Aditi Phadnis: Political problems

BACKSTAGE

The story of Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda's rise to power is a pot-boiler. At 38, Munda became chief minister in March 2003 after being just four years in the party. He was the greatest beneficiary of the clashes in the NDA that led to the exit of Babulal Marandi from the job.

Jharkhand is one state where there has been a 20-year movement for the rights of tribals and this has yielded a crop of politicians who might not be administrators but are "leaders". It is to the latter category that Munda belongs.

He became MLA in the state Assembly in 1995, joined the BJP in 1999, and became chief minister in 2003. But getting some purchase on the slippery upward incline of politics has not been easy.

After the controversial dismissal of the UPA-led Jharkhand government in March this year, Munda was selected to lead the NDA government. The numbers tell the tale. It has the support of 42 legislators, including six from the JD-U and six independents, in the 82 member house. All the independents are ministers out of necessity.

In August, in an attempt to settle dissidence within the BJP, Munda had to make the other senior leader in the state, Karia Munda, deputy chief minister. This was in addition to making him the chief of the 20-Point Programme Implementation Committee (PPIC). He also made Dinesh Oraon, a loyalist of BJP national vice-president and arch rival Babulal Marandi, a minister of state.

But in the NDA, partners resent partiality and believe they are all equal partners. The JD-U has now begun making a noise about the number of ministerships the BJP is claiming. Unhappy over last month's appointment of four parliamentary secretaries, all from the BJP, Welfare Minister and JD-U leader Ramesh Singh Munda had announced they would oust the chief minister. The latest elevation of Karia Munda is unlikely to help. Given this scenario, even within the BJP, the realistic expectation is that the Munda government is unlikely to survive long "" and for Munda to complete his five-year tenure is near impossible.

That could be one reason why Munda is in such a hurry to complete his agenda of development: giving industrial concessions, playing industrial houses one against the other and even trying to leverage Naxalism in the state to his advantage.

When Assembly elections to Jharkhand were held in March this year, commenting on the prime minister's first round of elections after he became PM, Manmohan Singh's aides confessed that the government was not as worried about a victory in the other states, as in Jharkhand, because of the security implications. Events in Jharkhand have come a full circle since then.