Violent events rise by 9.9% and violent deaths by 13.4% when a regional party comes to power, says our analysis. We, associate professors of economics, studied the relationship between the election of a regional-party representative and political violence. We defined regional parties as those that are officially recognised by the Election Commission of India as “state parties” and have experienced electoral success in a geographically concentrated area.

There were 74 regional parties active during the period of our study. Some of these are the Asom Gana Parishad, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), Bodoland People’s Front, Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, Naga People’s Front and Telugu Desam Party.

The study looked at constituency-level assembly election data between 1988 and 2011 and events of political violence between 1989 and 2015.
Regional political parties are a defining feature of Indian democracy. There are several states where the presence of national parties such as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or the Congress is marginal or where they depend heavily on alliances with dominant regional parties. In Tamil Nadu, for example, the BJP and the Congress play a secondary role in alliances led by regional stalwarts AIADMK and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) that have been in power since 1967.

Regional parties may, in principle, be better equipped to bring the government to the people, at least relative to national parties. They typically contest elections on a platform that appeals specifically to a geographically concentrated population that commonly identifies along some dimension, such as language, ethnicity, or “nationality”.

But regionalism can come at a price, we found.

Many regional parties are borne out of regional movements that demand greater autonomy, for local populations. They are siblings of the extreme and violent organisations that were borne out of the same regional movements. So, regional parties often retain a complicated and potentially symbiotic relationship with the more extreme segments of the broader movement and may facilitate or overlook the violent activities of extremists in exchange for political support come election time.

The figure 1 (a & b) plots the average number of violent events against the percentage of seats won by national parties [1 (a)] and by regional parties [1(b)]. Figure 1 (a) implies that a 10 percentage point rise in the win percentage of national parties is associated with an 11.94% fall in political violence. The bottom figure implies that a 10 percentage point increase in the win percentage of regional parties is associated with a 14.26% increase in political violence.

Figure 1(a) :  The Number Of Violent Events And The Win Percentage For National Parties

Figure 1(b) : The Number Of Violent Events And The Win Percentage Of Regional Parties

Figure 2 plots the average occurrence of violence against the margin of victory or defeat for a regional political party candidate. To the right of the vertical line at 0 are cases where a regional party candidate won the assembly seat. To the left, those where a regional party candidate lost. The figure shows that average occurrence of a violent event increases when the local MLA belongs to a regional political party. 

Figure 2: Causal Effect Of Electing A Regional MLA On Political Violence

Secessionist roots are a factor

One explanation for the rise in this political violence could be the secessionist origins of many regional parties.

The study divided data into states that did and did not report any active secessionist movement during our sample period. The first category included states such as Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, and Tripura. Then there were states like Gujarat, which primarily experienced Hindu-Muslim conflicts, and those like Andhra Pradesh that dealt with mostly insurgent Naxalite violence.

We found that the increase in violence associated with local regional party rule was driven entirely by states with a history of secessionism. This suggested that the election of a regional party increases secessionist violence in particular.

However, many of these states also experienced communal (nativist) violence. To determine whether the increased violence was due to secessionism or nativism, we further divided the data according to the protagonists involved in the violence. The idea was that secessionist violence would involve insurgents and central or state government forces, while nativist violence would involve groups of insurgents and civilians.

We found that only violence between insurgents and government forces increased when a regional representative was elected, further confirming that the election of these candidates cause secessionist violence in particular.

We also investigated if the level of violence depended on whether the regional party was solely responsible for governing the state or was only a member of a coalition. The violence, we found, was driven entirely by instances where regional parties were part of a governing coalition. This suggested that greater access to executive power may be a means of appeasing the violent groups associated with these regional political parties.

Should regional parties be curbed?

The results do not imply that regional parties should be banned from participation in elections in India. For one, the study estimated the causal effect of individual representatives who belong to regional parties. To curb their electoral role would also need an estimate of the causal effect of banning them.

Also, regional political parties can, in principle, confer significant benefits on the voters they represent. These and other hard-to-measure benefits need to be taken into account before drawing extreme conclusions about limiting the role of regional political parties. 

(Magesan is an associate professor of economics at the University of Calgary, Canada, and Kapoor is associate professor of economics at the Erasmus University, the Netherlands.)

Courtesy: India Spend

The post Regional-Party Rule Raises Levels Of Political Violence: Study appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Violence in the 2019 election season replete with BJP-TMC blame game:
Murders, clashes, stone pelting, lathicharge, firing, arson, you name it and some corner of West Bengal has witnessed it in this election season. As has always been the case, the BJP, TMC (and also the Left) have been accusing each other of attacking and murdering their workers and supporters. The constituencies witnessing severe law and order issues are – Barrackpore and Basirhat – former having a BJP MP, Arjun Singh, and the latter represented by TMC MP Nusrat Jahan Ruhi.

A Ministry of Home Affairs report, puts the number of political violence in West Bengal to 773 incidents in 2019 alone (till date) down from 1,035 in 2018. The report also states that 26 deaths have already taken place in 2019 till date due to the political violence.

In the immediate context, the BJP-TMC fight started in the run up to the panchayat elections held last year. As per media reports, nearly 50 people died during these elections which witnessed a four cornered fight between the BJP, TMC, Congress and the Left. During the single phase election held on May 14, 2018, two CPM workers, Apu Manna and Jogeswar Ghosh, were killed. A TMC worker named Arif Gazi was shot dead in Kultali area of South 24 Parganas district. In Burdwan, CPI(M) and the BJP accused the ruling TMC of terrorising voters and hurling bombs outside polling stations.

Cut to 2019, on February 10, sitting TMC MLA from Krishnaganj, Satyajit Biswas, was shot dead in West Bengal’s Nadia district. The TMC held BJP responsible for this murder, while the BJP predictably rubbished it saying Biswas was probably killed due to infighting in TMC. On March 28, a BJP leader, Utpal Mondal’s brother Patanu Mondal was allegedly murdered in Malda district. The BJP accused the TMC for this.

In third phase held on April 23, one person was killed and several injured during clashes between the Congress and the TMC in Murshidabad. In the fourth phase, on April 29, violence was reported from Bandar in Nanoor area of Birbhum district as BJP supporters clashed with TMC men over allegations of electoral malpractices. At Asansol, the then BJP candidate and now MP, Babul Supriyo was seen arguing inside a polling booth. He alleged that agents of his party were driven out of polling booths and that his vehicle was also attacked. During the fifth phase of the general election held on May 6, a clash erupted between BJP and TMC workers in Barrackpore after BJP’s Arjun Singh alleged that he was attacked by TMC workers.

The last phase also witnessed intense clashes and violence with BJP’s Rahul Sinha alleging that a crude bomb was hurled near Girish Park in North Kolkata. Police, however, said crackers were burst in the area, and polling was underway peacefully. In Kolkata South, TMC’s Mala Roy alleged that she was stopped from entering polling booths. Sporadic clashes were reported in Kolkata and its surrounding areas, with TMC workers claiming that voters were being intimidated by central forces outside booths.

On May 14, BJP’s then president and now Home Minister Amit Shah’s rally in Kolkata was marred by violence as clashes broke out between TMC and BJP workers. What worsened the situation was that a bust of Bengal icon Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was vandalised in the mayhem.

After an unprecedented performance of the BJP in West Bengal in the 2019 general elections, the state continues to witness immense unrest, with the BJP and TMC workers at loggerheads with each other. Reportedly, many TMC offices at block and village level in the state were painted in the BJP colour (saffron) after the party made inroads into West Bengal by winning 18 of the 42 seats in the state, cutting the TMC down to 22 seats against the 34 it had won in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

On June 8, two BJP workers and one TMC worker were allegedly killed and one BJP worker missing after clashes broke out between the two parties in Bangipara village under Sandeshkhali I block, Basirhat. According to the local residents, the area has been in a tense situation since the time the results were declared in which the village had given the BJP a lead of around 150 votes. Villagers alleged that since then, TMC workers have been targeting the BJP workers. On June 13, a BJP worker named Saraswati Das, was allegedly shot dead by miscreants in Basirhat. BJP alleged that Das was killed by TMC ‘goons.’
The Bhatpara-Kankinara area in Barrackpore has been the worst-hit in the on-going political violence. On June 17, BJP and TMC workers clashed at a market in Bhatpara, leaving six injured, two of them critically. Yesterday, the party workers from both sides allegedly hurled bombs at each other after which the police reportedly opened fire to control the violence which led to the death of a street food vendor, Dharamveer Shaw, The victim’s uncle alleged “the police opened fire without any provocation and killed his nephew.” However, a police officer said they had not “fired and killed civilians.”

In a clear threat of violence, BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, at a party meeting yesterday, said “I want to warn the ruling party (TMC) here to not think that we are weak. Our party does not believe in responding to violence with violence. But if forced, we also can take the path of violence, but we believe in doing politics of courtesy.”

TMC’s Tapas Roy said the BJP was “instigating such violence to destabilise the government.”

While the political tussle continues between the two parties, what is also concerning is the recent Doctor’s strike in West Bengal after two junior doctors at the NRS Hospital in Kolkata  were reportedly attacked by the relatives of a patient Mohammad Sayeed who died at the hospital. The incident took a communal angle after it was revealed that the patient was a Muslim with the BJP leader Mukul Roy, along with party MP Locket Chatterjee, saying “people of a particular community had carried out the attack.”

However, the junior doctors in West Bengal called off their strike on Monday evening ending the seven-day standoff, between them and the State government over lack of security at the workplace after a two-hour meeting Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who assured them of improved security.

The situation in West Bengal has worsened so much that there is a constant law and order problem in the state with reports of President’s rule soon being imposed. However, it is not then difficult to understand that a President’s rule will work in favour of the centre (BJP) which is notorious for, time and again, giving such threats whenever any state witnesses any violence. Also, the current violence seems to be nothing less than BJP-created  which is trying to strengthen its position in its new power kingdom, by instigating the TMC workers who have suffered a severe loss this election. The local TMC workers who were having immense powers until the results have now suffered a huge setback and this instigation by the BJP is nothing but taking undue advantage of their precarious condition, thereby attempting to defame the entire party and removing it from its existing strongholds.

History of poll-related violence:
Poll-related violence has been a constant in the state of West Bengal and has its roots much before the TMC and the BJP became the major political parties in the state. Election Commission’s (EC) reports on past Lok Sabha elections and annual reports of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) show that West Bengal and poll-related violence go hand in hand.

During the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, a total of 16 political workers were killed across India in poll-related violence and West Bengal had the highest share with seven deaths (44%). Further, the EC report shows that 64%  (1,298 of 2,008) of the political workers injured during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections were from West Bengal. Besides this, all the 1,354 onlookers who were injured in poll-related violence were from West Bengal.

Reports of the NCRB also reveal that in the 18 years between 1999 and 2016, on an average West Bengal witnessed 20 political murders every year. The highest was in 2009 when 50 murders were motivated by political reasons. This was followed by 2000, 2010 and 2011, each of which saw 38 political murders.
In August 2009, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) released a pamphlet in which it accused the TMC of having murdered 62 of its supporters between March 2 and July 21 that year. However, the history of violence dates back to the 1980s and 1990s when neither the TMC nor the BJP had any presence in the politically aggressive state. During that time, the Left and the Congress were at loggerheads.

In 1989, the then Communist Chief Minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu, presented some figures in the state assembly. His figures, as reported in a May 1989 report of India Today magazine, revealed that at least 86 political workers were killed in inter-and-intra-party clashes in West Bengal in 1988-89.

Therefore, West Bengal has a history of political conflicts and extreme cases of poll-related violence everytime there is a change in power dynamics. The current scenario is nothing but a turf war between BJP and TMC as BJP rises to power and TMC continues to lose its hold. It is thus not difficult to understand that the BJP is not leaving any stone unturned to belittle the TMC with reports of the BJP workers sending ‘Jai Shri Ram’ postcards to Mamata Banerjee, Kailash Vijayvargiya warning TMC of counter-violence, reports of President’s rule and the BJP communalising the doctor’s strike, doing the rounds.
Amidst this constant political battle, the citizens continue to suffer the brunt with a constant law and order problem.
 
 

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