated itself from the tragedy, saying the Apr. 12 sari distribution programme was held by Tandon to mark his 70th birthday and had nothing to do with the party or Vajpayee’s campaign. Tandon was divested of his job as Vajpayee’s poll agent.

When Vajpayee filed his nomination papers in Lucknow two days later, on Apr. 14, the atmosphere was funereal and far removed from the celebratory din and bustle that would have marked an incumbent prime minister’s return to his pet constituency and lay claim to represent it for another five years.

In a television interview broadcast Sunday by the ‘NDTV24x7’ channel, Vajpayee admitted that even he could not understand how so many women could have turned up for the saris. ”This is something I have not yet understood,” the veteran politician said dejectedly and somewhat lamely.

Asked if the incident had dented the much criticised ‘Shining India’ campaign launched by his party managers to extol economic progress under his leadership, Vajpayee admitted: ”While some parts were shining, there were also some dark aspects. We were shocked. Just by seeing the shining part won’t do. We have to look at the other aspects too.”

Purushottam Aggarwal, expert on northern India’s complex politics and professor at the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), told IPS in an interview that there was grim irony in the somewhat boastful ‘Shining India’ campaign coming to such an ignominious and grim end in Vajpayee’s own constituency.

”What can be more telling of the real economic situation in the country than that of poor women trampling each other to death for cheap saris being given away free in the Prime Minister’s own constituency?” Aggarwal said.

Official estimates say that although Lucknow is primarily urban, 30 percent of its population lives below the poverty line and earn less than a dollar a day. It also rates poorly on human development indices and for instance, has a high infant mortality rate of 97 deaths per thousand.

Aggarwal said he feared the sari tragedy could cost Vajpayee his parliamentary seat in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state with 170 million people and considered India’s political powerhouse.

”He has already betrayed a lack of confidence in winning Lucknow by asking his main opponent Ram Jethmalani to withdraw from the fray on the grounds of old friendship,” Aggarwal pointed out.

But after dithering over the prime ministerial request for days, Jethmalani, a brilliant lawyer who briefly served as union law minister in Vajpayee’s cabinet, announced at a press conference Monday that he would not withdraw his candidature – and that the sari disaster would be one of the main issues.

To add to Vajpayee’s woes, the BJP’s main rival, the opposition Congress party, declared simultaneously that it is withdrawing its candidate in Lucknow and is prepared to do whatever else it could to improve Jethmalani’s chances.

Although politically independent, Jethmalani has always opposed the Congress party and its policies, but now says the party is a lesser evil than the BJP.

”I have said before that this government has to be changed or the country’s unity would be in danger – I am standing by it,” Jethmalani said of a dispensation in which he was an important member until his resignation over the pro-Hindu, BJP’s overtly communal politics in July 2000.

Vajpayee, who will be 80 this year, has already expressed disinterest in fighting the present elections. Analysts have said that he probably plans to retire after seeing the BJP through the elections and hand over the reins to his energetic deputy and long-time associate, Lal Krishna Advani.

Although Vajpayee has had rare success in managing contradictions inherent in an ideologically diverse, multi-party ruling coalition – of which the BJP is only one component – his critics say this has been achieved at the cost of real governance.

Typically, Vajpayee found himself facing charges of inaction while a BJP government in western Gujarat state, led by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, unleashed a pogrom on the state’s minority Muslim community two years ago that left more than 2,000 people dead.

Meantime, Vajpayee’s woes are far from over.

He is now being accused by his political opponents of defending his former poll agent Lalji Tandon, who not only faces charges of criminal negligence for the sari distribution ceremony but has also brought the wrath of the Election Commission on the BJP for violating its ‘model code of conduct’ by trying to buy votes with saris.

”Instead of ensuring that the guilty are punished, the prime minister is showing a lack of sensitivity toward the victims of this tragedy by jumping to the defence of Lalji Tandon,” said Anand Sharma, official spokesman for the Congress party.

Pre-poll surveys indicate that the party is expected to come in a poor second behind the BJP-led coalition or National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

”The BJP may fall back on the technicality that Lalji Tandon was only distributing saris to mark his own birthday. But Vajpayee could have owned moral responsibility for the tragedy and for the blatant violation of the Election Commission’s norms in a key constituency,” commented Aggarwal.