Domicile damnation

It’s a bit like pulling out a rabbit from a hat. For a while back then, Jharkhand Chief Minister Babulal Marandi had looked a cornered man. Detractors were piping up both within his party and without, especially within and particularly after his government lost its first popularity test in the Santhal heartland in the Dumka by-polls. The odds were stacked against his continuance in the hot seat at Ranchi. Until he pulled out a new domicile policy, like a rabbit from a hat. The new policy makes it mandatory for all applicants for Class III and IV government jobs to prove their ancestral roots in the state on the basis of the 1932 khatian, or land records. Couple this with the reservation policy introduced earlier, that provides 73 per cent reservation for tribals, backward classes and Dalits in jobs and technical institutions, and the state is set for a tumult that reminds many of Mandal’s immediate aftermath. Over the last few days, there has been a rash of bandhs called by groups who are either for the domicile policy or against it, protests have turned violent, innocent lives have been lost, curfew imposed, shoot at sight orders issued. The social polarisation in Jharkhand between the tribals and non-tribals is bloody and near complete, the Opposition is divided — and Chief Minister Marandi may have just settled more comfortably on his throne.

So will this domicile policy really be Marandi’s ticket to more power and another term? Will he emerge at the head of a brand new winning coalition that includes the Adivasis and the Moolvasis? Or will the disgruntled sections of non-tribals, Biharis and the business classes, traditional voters of the BJP, nix his chances to form another government? These are terribly cynical questions to ask at a time when Jharkhand is roiled by grim conflict. But then, the events in Jharkhand today reek of crass opportunism and rank cynicism.

The impetus for carving out the new state in 2000 came from the BJP’s frustration at not being able to make wide enough inroads in Laloo’s Bihar. The new state — the calculation was — could provide a more hospitable site for a new BJP bastion. Now the BJP-led government’s domicile policy is born of a leader’s insecurity about holding on to a slipping fief. Amid the thinly veiled political strategies and electoral calculations, therefore, the rhetoric of protecting the interests of the tribals sounds like a very cruel joke. What is happening in Jharkhand today is born of bad faith and worse politics. It will only deepen the old divisions in the state even as it creates new ones.