In Gujarat’s tribal belts, water, jobs on top of voters’ mind as BJP, INDIA scramble to woo them

Like Shobhli, others in the belt’s villages are waiting for their taps to provide water. “Tall promises were made when the taps were installed in our courtyards… We did not know that they were only showpieces to remind us we are not a population that deserves water from taps in our homes,” says Rami Rathwa in the Vanar village.

Stretching from the Banaskantha district in the north to Valsad in the south, the tribal region in Gujarat, which goes to polls on Tuesday, covers nine Lok Sabha constituencies. Many tribal women across these belts say the BJP campaign’s emphasis on the success of the Nal Se Jal scheme is “far from reality”.

Ashok Pateliya, an independent sarpanch of Dahod district’s Garbada, says the scheme has “failed”. “It is one of the major issues facing tribal areas of central Gujarat, where water schemes have been commissioned but seem to be implemented only on paper,” he said.

Last May, Gujarat Assembly Deputy Speaker Jetha Ahir said in a letter to Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel that the scheme had failed in his constituency, and demanded an inquiry into alleged “corruption”.

While access to drinking water is a perennial problem, another key issue in the tribal belt is unemployment. Ghanshyam Rathwa, 25, from Devaliya village in Chhota Udepur, has a bachelor’s degree in engineering but is yet to land a job. Instead, he is preparing for the Gujarat State Police Service exam. “Educated youth are only waiting to clear government exams as there are no opportunities in private companies in the tribal areas… There is no industrial development, which compels migration,” Ghanshyam said.

Although only four Lok Sabha seats – Chhota Udepur, Dahod, Bardoli and Valsad – out of the state’s 26 are reserved for the Scheduled Tribes (STs), tribal voters are also in sizeable numbers in the Sabarkantha, Bharuch, Panchmahal, Navsari and Banaskantha constituencies.

Though tribals, who account for 80 lakh of the state’s 6.5 crore population, have traditionally voted for the Congress, the scales tilted in favour of the BJP in the 2022 Assembly polls, when the party won 23 of the 27 ST seats, compared to the Congress’s three seats and its ally Bharatiya Tribal Party’s (BTP) two.

While the BJP’s campaign has been centred on ‘Modi ki guarantee’, and the Congress and its INDIA bloc ally Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s on jal, jungle and zameen and apprenticeship for unemployed youth, their poll promises do not appear to have created a resonance among tribal voters.

In Bhilpur village, Ishwar Rathwa, 28, a graduate from Chhota Udepur, says, “The two parties (the BJP and the Congress) have formed governments in the past. They made many promises but did not deliver. We do not believe the Rs 1 lakh per annum apprenticeship promise nor will we believe that the other party will give us Rs 2 lakhs… The fact is that getting private jobs is a struggle… And it comes after we have struggled to seek education too.”

As tribals from districts like Dahod and Chhota Udepur continue to migrate seeking work, BJP leaders admit the increased number of graduates has also meant a higher number of job seekers. Arjun Chaudhary, the state BJP’s ST Morcha head, says, “There is no doubt that every second home in tribal areas today has a science student and many children are taking up medicine and engineering from the tribal areas but the employment opportunities within the tribal districts are limited as industries cannot be set up in the current topography.”

Though the BJP had swept the state in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress and the AAP point to the results of the 2022 Assembly polls with hopes of vote consolidation. Tushar Chaudhary, son of former CM Amarsinh Chaudhary and the Congress’s Sabarkantha candidate, says, “The BJP earned 15 additional tribal Assembly seats (from the Congress) only because of vote division due to the AAP factor. Moreover, in seats like Panchmahal, where there is a Kshatriya population along with tribals, the ongoing Kshatriya agitation will benefit the Congress.”

The Congress’s Vansda MLA and Valsad candidate Anant Patel, who led the agitation against the Par-Tapi-Narmada link project, feels that while the tribal voters were “enchanted” by the promises of the AAP in 2022, the votes that went to the AAP were anti-BJP votes. “The 2022 Assembly poll was not a direct BJP-Congress battle, as it is this time. The AAP had dented vote shares but … it was the anti-BJP vote that went to AAP… The AAP also caught the pulse of the tribal areas as they felt that in urban areas they would not make the cut. This time, the Congress will regain its lost seats in Gujarat,” Patel said.

However, the Congress in the tribal belt has been eroded by defection to the BJP of its leaders, including 10-time Chhota Udepur MLA Mohansinh Rathwa, former MP Naran Rathwa, and four-term MLA Dhiru Bhil, among others.

Though the BJP has made inroads in the tribal belt, the re-nomination of six-time MP Mansukh Vasava from Bharuch against the AAP’s young tribal leader Chaitar Vasava shows its struggle to find tribal faces.

The BJP’s Arjun Chaudhary, however, feels that Chaitar has no hold beyond his Dediapada Assembly seat and that he won in 2022 “because the BJP fielded a weak candidate”. “Right now, in Valsad, we have fielded a young leader Dhaval Patel (to take on Anant Patel) but he is a resident of Surat and may not be as popular in Valsad. Yet we are confident we will win the seat because people are voting for Modi ji in the Lok Sabha. There is no other leader who they trust for development”, he said.

But Anant Patel said the Opposition tribal leaders’ grassroots presence could make the difference. “Both Chaitar and I come from the grassroots. We are readily available for the people of our areas. Whenever someone is in trouble, we reach out immediately; many of our older leaders did not do that,” he said.