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© 2006-2017 Kasturi & Sons Ltd. -vijay kumar [email protected] - EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE CHENNAI THE HINDU 8 EDITORIAL MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2018 EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE The saron breeze in the Northeast Most regional parties prefer the BJP as their national partner, but managing contradictions won’t be easy connect to the separatist National contradictions. It now seems those merged nearly four decades ago . Liberation Front of Tripura who swear by Kautilya seem to While IT investments would ap­ (NLFT), and the CPI(M) cadre is no handle it better than those who peal to the young, both tribals and Small arena, big win match for the armed guerrillas preach Marx and Engels, at least in Bengalis, the dam decommission­ For the BJP, the import of its victory who back the IPFT’s young mili­ India. ing may open the path for ethnic tant cadres in the remote hill inte­ reconciliation which the Marxists in Tripura goes beyond numbers Subir Bhaumik riors. But by not endorsing the A bid for all three overlooked at their own peril by here is a reason that the Bharatiya Janata Party is Twipraland demand and by not The BJP parliamentary board has trying to play the wild card of Ben­ disproportionately pleased with its performance giving the IPFT the majority of the expressed the hope that despite gali chauvinism. in Tripura, which sends only two members to the f the three States whose As­ ST reserved seats (11 contested by not getting a clear majority in Na­ In Nagaland, the BJP has to de­ T sembly election results the BJP, nine by the IPFT), the BJP galand and also the Congress liver a nal settlement in a way Lok Sabha. From zero to 35 seats in the 60­member As­ Owere declared on March 3, sent a clear message it would not emerging as the single largest par­ that pleases most, if not all, rebel sembly in ve years is unarguably no mean electoral ac­ Tripura’s was doubtlessly the most be a junior partner to its ally, as in ty in Meghalaya, the BJP will form and political factions. This is no complishment. But having done this by beating the Left stunning. Tripura has been the saf­ Jammu and Kashmir. That got the the government in both these easy task in a very divided tribal Front, its strongest ideological opponent, even if not est Left bastion since the Commu­ BJP much of the tribal backing , Christian­majority States. Again, society. the biggest political threat nationally, has given P rime nist Party of India (Marxist)­led and also of Bengalis in rural re­ the BJP seems to have managed In Meghalaya, where the BJP ap­ Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah a Left Front rst swept to power in mote interiors who saw support to the National Socialist Council of pears to have managed to deth­ special satisfaction. Mr. Modi wanted a victory in T rip­ 1978. Only once since then, in the BJP as their safest security op­ Nagalim (Isak­Muivah) — NSCN rone Chief Minister Mukul Sangma 1988, did the Left Front lose to the tion. (IM) — to back its bid for power (who led the Congress to emerge ura to be celebrated as much as the victory in Uttar Pra­ Congress­TUJS (Tripura Upajati Ju­ Then by absorbing almost the with its new found ally and the Na­ as the single largest party), it desh, which sends the largest number of members to ba Samity) alliance, but it returned entire Congress­turned Trinamool RITU RAJ KONWAR ga People’s Front (NPF) may join would have to hold together a coa­ the Lok Sabha. Mr. Shah saw in Tripura a reason for his to power in 1993. Since then it has Congress leadership in its fold, the That explains the BJP sweep in in as well, all apparently to pave lition of disparate regional players; party workers in West Bengal and Kerala to be extreme­ been in power, with Manik Sarkar BJP ensured that it ran away with Agartala and other urban areas. So the way for a nal settlement of ensuring the survival of such a coa­ ly happy. The BJP likes to imagine that the Left has as Chief Minister since 1998. So for the 30% Congress votebank. In with the tribal vote and the middle the Naga imbroglio. Failure to de­ lition will not be easy in Megha­ wielded a disproportionate inuence on political dis­ the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to Tripura, the ght has always tend­ class urban Bengali vote swinging liver a nal settlement more than laya’s ‘aya ram gaya ram’ politics. course, resulting in pushing the entire Sangh Parivar in­ emerge out of nowhere and score ed to be between the Left and the its way, all that the BJP needed was two years after signing the Frame­ a spectacular victory by getting a anti­Left. With the Congress deci­ a small swing in the rural Bengali work Agreement would have nor­ Message for West Bengal to a place of political isolation and unacceptability. It is majority in the Assembly on its mated and seen as the B­team of vote. mally jeopardised the poll pros­ Most regional parties in Northeast true that the BJP’s diculties in nding allies for much own is nothing short of a miracle. the Left, with Congress president While much of that remained pects of the BJP, especially after it now prefer the BJP as their nation­ of the eighties and the nineties had a lot to do with the Beneath this surprise lies a cob­ Rahul Gandhi avoiding any attack with the Left (which is marginally fell out with the ruling NPF, but al partner, and not the Congress Left, particularly the Communist Party of India (Mar­ web of contradictions that the against Mr. Sarkar, the anti­Left vo­ behind the BJP in overall vote party general secretary Ram Mad­ which has a tribal base, but ma­ xist), which propped up an eective secular platform BJP’s election managers, especial­ ter had no option but to go with share), in the deep interiors domi­ hav’s political engineering in trig­ naging the contradictions will be a for regional parties opposed to the Congress. If the BJP ly Sunil Deodhar, Prime Minister the BJP as it was seen as the only nated by the IPFT’s militant cadre, gering a successful split and then a full­time task. Meanwhile, the kept its core Hindutva issues on the back burner during Narendra Modi’s poll manager in viable option to dethrone the Left. the Bengali settlers seem to have taming the main NPF and the Tripura results will denitely wor­ Varanasi, seem to have managed The middle class Bengali vote voted against the Left, as it was NSCN is something that would ry one Chief Minister in particular the Vajpayee years in government, then it was in no so well. swung the saron way because of seen to be no longer capable of de­ have done Kautilya proud. — Mamata Banerjee in West Ben­ small measure due to pressure from its allies who were the Left’s poor track record in em­ fending them in the event of a re­ But now the challenges. In Trip­ gal. It is easy to see why she spoke earlier part of a Left­backed grouping that treated the The Tripura manoeuvre ployment generation, forcing Trip­ surgent tribal insurgency. ura, the BJP has to deliver on its of Left arrogance and Congress Congress as the biggest enemy and the BJP as beyond By striking an alliance with the tri­ ura’s best brains to seek jobs in Fear of the unknown always development promise — the new missteps in not aligning with her the pale. The real story in Tripura is of course the col­ bal Indigenous People’s Front of Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. haunts the rural Bengalis who Chief Minister may do well to go party in Tripura. She seems to lapse of the Congress vote­bank. Clearly, the anti­L eft, Tripura (IPFT) which demands a Mr. Sarkar’s refusal to meet the have borne the brunt of tribal in­ for roadshows to attract big ticket know that she will be the next to anti­incumbency vote, which includes the tribal vote, separate tribal State of Twipraland captains of IT industry during a surgency since the violence of investments to leverage the IT ga­ face the saron re. has moved completely to the BJP. A tie­up with the Con­ it wants carved out of the autono­ 2015 Tripura Conclave organised 1980 — and a dominant BJP with a teway and may consider, for in­ mous district council of the S tate, to leverage Agartala’s emergence majority of its own was their best stance, decommissioning the Subir Bhaumik, a former BBC bureau gress, therefore, would not have been the answer to the the BJP assured itself of a sweep in as India’s third Internet gateway bet to tame the IPFT and nip the 10MW Gumti hydel project to re­ chief for East and Northeast India, is Left’s loss in Tripura, where it ruled for 25 years. What the 20 seats reserved for Sche­ did not go down well with Gen­ Twipraland demand in the bud. claim thousands of acres of fertile editorial consultant with Myanmar’s it needs to do is win back some of the tribal votes that duled Tribes. The IPFT has close Next, tribals and Bengalis alike. Politics is the art of managing the tribal land that the project sub­ Mizzima Media the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura spirited away to the BJP.

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