A Chance for Chamling

Anti-incumbency is an unpredictable phenomenon-it can afflict governments when they are least expecting it.

-  Romita Datta

Three years after the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM)-led government came to power-itself riding on the back of anti-incumbency against former chief minister Pawan Kumar Chamling's 25-year government-it's already beset by a lack of public confidence in it. In 2019, the tedium of status quo and the SKM's slogan of parivartan enthused the youth and gave it a narrow victory in the assembly polls. The SKM was only six years old, but its leader P.S. Golay, an old aide of Chamling, appeared a viable alternative. Besides, their manifesto was bountiful: jobs or monthly allowances for the unemployed, support prices for ginger, orange, cardamom crops, allowances for women and so forth.