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In the wild run for the post of the
chief executive of our country the trials and heats have already
been on. Right from the market research groups and survey
conductors to the techno-glitz trendsetter analysts there has been
a concerted effort to seat Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi at
Delhi. The logic is that he is a chief minister who has won three
consecutive assembly polls and become a symbol of growth and
development as Gujarat has been made the favourite destination for
big business.
Apart from the party big-wigs to the corporate
leaders, celebrities and popular columnist are also endorsing Modi
for the post of India’s Prime Minister after the 2014 Lok Sabha
Polls. However these techno-savvy, urbane and neo-liberals awfully
miss the same logic when it comes to state chief ministers of
other political parties. Sheila Dixit, Navin Patnaik, Tarun Gogoi,
Nitish Kumar all fall to the same rank of Nraendra Modi of wining
successive assembly polls. Latest of them is the Tripura Chief
Minister Manik Sarkar. Sarkar has won the assembly polls for
fourth consecutive term on a camping of good governance and
welfare of the people. Does this not make him eligible for the
post of premiership on the same logic as attributed to Modi?
The giant billboards, LED big screens or online portals portraying
the larger than life image of Narendra Modi is nowhere to be seen
in Agartala or anywhere in Tripura if you try to gauge the
popularity of its Chief Minister Manik Sarkar. There is no
corporate houses in Tripura for Manik Sarkar to pour money for
lavish publicity campaigns as we have seen in the case of Modi in
last December’s assembly polls. Nor is there glass and chromed
super malls and multiplexes, express highways of Gandhinagar,
Vadodara or Rajkot representing the vibrant Gujarat of Modi in
Tripura to showcase Sarkar’s success. Whatever he has is the
people’s goodwill and support across the state comprising all
ethnic groups for transforming a state from strife and insurgency
and political corruption to a peace and development.
Tripura is a multi-ethnic state with different sub-tribes (upajatis)
and East Bengali immigrants. The state witnessed the ethnic
insurgency and secessionist militancy, a familiar phenomenon of
all North Eastern states, for a long time. Economic development
and business was hard as Tripura is a landlocked country with
inhospitable terrain making it extremely difficult to connect by
road with rest of India. The easiest possible way was to connect
Agartala with Kolkata via Bangladesh. Since 1998, the year Manik
Sarkar won the first election; there has been steady and upward
development in all these sectors making Tripura as one of the most
peaceful and developing state of India.
Celebrities often talk about Modi’s personal habits like
vegetarianism and celibacy. Bollywood dream girl Hema Malini, a
diehard fan of Modi, often showered accolades for him for his
liking of Khichidi. However no one talks about Manik Sarkar as he
takes Muri (puffed rice) along with party workers in his party’s
office on a bench in the verandah. He never takes special food in
the Tripura Bhawan when he is on official visits to Kolkata or
Delhi and shares the common food along with his staff. Manik
Sarkar is probably India’s only chief minister who does not own a
home, car or bank balance worth mentioning. He does not even have
a mobile phone and has never used the red beacon on his official
car and washes his own clothes every morning. His wife, a
government employee, commutes to her office by a rickshaw. What
Chetan Bhagat would like to say on him?
On the other hand Narendra Modi’s wardrobe is filled with dresses designed by Gautam Adani,
takes his entire secretariat to Kutch to follow his steps of yoga
and other shows. While it is very difficult to find out Manik
Sarkar as the chief minister of Tripura when someone visits his
party office where he mingles without his personal presence being
seen or felt among his fellow workers.
Like other NE states Tripura too have been hit by ethnic militancy
and armed secessionist insurgency. However, unlike the terror hit
states, Chief Minister Manik Sarkar never has opted for a military
offensive. Like his predecessor Nripen Chakraborty, who had
opposed extension of Disturbed Areas Act to Tripura and induction
of army, Sarkar followed a different strategy of engaging only
state police and central para-military forces in effectively
dealing the anti-insurgency operations. The State took on the
problems in a strategic and resolute manner formulating a
multi-dimensional and fine-tuned construct to respond creatively
to the situation.
The control mechanism was subsumed in
counter-insurgency operations intent on swift area-domination and
ascendancy, as well as psychological operations and
confidence-building measures instead of an exclusive, hawkish,
one-dimensional combat in the nature of conflict-management. Sarkar also brought tribal youth in the Special Police Officers
for the operations which proved to be valuable in terms of
gathering intelligence and keeping a tab on the activities and
movements of the insurgents, collaborators and harbourers. The
Central and State security forces were forged into a synergetic,
coordinated and cohesive mode to derive optimal gains.
Their
conduct was under close observation of the Governor and the Chief
Minister, in order to check personnel from going berserk and being
ruthless, trigger-happy, oppressive and violation of human rights.
Counter insurgency operations were discreetly suffused with
psychological elements, confidence-building measures and healing
touches to achieve a sustained end to the conflict. Psychological
interventions were focused on correcting the tribal person's
negative perception about the state and the mainland, and inducing
confidence in and credibility about the State's intentions.
Confidence-building exercises and healing touches encompassed
special recruitment to the security forces and other government
services, especially in the insurgency-bound pockets. An
accelerated development thrust, management of the media, civic
action programmes of the security forces, and the political
process were additional factors.
These observations were made by D.N. Sahaya, the ex-Governor of Tripura (2003-2009). Thus Tripura
is a model of the most extraordinary success, bringing some of the
country’s most virulent and bloody movements to a near complete
end in an exemplary, police-led campaign that began to record
major successes in 2004, and had brought the State to peace by
late 2006. In the contrary, Modi has not taken up any steps to
reach out the post-Godhra marginalized Muslim population of
Gujarat who has been by-passed by his development mantra.
Manik Sarkar’s electoral ascendancy is also impressive. In 1998
state polls, when he got the mandate for the first time, CPM won
38 (49.43%) seats out of 60 in which its allies the RSP won 2 and
the CPI got 1 seat. In 2003 polls the result was absolutely
identical with similar wins. In 2008 Manik Sarkar led CPM to win
46 seats in the assembly securing 51.21% of the share. This time
in 2013 the CPM increased its tally to 48 seats. Isn’t it
sufficient to point this phenomenal electoral success of the
Tripura Chief Minister to stake his claim (though he has not made
any such claims unlike Modi) for Delhi? Will Chetan Bhagat, Gautam
Adani, Amitabh Bachchan will say same words for Manik Sarakr?
The writer is a
freelancer based in Assam. He can be reached at sazzad.hussain2@gmail.com
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