Gujarat Hardlook | On That Note, My Vote: A look at the key issues on voters’ minds this election

A group of women, including college students, sit around a hose as they fill pots and large water bottles. “The water comes once or twice in a week and someone spots it and tells us, and we all fill our pots,” says Ritaba Sisodia, a local.

These locals in Jamnagar’s Kanalus village – dominated by Rajputs – say they have not heard about the Kshatriya protests against Rupala. The absence of a high school in their village is the poll issue that matters for them. “Our girls have to drop out of school because we cannot send them to another village after Class 8,” says Ritaba.

Jalpa Vaghela, 20, who takes a free bus ride provided by the state government everyday to attend a college in Jamnagar — about 35 km away — for studying commerce, says that she hasn’t decided yet as to who will get her vote when she exercises her franchise for the first time in the Lok Sabha elections on Tuesday.

Women fill pots at Kanalus village of Jamnagar. (Express File Photo)

“But look at these overflowing open drains. Getting enough drinking water is a huge problem in this village. Water that our village panchayat supplies through pipeline is so salty that one can’t use to even for bathing,” Jalpa says, adding, “The nearest government high school in Sikka is around 20 km away from our village and villagers can’t afford fees of a private high school in nearby Padana village as people’s earnings are not that big.” Hundreds of kilometres away, in Bahediya village of Sabarkantha, water is a poll issue for Dimple Solanki (21). A third-year student of a private nursing college in Khedbrahma, Dimple recently welcomed Congress leaders at a public meeting in their village by offering them flowers and applying tilak on their foreheads.

Speaking with The Indian Express, Dimple says, “I support Congress. We are facing a problem of drinking water in our village. Pipelines and taps have been installed under ‘Nal se Jal’ (scheme of the government), but we don’t get water in it. We get our drinking water from a personal borewell that we have prepared.”

At The ‘Onion Bowl’ In Mahuva

Last year, in December, farmers in Bhavnagar’s Mahuva town – ‘the onion bowl of Gujarat’ – and other parts of the state had blocked roads after the central government banned onion export. At the Mahuva Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC), onion prices crashed from an average Rs 462 per mann (20 kg) to around Rs 210 within four days. A similar drop was also witnessed in 2020 after the government banned exports to rein in soaring prices. Arguably, these are the issues that are playing on the minds of farmers this poll season.

“Rs 400 per mann would be a worthwhile price but that can happen only if our onions are exported,” says Nanji Shiyal, 48, a farmer from Khared village of Mahuva after his onion produce was auctioned off at rate of Rs 256 per mann at the mandi late last month. “Onion prices rise once in four years and if the government intervenes during such periods, farmers are denied their chance of recovering losses of previous years,” says the farmer who has studied till Class 3.

Mahesh Bhukan, a farmer, unloads his onion produce at the APMC mandi, in Mahuva. (Express Photo by Gopal Kateshiya)

Ghanshyam Patel, chairman of Mahuva APMC, says the central government will have to find a long-term solution to address price volatility. “From the peak of Rs 2,100 per mann in January 2020, onion prices crashed to Rs 50 per mann last summer. This summer, they are hovering at around Rs 200. This gives one an idea how volatile the price remains. In such a market, farmers will be able to sustain themselves if the government remains considerate in its actions when it becomes a sellers’ market. Dehydrated onion is an easy substitute during days of high onion prices. But the policy of making fresh onion available to all the people all the time, even at the cost of farmers, will have its own price to pay in the long run,” says the cooperative leader.

Mahesh Bhukan, 23, a farmer of Taredi village, agrees with Patel. “Not only onion prices, onion yields also remain volatile, especially during the Kharif season and a liberal exports policy will do farmers a world of good,” he says as sweat streams down his forehead while unloading his onion bags from a tractor trailer on Mahuva APMC yard.

His onion was sold at Rs 225 per mann last month. “This price will barely cover the cultivation cost,” says the farmer who dropped out of school after he failed the Class 10 exam. “I vote for a good candidate and mostly BJP provides a good candidate,” he says. In Bildi village of Mahuva, Karan Sankhat, 31, a sharecropper with no formal education, says he is not able to get his head around the onion market. “When I sow groundnut, prices will be good. But by the time it is time to harvest and cart my onion to market, prices go bust. This is not fair from a farmer’s point of view,” says Sankhat as he oversees labourers harvesting onion from his farm, adding, “This time, I am going to vote for a change and give a chance to someone else.”

Recounting Horror of Flash Floods

In September 2023, flash floods caused by sudden release of water from the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River destroyed nearly 25 homes in Juna Chhapra village of Ankleshwar taluka in Bharuch district, which was among the worst hit .

In the village of mixed communities, Bhavna Vasava, a tribal, says her house became a pile of bricks. She shows a picture saved on her mobile phone. Her daughter, who is 16, dropped out of school after the floods. “Nobody did anything when the water came. We applied for compensation and half the (affected) people got Rs 7,000. We haven’t got anything yet”, says Bhavnaben

Bhavna Vasava’s house in Bharuch was reduced to a pile of bricks in the flash floods. (Express File Photo)

“You can’t even build a wall with Rs 7,000,” says Bhuriben, whose kitchen area got washed out. “Who has seen Mansukh (Vasava)?” says Suresh Vasava, Bhuriben’s husband, who were among those who got the Rs 7,000 compensation, suggesting that the BJP candidate has not come to this village of mixed population comprising OBCs, tribals and others, but they respect their sarpanch, who is also from the BJP. “Our sarpanch helped us salvage our belongings,” they say in unison.

Job Quest & Paper Leaks

It’s a blazing afternoon and two students are waiting for a bus at the campus of Saurashtra University in Rajkot. Rakesh Vasani (25) — one of the two students — has taken up a day job to fund his education and other expenses. He polishes diamonds in two shifts – from 8 am-11 am and 1 pm-6 pm – and earns up to Rs 18,000 a month. Hailing from Lilapur village of Rajkot’s Jasdan taluka, he is pursuing Masters of Arts in History from Saurashtra University. Amid his pursuit of a government job, Rakesh has so far taken five competitive exams but four got cancelled because of paper leaks. “I want to get into the police force”, Rakesh tells The Indian Express. But he is angry that the government announces vacancies “only when there are elections”.

“Nobody comes to us after elections,” says Rakesh. His parents are labourers back in Lilapur. They have five children and Rakesh’s brothers are also diamond polishers. He finds both the ruling BJP and rival Congress “unimpressive”.

Also, he does not relate to the recent controversy linked to the BJP’s Rajkot candidate and Union Minister Parshottam Rupala over his alleged anti-Kshatriya comments. “They (protesters from the community) should forget it and move on,” he says. Demands for withdrawal of Rupala’s candidature grew in the last few weeks as did the protests over his comments.

Karan Rathod, another student standing next to Rakesh, is also from Jasdan, in pursuit of a government job and has taken several competitive exams, at times “missing the merit list by two marks. His father is employed with the Indian Postal Service.

Youth in Chhota Udepur say unemployment is a major issue this election season. (Express Photo by Bhupendra Rana)

Jobs remain a major election issue for both Karan and Rakesh, who represent an average young voter in Rajkot. They say their vote usually goes to the candidate and not the party.

Sapna Meena, 23, a student of M.Pharm at Saurashtra University, puts “unemployment” at the top on her list of electoral issues, and says, “The frequent paper leaks cause immense mental agony.” Daughter of a railway employee, she aspires to work for the government as it would help her maintain a “work-life balance”. “Exam dete hain, aur ghar pahunchte pata chalta hai ki paper leak ho gaya (We take the exam and reach home to realise the paper has leaked),” says Meena, who has her roots in Rajasthan.

Hiren Makwana, 30, a civil engineer with a multinational firm which is executing a project of the Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC), however, is of the view that paper leaks are not a new issue. “It is possible that people didn’t come to know about the leaks earlier. But now, the situation is different,” Makwana says.
The engineer, who hails from Junagadh, also says that one can’t keep waiting for a government job endlessly. “If one is talented, private jobs are equally well-paying,” he says.

Drawing parallels between politics and the private sector, he says, “Ones who work for people, get elected. Performance is all that matters,” he says.
In Chhota Udepur, Sunilkumar Rathwa, 28, from Khajuria village says that the lack of employment opportunities in tribal regions forces migration, which, he thinks, can end by setting up more industries in such areas.

Sunilkumar, who has completed a course from the Centre of Continuing Education (CCE), says, “It is a struggle to get jobs. The government jobs are out of reach and taking up a private job means moving to other cities like Surat, Bharuch or Saurashtra… The government needs to set up industries in tribal areas to increase opportunities in the region. In Narmada district, they (the government) have planned to increase tourism but in Chhota Udepur, except mines, there is no other way.”

Sunil is referring to the dolomite mines that are spread across the taluka. But for Veliya Thanak, a mine worker in Vanar village, mining is an industry for those who have no other skill.

Covered with mine dust, he sips tea from a saucer, and says, “We have grown up in this village and our fathers worked in mines. We grazed cattle as kids and as a natural progression took to mining after our fathers… It would not be a preference to work in mines if we had other opportunities?. Why would anyone be exposed willingly to the risk of silicosis? But we are uneducated and setting out in search of jobs in other cities would mean added expenditures. So we choose to stay back and work in mines and on our farms. My children go to school in the village but I am not sure what kind of opportunities await them later in life as nothing has changed for our village in the last five decades at least — there are no roads, no water connection, no hospitals in the vicinity…”

Hit-And-Miss

In Pithavadi village of Amreli district’s Savarkundla taluka, Kishor Aal, 23, a truck driver who is set to vote for the first time in Lok Sabha election, says that he votes for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “He has done lots of vikas (development). Roads in Amreli look good,” he says. Kishor dropped out of school after Class 10.

“But the (government) proposal to punish drivers with 10 years of imprisonment in hit-and-run cases was bad,” Kishor says, adding, “I have never seen a non-BJP government in Gujarat and elders tell us that Congress is gone for good. However, it is good to have candidates who are well-educated,” he further opines. Earlier this year, the new hit-and-run law that came with strict punishment was put on hold by the central government amid countrywide protests by transport bodies.

‘Kshatriya samaj first’

In Surat’s Moti Naroli village, Siddhrajsinh Vasi, a businessman, his father Ranjitsinh and uncle Natwarsinh are angry with Union minister Rupala for his comments against the community and say they will “vote against the BJP”, but they regard Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a “hero”.

“Now, this is a national election but when there is a village election, this issue will have an impact. People in the village will not forget this till the panchayat election,” says Siddhrajsinh, adding that no Rajput has got the ticket this time. “We know how prices rose, we know how much work was done, and we know how secure we are, but first our Kshatriya samaj and then BJP,” says Ranjitsinh, adding that there would have been “no democracy if Bhavnagar’s erstwhile ruler Krishnakumarsinh Gohil would not have signed the instrument of accession.” .