Bonus Season Is Here

As the state enters an election year, Raman Singh, the BJP’s longest serving chief minister, is pulling out all the stops

- Rahul Noronha

CHHATTISGARH CHIEF minister Raman Singh spent most of December 2017 crisscrossing the state, clocking miles on the state government’s Beechcraft to attend tendu leaf bonus distribution programmes in the tribal areas. A brainchild of the late Arjun Singh, CM of the then united Madhya Pradesh, the bonus on tendu leaf plucking—an important economic activity in Chhattisgarh for nearly 1.3 million tribal families—was seen as a political masterstroke back in the mid­1980s.

Singh, the longest serving BJP chief minister in the country, is hoping the nearly Rs 275 crore distributed as a bonus, the wage hike for tendu leaf pluckers—from Rs 1,800 to Rs 2,500 per standard bag—and a clutch of other schemes targeting the tribals, will be game changers in the 2018 assembly elections for him. While he speaks the language of development and welfare at the meetings, Singh is acutely aware that the BJP didn’t do too well in the tribal seats last time around and that he needs to win over this crucial constituency if he wants to successfully defend this BJP citadel in central India.

So what is Singh’s gameplan for this elections? “Development is the central theme of my campaign. Compare the statistics on key indices in the state between 2004 and 2017 and you will see the massive change,” he says.