Young Dalit leader who overcame setback to script poll history

New Delhi/ Jaipur In the winter of 2023, Sanjna Jatav was at a difficult crossroads. Just 25, the mother of two had just suffered a narrow defeat in the assembly elections in Rajasthan after being trounced by the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate by 409 votes. Days later, even as the cultivator family was reeling from the loss, her father died. Heartbroken and bereaved, with two toddlers to take care of, it seemed curtains for Jatav’s still-fledgling political career.

Six months on, the contrast couldn’t be sharper as Jatav ascended the steps of the new Parliament building this week, her head shielded from the scalding sun by the canopy of her sky blue saree, her mother and mother-in-law standing in the background.

Walking down to the lectern that day to take oath as one of the youngest members of Parliament, she could scarcely believe what the last six months had brought her – a parliamentary ticket from the Congress, a campaign in the BJP stronghold that forced chief minister Bhajan Lal Sharma to respond with a roadshow, and erasing a 300,000 vote deficit with a 17 percentage point vote share swing to register an improbable victory.

“If it happened, it all happened because of ordinary people. They’re the ones who funded me, they’re the ones who defeated the BJP,” she said.

The Dalit woman’s achievement was representative of the Congress’s revival in a state where it had drawn a blank in the last two general elections, and her rooted campaign and youthful spontaneity – seen in the impromptu dance she broke into the moment results were announced on June 4 – part of why the opposition party improved its strike rate against the BJP in head-to-head contests from 9% in 2019 to 28% now. Most of all, the Opposition’s narrative that the BJP will effect changes in the Constitution struck a chord with Dalit people such as Jatav, helping her consolidate that important base. “The BJP had thought they could win on the basis of PM Modi’s name alone. But the ordinary man, the ordinary Dalit was angry, and it reflected in the result.”

Many rising stars of Indian politics.

Born in 1998 in Bharatpur district, Jatav married police constable Kaptan Singh at 18 in Alwar district’s Kathumar town. That year was also her first foray into politics when the village panchayat seat Singh’s father held was reserved for women. Jatav held a graduate degree in arts, and was a fresh young face. She won the election by 4,000 votes. “It was a big deal for me, coming from a small family of farmers,” she said.

Jatav had joined the Congress shortly before the election, and the muck of mainstream politics didn’t leave her untouched. Alarmed by her rise, a rival leader dug a deep pit outside her house and registered a complaint against Singh with the Rajasthan Police. “They started troubling her family,” said Congress leader Bhupendra Gurjar.

In 2022, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra passed through Rajasthan, giving Jatav an opportunity to sink deeper roots in the party organisation. She helped prepare for the yatra in Alwar; she also participated in Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s Ladki Hun Lad Sakti Hun campaign, holding meetings and rallies and bringing many young girls into the party fold.

During the yatra, Sanjana met Priyanka Gandhi, who was impressed with her work. She told Bhanwar Jitendra Singh, a former Congress MP from Alwar, to groom Jatav, said a senior Congress leader. She got the ticket for the 2023 assembly elections but lost.

“Woh mushkil daur tha (it was a difficult period). I was jolted. An election is a big thing for an ordinary person. It was very difficult to get out of it for 2-3 months. My father’s absence rankled,” she said.

Fighting another election was not on the cards at the point. “We didn’t even have enough money,” her husband Singh said.

But politics was slowly creeping back into her life.When the Congress was deciding candidates for the Bharatpur Lok Sabha seat, local leaders thought Jatav could be a fresh face and a strong candidate against the BJP, which had also dropped its incumbent.

When she started campaigning, Jatav realised she had a chance. “The public wanted a change from the high-handed attitude of the previous winners,” she said.

Bharatpur was a prestige seat for the BJP because it is the home district of chief minister Bhajan Lal Sharma, and the National Democratic Alliance held seven of the eight assembly segments that make up the constituency. “We knew that our USP was rootedness so we went to every village, every home even as our opponents were confident that the PM’s name would make him win. Everywhere people told us they didn’t have employment or amenities such as water.”

Throughout the campaign, they did three things – keep the focus on local amenities and lack of opportunities in Bharatpur to not allow the BJP to make the election national, talk about the Constitution and the perceived threat to protections for marginalised groups, and the Congress as a genuine alternative in a state where the chief minister is facing some internal dissension. “We are poor people but people themselves arranged vehicles for us. People were distressed and they made their voices heard,” she said.

Life has come full circle for the family since June 4. Yet, Jatav finds herself balancing her old persona of a rural woman with her new identity as one of India’s 543 parliamentarians. “These few days in Delhi are only an intermission. I wake up at 4am everyday to feed the buffaloes, finish household chores, then cook for the children and get them ready, before tending to the fields,” she said.

As she spoke, her four-year-old sauntered in from another room, hungry. Quickly coddling him, Jatav turned to her husband. “We are ordinary people. Our friends are ordinary. Our relatives are ordinary. We didn’t have a single important person in our phone books,” she said. “But, you know, such ordinary people are 90% of the country.” Jatav nodded in agreement: “That’s why we won.”

Courtesy : MSN

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