For the first time since the formation of Jharkhand in 2000, the state will have a non-tribal as its chief minister. The BJP’s choice of Raghubar Das, a five-time MLA and a former deputy CM, was arguably necessitated by the defeat of former CM Arjun Munda. It also draws, perhaps, from the party’s attempt to consolidate its non-tribal vote base in the state. Whatever the reason, Das must seize the opportunity and address the challenge: to run a clean and efficient administration which also reaches out to tribals. Jharkhand’s new CM must dispel any notion that he represents only a segment of society.
Though the numerous tribal communities together constitute only 32 per cent of the state’s population, political parties have always privileged tribal identity over other criteria when it came to choosing the CM. By that token, the identity issue could be said to have run out of its charge in this election — four former chief ministers, all tribals and from different political parties, lost. The underlying impulse for the creation of Jharkhand was not merely to give representation to tribals in government but to achieve an inclusive and effective administration that would also address their specific needs. The Jharkhand movement — and the statehood demand — that gained popular support in the 1970s did not limit itself to the assertion of tribal identity but campaigned against usury, dowry, alcoholism, superstitions. Its emancipatory agenda had a strong economic and reformist content. The decline of the JMM, which emerged out of the mass movement, began when the party was seen to ignore the original vision that led to the call for a separate state and concentrated its energies, instead, on playing up the tribal-non-tribal divide.
