Jharkhand Crisis: What Deepened Fault Lines in the State’s Political Landscape

Despite having been marred by Maoist violence since formation, Chattisgarh looks politically stable than Jharkhand.

In many ways, Jharkhand resembles the Uttar Pradesh of the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of this century where decisive mandates and majorities were as elusive as water in a desert.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

The tribal, resource-rich yet poor Jharkhand has been grabbing headlines in recent weeks for three reasons. The first is, the looming sword of disqualification hanging over the Chief Minster Hemant Soren who is de fact boss--the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM).

The second is, persistent allegations levelled by alliance partners JMM, Congress and the RJD who run the government that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is trying to topple the government by misusing central agencies and by trying to bribe alliance MLAs.

Hemant Soren comfortably won a confidence vote on 5 September in the assembly when 48 members of the 81 member assembly extended support. The third is, the sudden spate of brutal murders reported from the state.

Jharkhand Steeped in Political Quicksand

Depending on one's ideological leanings, readers will tend to blame the BJP or the JMM-led alliance for the shenanigans in the state. Much has been written about all this already but let's look at the two trends that can be discerned when electoral and other data are analysed objectively.

Firstly, why has Jharkhand been plagued by political instability ever since it became a state on 15 November 2000.

This can be followed up with why Jharkhand has failed to reap any benefits of breaking away from Bihar to provide more material prosperity to its citizens.

Changing Faces of Coalition Governments

Let's look at the political instability angle first. Two largely tribal, resource-rich and yet, hopelessly poor states Chattisgarh and Jharkhand were carved out of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar respectively in 2000 when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA coalition government was in power at the centre. Another state, Uttarakhand was carved out of Uttar Pradesh at the same time. Unlike the bitterness witnessed during the creation of Telengana, the 2000 move was done without much rancour or anger.

Look at what has happened politically in Chattisgarh. For three years, it was ruled by the Congress with the late Ajit Jogi as the chief minister. Between 2003 and 2018, the BJP won three successive assembly elections with Dr Raman Singh being the chief minister.

In 2018, the Congress won a massive victory and Bhupesh Baghel will soon be completing four years as chief minister. In effect, the state of Chattisgarh has had three chief ministers in 22 years. Now look at Jharkhand. The state has seen eleven chief ministers in the same time period.

One of the chief ministers was a gentleman called Madhu Koda who was an independent MLA supported by JMM and the Congress. The astonishing fact is that Koda remained chief minster for almost two years. He was convicted on charges of corruption related to allotment of mines and sentenced to three years in jail in 2017.

The father of Hemant Soren, Shibu Soren too has served two short stints as chief minister. President's rule has been imposed three times as alliances formed and broke up in the race to capture political power.

Both Jharkhand and Chattisgarh have been marred by Maoist violence ever since they were formed. Yet, politically, Chattisgarh looks like an island of political stability compared to Jharkhand.

Is Jharkhand the New UP?

The reasons can be easily found in the data available with the Election Commission of India. Chattisgarh has seen a predominantly bi-polar competition between the Congress and the BJP with the Bahujan Samajwadi Party(BSP) emerging as a marginal player for a while.

Not surprisingly, the state has witnessed political stability. In sharp contrast, Jharkhand has been a multi-polar battleground where no party or even alliance has been able to conjure up a decisive majority that stays stable.

In many ways, Jharkhand resembles the Uttar Pradesh of the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of this century where decisive mandates and majorities were as elusive as water in a desert.

The state has seen four assembly elections in the last 22 years, the first one in 2005 and the last one in 2019.

The highest vote share managed by any party in the four elections has been 33.3% by the BJP in 2019 when it lost to the JMM-led alliance. The highest vote share gained by the homegrown JMM that struggled for decades to create Jharkhand was 20.4% in 2014 when it lost the elections. The Congress managed to cross the 15% vote share mark only once in 2009 when it garnered 16.1% of the vote share.

Alliances Fail To Stand a Winning Chance

When one examines the number of seats won by various parties, the reason for chronic political instability becomes even more clear. The majority mark in the Jharkhand assembly is 42. The maximum number of seats won by any party in the four previously held elections has been 37 by the BJP in 2014. That is five short of the majority mark.

The next best performance has been 30 seats by the JMM in 2019 and 30 by the BJP in 2005. That is 12 short of an absolute majority. In other words, no party has won an absolute majority in the entire history of Jharkhand electoral politics since 2000.

In such a scenario, inherently unstable alliances with in-built centrifugal forces have become the norm. That much can be easily gleaned from data provided by the Election Commission.

The Sorry State of Homegrown Parties

There are two more reasons that dig deeper into the developments beyond the data reveal. The first is the inability of the JMM to significantly expand its political footprint as the main regional, home grown party in the state.

Regional parties like SP, RJD, BJD, Akali Dal, AGP, DMK and AIADMK, TRS, TDP & YSR Congress along with the TMC have all won a majority in their states on their own. Not JMM. In this context, the JMM resembles the Shiv Sena, another homegrown party that has never managed to win a majority in the Maharashtra assembly since it was formed in 1966.

Barring a miracle, the Shiv Sena can form a government either with the BJP or with the Congress and NCP as allies. The JMM faces exactly the same situation. It is unlikely for it to form a government without relying on alliance partners like the Congress and the RJD & JD(U) which are marginal players in the state.

What Pushed Back BJP in the State?

If one examines the data available with the Election Commission more closely, the clear-cut conclusion is that the BJP could have emerged as the dominant party in the state if not for a “historic” blunder.

Look at the electoral data since 2009. An outfit called Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM) has fought three assembly elections. It won 9%, 10% and about 5.5% of the vote share respectively in 2009, 2014 and 2019. The party won 11, 8 and 3 seats respectively in the same time period.

Now that is bland electoral data. What the Election Commission data doesn’t say is more significant. The JVM was a party formed by the tribal BJP leader Babulal Marandi in 2006, in an act of revolt against by the party. Marandi was the first chief minister of Jharkhand and a rare politician who was admired even by his opponents for integrity.

In the aftermath of the shock, Lok Sabha election suffered by the BJP in 2004, the party seemed to have gone into a suicidal spiral by neglecting or humiliating grassroots leaders ranging from Kalyan Singh to Uma Bharti.

Babulal Marandi too was a victim who felt humiliated. Look at the 2019 assembly elections data. The BJP won 33.3% of the vote share and the JVM won 5.45% of the vote share. If the two had fought as one unit, the vote share of the BJP could have been about 39% of the total, ahead of the JMM-led alliance.

Perhaps, the BJP realised its blunder and welcomed Marandi back into its fold in 2020 when the JVM merged with the BJP. A clear case of missed opportunities.

Chhatisgarh Fared Better in Mitigating Poverty

So much for the political see saws in the state. The other trend that can be noticed is the relatively poor performance of Jharkhand compared to Chattisgarh when it comes to human development and ease of living indicators.

Back in 2000, both the states had extremely high poverty rates, with very high infant and maternal mortality and very low access to sanitation, clean cooking fuel, safe drinking water, electricity, and bank accounts. The same was true of neighbouring Odisha that also has a large tribal population.

Since then, the trajectory of Chattisgarh and Jharkhand have been dramatically different. This was revealed by an important initiative of the Niti Ayog that published a multi dimensional poverty report for India in late 2021. This MPI Index and Report have taken a different approach to measure poverty and deprivation that is now globally accepted as a better measure than mere counting of family income and expenditure as a measure.

The MPI Index measures poverty or ease of living based on 12 parameters that is an expanded version of the Human Development Index released every year by the the United Nations.

Chattisgarh performs far better than Jharkhand. As per the Niti Ayog MPI Index, the poverty rate in India is 25.1%, far higher than the 12% or even 3% estimated by income and expenditure estimates. As per the Niti Ayog MPI Index, 29.91% of people in Chattisgarh suffer from poverty. Kerala reports less than 1% poverty rate in this index. The figure for Jharkhand 42.16%, making it the second most deprived state after Bihar from which it attained “independence” to make lives easier for local citizens.

In virtually every parameter, Jharkhand lags behind Chattisgarh. About 44% of families in Jharkhand did not have access to clean cooking fuel in 2021 compared to 29% in Chattisgarh. Close to 40% of citizens in Jharkhand have no access to sanitation compared to 26% for Chattisgarh. Look at all the 12 parameters and Jharkhand comes a poor second.

In fact, if one compares the data with another poor Maoist violence-ridden state like Odisha with a large tribal population, the Jharkhand situation looks even more grim.

What Caused a Series of Setbacks in Jharkhand

Anyone would be genuinely puzzled by this. Has political stability in Chattisgarh and Odisha since 2000 been the reason why they have outperformed Jharkhand in human development and poverty parameters? Many might argue that this could be a lazy conclusion.

After all, India was ruled by “minority” governments between 1991 and 2014. Despite political instability and the decision-making problems that alliance governments confront, the GDP growth rate of India was quite high in that period. More importantly, close to 300 million Indians were lifted above poverty levels during this politically “unstable” period. It would be both lazy and unfair to blame political instability in Jharkhand for the poor economic performance.

Besides the fact that the state has seen 11 chief ministers in the last 22 year is basically a glass-half-empty context when you go in details. The glass-half-full context would be that in first 14 years of Statehood, the State witnessed 9 Chief Ministers. But it has witnessed only 2 CMs in last 8 years, with BJP’s Raghubar Das being the first ever CM in the state to have completed full 5 years term between 2014 to 2019.

Along with NDA allies the BJP had won a full majority in 2014 while along with UPA allies the JMM got full majority in 2019 elections. Add to the fact the Jharkhand was under 3 phases of President’s rule counting for 628 days in total, almost 2 years out of the first 14 years.

If you add these phases of President's Rule, you will realise as a matter of fact the power changed hands 12 times in first 14 years; but only twice in last 8 years. That for all practical matters confirms people’s mandate for stability and development, even though a bit late by a decade and a half. The authors would urge both scholars of politics and economists to analyse this phenomenon.

(Yashwant Deshmukh is founder and editor in chief of C Voter Research Foundation & Sutanu Guru is Executive Director. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)