The Shah of Modi Government and India’s Future
The most talked-about person in the new council of ministers of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah. His induction in the new cabinet and being given the charge of the Home portfolio was not entirely unexpected, given the intense speculation about it in the media in the run-up to the government formation. Shah replaces Rajnath Singh, who was the home minister during the entire five-year duration of Modi's first term as prime minister.
There are a number of reasons for Modi drafting in his new government a man who has been known as an astute party organisation man with great capabilities for both macro- and micro-level management of the party during his stint as BJP chief for the last three years. Shah is Modi's eyes and ears in the party, and that role will now be extended to the government. Now that both Modi and Shah—who have worked closely since 1980s during their days together in Gujarat politics—are there in the cabinet and Shah remains party president, there is expected to be a lot more political and ideological synergy between the government and the party in the coming years.
The key questions the Indian government has to deal with are: what happens to lakhs of people who do not find their names in the final approved NRC and their livelihood? Do they become stateless persons?
There are a number of reasons for Shah's induction in the cabinet and being made the home minister. First, given the ideological commitment of Modi and Shah and their shared vision for the future of India, the latter's presence in the government is likely to help sharpen its focus on the BJP's Hindutva plank on crucial issues. The Modi-Shah duo can be realistic up to a point but are not likely to compromise on Hindutva in any manner. Secondly, a new second rung of the BJP leadership in the government has emerged after the exit of Arun Jaitley, who opted out of the new ministry on health grounds, and Sushma Swaraj. Both were in their late sixties. But more importantly, the induction of Shah, 54, may have put in place a new line of succession if and when 69-year-old Modi steps out. The fact that Shah was the third cabinet minister to take oath after Modi and Rajnath has not gone unnoticed. The challenge for Shah is to prove that he is adept not only as an organisation man but also, perhaps in equal measure, in governance and delivery.
Among Shah's immediate challenges is the implementation of the controversial National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam once the final list is published after July this year, and the situation that may arise in the north-eastern state thereafter. The final draft of NRC has left out over four million people, including Muslims and Hindus, and the process of objections and claims to inclusion is now on. The Supreme Court has refused to extend the deadline for the NRC roll-out beyond July 31.
The key questions the Indian government has to deal with are: what happens to lakhs of people who do not find their names in the final approved NRC and their livelihood? Do they become stateless persons? Will they continue to have the right to own properties? Many of them are in government and private sector jobs. Will they be thrown out or will they need work permit to continue? Will they lose voting rights and will their names be deleted from voters' lists? Besides, the BJP manifesto and Shah himself at different election rallies had promised to extend the NRC in other parts of India, and the most to be affected after Assam will be West Bengal.
Apart from the landslide electoral mandate across much of the country, what seems to have given added confidence to the BJP to push ahead with the NRC is that it has succeeded in navigating through the tricky issue of Citizenship Amendment Bill—which seeks to give citizenship to religious minorities who shift to India from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan—with little damage to it in the recent parliamentary election in the seven north-eastern states where the issue of illegal immigration from Bangladesh is a highly emotive issue. In the run-up to the election, the Citizenship Amendment Bill had created a groundswell of protests from the non-Bangla speaking population in the majority of areas in the North East but was welcomed by Bangla-speaking Hindus, especially in the Barak Valley in Assam.
The Congress and other opposition parties tried to capitalise on the protests, and two BJP allies in Nagaland and Mizoram threatened to part ways with the BJP. There was a point of time when the BJP was concerned about the impact that the Citizenship Bill might have in the Brahmaputra Valley region of Assam dominated by Assamese language-speaking people.
But as the poll results showed, the BJP has, in fact, gained two more seats this time than in the previous national election five years ago, taking its tally of seats from seven to nine out of the total of 14 in Assam. The BJP not only won both the seats in the Barak Valley but also won one of the two parliamentary seats in Arunachal Pradesh, and most of the other seats in other north-eastern states were bagged by the party or its allies. In the Brahmaputra Valley, the BJP's good show is explained by a combination of factors: its promise to protect the identity of non-Bangla-speaking ethnic groups by implementing the NRC, as per Clause 6 of the 1985 Assam Accord, and giving constitutional status to six ethnic groups in the Brahmaputra Valley, promising the Citizenship Bill in the Barak Valley and by development measures including construction of two major river bridges and welfare schemes in tea garden areas.
Ironically, two BJP allies in Assam—the Asom Gana Parishad, a tie-up with which has given wider acceptability of the BJP among Assamese-speaking people, and the Bodoland People's Front—failed to win a single seat. True, the Citizenship Bill lapsed because it could not be mandatorily passed in the Rajya Sabha, where the BJP lacked majority, after its approval in the previous Lok Sabha. The BJP still lacks majority in the Rajya Sabha, and its hopes to turn the numbers game in the Upper House rest on its win in a series of assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand later this year (members of state assemblies elect members of the Rajya Sabha as and when seats fall vacant there).
Under Shah as home minister, the BJP is expected to push the Hindutva agenda more aggressively not only through the NRC and the Citizenship Bill but also through the scrapping of the Constitution's Article 370 that gives special status to Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir and Article 35A that the party considers "discriminatory" against non-permanent residents and women in the state. With the BJP having secured a bigger majority of its own this time than in 2014 and the opposition weaker than before, Hindutva politics is set to take firmer roots.
Pallab Bhattacharya is a special correspondent for The Daily Star.
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