She has just addressed a small gathering at the Gamahria gurdwara, where elderly Sikh gentlemen seemed to regard her with a kind of affection usually reserved for the youngest daughter who everyone wants to indulge. They speak of their youth, who despite having gone to college, are sitting at home without work, and point to several factories along the Tata-Kandra road near Jamshedpur that have had to shrink operations because of depleting orders after demonetisation.
She is Geeta Koda, wife of Madhu Koda, who became chief minister of Jharkhand as an Independent and went on to become the poster boy of alleged corruption that the mineral-rich state became synonymous with. Displaying a remarkable grasp of the core issues at hand, Mrs Koda is today in the Congress, the party that had propped her husband to the state’s top post in 2006. She is taking on the mighty BJP in the Singhbum constituency that is represented by Laxman Gilua. And she isn’t in the least bit flustered.
“These days we are being told who qualifies as a nationalist. We are Indians, for each of us Indian-ness runs in our veins. There is no need to go about telling everyone all the time how to show our love for the country,” she says after addressing the gathering at the gurdwara. Then, like a seasoned politician, she adds that the BJP was obfuscating “real issues” to raise the bogey of nationalism.
“Berozgari (unemployment) is the primary concern here. Factories are shutting down, mines are closed. This is the same BJP that had proclaimed loudly in 2014 it would create two crore jobs. Who will address these worries?” asks Geeta, who is an MLA from Jagannathpur, one of the six Assembly segments that makes up the Singhbhum Lok Sabha constituency. In fact, all six are non-BJP MLAs, five are from JMM with Geeta representing her husband’s Jai Bharat Samanta Party which ultimately merged with the Congress.
Old timers are pleasantly surprised that the quiet, diminutive Geeta, who has always been the ever-supportive better half to Madhuji, is so prepared for the rough and tumble of the hustings. Over 56 per cent of government posts are vacant, she points out. Talk to her about the ignominy of Singhhum being one of the worst districts in terms of child health parameters, and she agrees. “This district is the worst in terms of malnourishment of children. The government doesn’t care. Anganwadis have stopped being effective,” she points out referring to the poor functioning of what are meant to be the first stop for medical assistance for rural mothers and newborns.
According to a study conducted by public health experts from Harvard University and Tata Trusts, and first reported by liveMint, two-thirds of the district’s children (under 5) are underweight, the highest in the country; more than half are stunted and a third suffer from wasting (underweight with reference to height). Geeta isn’t shying away from mentioning these facts; one, because it makes political sense to provide numerical data while running down the present regime; but more importantly, she has stumped her immediate poll rival for response.
Gilua, it appears, has been forced to go on the defensive, unwilling, incapable even, of being drawn into a debate on child health. “Mere ko mat dekho. Samjho Modiji ko vote de rahe ho aur kamal phool pe button dabao (Don’t look at me. Consider you are voting for Modiji and press the button next to the lotus symbol),” is the crux of his campaign messaging.
Isn’t Koda, a former chief minister convicted of corruption in allotment of a mining contract, a liability?
Far from it, says Geeta of her husband who is now on bail and, therefore, prefers to be a backroom player in the constituency, using his popularity to steer the discourse in favour of the gathbandhan among the electorate, 64 per cent of which is tribal. “Kodaji aam janta ka neta hai (Kodaji is the leader of the masses),” she says, referring to the popular perception across the Singhbhum constituency that the tainted former chief minister was a victim of circumstances. “Everybody in Singhbhum knows his contribution, be it a local bridge or the Kolhan University that came into being because of him. He is always accessible and everyone knows he is there for them.”
The road ahead will not be easy and Geeta knows that. The tenets of the gathbandhan strategy — essentially, that the dominant party takes charge of local campaign — had not quite percolated down to the workers of the JMM and JVM, she admits. It is only in the last few days that everyone has fallen in line. Hence, the gurdwara meeting, a schedule worked out by the JMM district unit that has a considerable following in the rural and semi-urban areas of the constituency.
Congress’s strategists are confident that the cohesion among alliance partners, though it happened late, will help Geeta pull off a win. In 2014, Geeta lost to Gilua by securing 27 per cent of the votes. The BJP polled 38 per cent of the votes, roughly 7 per cent less than the combined vote share of the Congress, JVM, and Koda’s Jai Bharat Samanta Party. Pure arithmetic says she is on song this time. But then, elections are not always about the math.
Singhbhum votes today
