It can literally be termed as a vote by the outsiders, of the outsiders!
Come February 23, the Germans will queue outside polling booths across that European nation to vote and choose the 630-seat Bundestag for the next four years. Interestingly, among the total number of German voters who will be voting to choose among the main stakeholders - the centre-left Social Democratic Party, the far-right Alternative for Germany, the rightist Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) or the Green Party, an estimated one-eighth or around 71 lakh will be immigrants. Immigrants from North Africa, Central Asia, Turkey or Ukraine will be there along with those from the soil, to pick their representatives whom they feel will address Germany's inflation, housing, social, economic and security challenges.
But why bring an election happening in a far-off land on the plate, while trying to take a peek into an election back home? The answer lies in the statistics embedded in the word - Outsider. The German elections and the February 5 election for the 70-seat Delhi Assembly are worlds apart and have no match whatsoever. Yet like the German immigrants who make up one-eighth of that country's voters, out of the around 1.67 crore people residing in Delhi with a voting population of over 1.55 crore, a little over 60 lakh are inter-state migrants. And they are the ones who decide the fate of Delhi to a large extent.
Packed into the 1,483 sqkm space called Delhi, the 2011 census says this city-state has the second largest number of migrants staying within its limits, after Maharashtra. Now, Maharashtra is a much bigger state in terms of population as well as area, in comparison to Delhi. Hence, there is no match. The migrants residing in the dingy spaces of Kalindi Kunj or on the banks of the Yamuna or meeting ends by packing themselves in and around Majnu-ka-Tilla to cramming in the slums of Jangpura or the vasts of Narela or Burari, make a sizable voting population that comes out and stands outside polling booths across the 70 Assembly constituencies of Delhi.
And yes, no election in Delhi is possible minus the massive migrant community who have come in from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand and settled in Delhi in search of better education, better livelihood or just for the sake of getting employed in some form and making a living. They are the Purvanchalis or those from the East.
No political party trying its luck in the Delhi elections can afford to ignore the Purvanchalis who have trickled into the belly of Delhi and made the National Capital Territory (NCT), their home. Some estimates put the figures of the Purvanchalis as much as about 25 percent of Delhi’s electorate, spread across large swathes of NCT with many putting up in JJ colonies, a sort of smart way of referring to slums.
JJ stands for the Hindi coinage of Jhuggi-Jhopri or shanties. But come election season, residents of the JJ colonies and the Purvanchalis turn darlings for all political parties, irrespective of hues and ideologies. The reason is as clear as daylight. The Purvanchalis have a clear dominance over around 27 Assembly seats of Delhi and are effectively the majority force in around 13 Assembly seats.
So, when a ‘political startup’ like the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which describes itself on its website as 'born to clean the system from within', files as many as seven Purvanchali faces, the ‘Outsiders’ become the prized ‘Insiders’. And not only AAP, its two main rivals -- the BJP and the Congress -- are also not far behind.
BJP has given tickets to around eight Purvanchali candidates leaving one seat each to its NDA allies from Bihar, the Janata Dal (United) and the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), pushing the saffron Purvanchali kitty to seven as both alliance parties are from Bihar, which essentially is a key Purvanchal state. The seats allotted to the two BJP allies are Burari and Deoli respectively, which have a decisive Purvanchali population. Congress has also equalled BJP’s numbers while choosing Purvanchali faces as the party’s candidates for the Delhi Assembly elections.
With migrants being an estimated 25 per cent of Delhi’s electorate, which roughly translates to over 40 lakh people, it becomes a compulsion to grab their collective attention before any election, at any cost. Here comes the issue of freebies or sops that can woo a sizeable chunk from that Purvanchali block to one particular party’s pocket. And everybody is in that desperate race.
BJP has been the primary stakeholder in the Centre’s politics since 2014, but though they have been running India from Delhi’s corridors of power, they have remained an outcast from that very Delhi for the past 26 years. The last time a saffron hue was on the chief minister’s seat in Delhi was when Sushma Swaraj was at the helm of affairs. Since then it was Sheila Dixit and the Congress, followed by Arvind Kejriwal and his AAP. Hence, a greater lotus desperation.
To win the migrants’ minds from the east, Chhath Puja has been played as a trump card by both the AAP and the BJP. The AAP government has declared Chhath Puja as a state holiday and has been continuously focusing on the construction of dedicated Chhath Puja ghats along the Yamuna River to aid the annual puja rituals and immersion. Artificial water bodies are created every year in the colonies, which are yet to be legalised, facilitating Chhath Puja rituals. For Kejriwal and company, the dividends received from the Purvanchali migrants are loud and clear.
BJP wanted to counter the AAP by deploying a battery of campaigners from the East ranging from UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to Assam Chief Minister Hemanta Biswa Sarma and many others, mostly from UP and Bihar. Prime Minister Modi in his campaign speech has accused the AAP and Kejriwal in particular, of "spreading lies". He promised that no slums would be demolished in Delhi and took on the AAP for its failure to provide clean water to households and also a clean Yamuna during Chhath rituals. He stressed legalising unauthorised colonies along with basic facilities if the BJP came to power in Delhi. All eyes are fixed on the migrants as the largest chunk of the population in these colonies are those who have come from other states and made Delhi their home. The Congress has even gone a step further and has promised a separate ministry for the Purvanchalis if voted to power in Delhi.
Talking of freebies, which Modi earlier preferred to call 'revdi', has time and again come back to haunt the BJP in several states where regional parties have walked away with the cream. Since Mamata Banerjee introduced her Laxmir Bhandar, a direct cash transfer scheme for women, ahead of the 2021 state elections and decimated the BJP in Bengal, others have followed. The latest blow has come from Jharkhand where Hemant Soren and his Jharkhand Mukti Morcha flattened the BJP with their Maiyan Samman Yojana, a direct cash benefit scheme for women.
The BJP has eventually understood and has tried to put in place its own version of benefit transfers with names like Laadli Behna in Madhya Pradesh to Ladli Behna Yojana in the recently concluded Maharashtra Assembly elections. But, when it comes to Delhi, the challenge in front of BJP as well as Congress is not just one simple cash benefit transfer for women. They have to counter the AAP's free electricity, free water, free education and free healthcare sops already in play, for the poor. Added to that is the free bus ride for women and the promise of sector-specific benefits for auto rickshaw drivers, residents' welfare associations and others. It indeed is a race of sorts, albeit among those offering the largest number of freebies.
Amid all this windfall, what has taken a backseat is one of the prime concerns for the Delhiites -- the dangerously alarming levels of pollution. There is a studied silence on the ways and means to mitigate pollution levels of the NCT during the high voltage campaign for Delhi, a place which is the capital of India and houses the President, Prime Minister and most of his council of ministers. It is another thing that most VVIPs and VIPs of Delhi have air purifiers installed and the common person's lungs are the principal casualties, a large number of whom are those very migrants whom the parties target as their best option to secure an entry into the secretariat.
February will be decisive for the Germans to choose a party or a coalition which will lead them, and immigrants could play a significant role in the process. For Delhi, the migrants are already the kingmakers, sans a kingdom. They will determine the future of Delhi for the next five years when the votes are counted on February 8. The question of whether the Purvanchalis or the migrants of Delhi will remain as a seasonal vote bank or will become real stakeholders in the NCT's future policies, will however, continue to hang for long.
Read More
Analysis | Delhi Elections: AAP May Emerge As Single Largest Party Followed By BJP And Congress
