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The madhouse Mulayam rules: The Indian Express
Lucknow, Aug 31: IN almost every city and town of India, the billboards that greet a visitor are of the latest washing machine or cellphone offer or - if you live in Delhi - two leading newspapers both claiming to be the city`s Number 1. Lucknow is different.
Lucknow, Aug 31: IN almost every city and town of India, the billboards that greet a visitor are of the latest washing machine or cellphone offer or — if you live in Delhi — two leading newspapers both claiming to be the city’s Number 1. Lucknow is different.
If you had arrived in the capital of India’s most populous, most politicised, and most fractured state on August 26, all you would have seen is the colour blue, the elephant symbol, and a carefully coiffed Mayawati staring down from every poster on every lamppost on every thoroughfare of the city.
And by Friday, it would all be different — the colour changing to a red and green combination, the elephant transformed to a cycle and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s smiling visage at the same roundabouts. The promises on the posters, though, remain unchanged: a stable government, a caring administration, a prosperous state.
Although that last bit has eluded Uttar Pradesh since God knows when (some say they haven’t had a good administration since the days H N Bahuguna was CM, others go further back to Govind Ballabh Pant, and still others to the Nawab of ‘Oudh’), neither the people of this state nor the denizens of this city seem tired of politics.
Politics drives this city, literally. There are more SUVs in Lucknow than perhaps any other town in the country because it’s the kind of big car politicians love to drive. It has replaced the white ambassador and the olive green jeep of the old days, and every political worker has or aspires to have one. And Lucknow — indeed every town and kasba in UP — has ‘‘aspiring’’ politicians in every home. One reason is that politics is lucrative business in an unstable polity. But the more important reason is that there is little else on offer.
Over the last decade as economic reforms transformed much of India, UP has remained a stagnant pool. There has been little development, practically no private investment from outside, and hardly any avenues of employment.
Politics has been the only ‘‘vibrant’’ industry — its vibrancy visible every time a coalition government breaks and another is formed. Erstwhile partners abuse one another, new alliances are made, ‘‘rebels’’ become ministers, common minimum programmes get drafted — and karyakartas and samarthaks emerge out of the woodwork to dance before TV cameras once their leader is anointed. It’s show time folks, but in UP its also boom time — every time a new government is made, money flows. New posters and banners cost money, and so do the sweets and drums, and letters of support that a governor wants don’t come for free either.
The drama that unfolded in Lucknow last week, for all its moments of low tension and high theatrics (with Bollywood stars and Bombay socialites flown in for the grand finale), was a replay of an old script. Barring the brief single party rule of the BJP in 1991-92, the state has been governed by unstable coalition partners for over 10 years now. First Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, then BSP and BJP, then three BJP-led governments (Kalyan Singh, Ram Prakash Gupta and Rajnath Singh) dependent on a host of defectors-turned-allies, and most recently the BSP-BJP alliance again.
According to Ramesh Dikshit, professor of political science at Lucknow University, it is this decade-long period of instability and caste politics that is the bane of UP, pushing the state almost to the bottom of the development scale.
The lack of political stability, according to Dikshit and his ilk, has meant that every government over the past 10 years has only been concerned with survival. Development issues have taken a back seat with chief ministers too busy luring MLAs from other parties, keeping an eye on their own flock, and spending crores not on development but on ensuring the ‘‘stability’’ of their coalition.
Second, the upsurge in social consciousness evident through the rise of SP, BSP and other caste-based parties has not been matched with any broader vision for the state. True, Mayawati has politically empowered the Dalits of UP as no one before her ever had, but this empowerment has not improved their material circumstance substantially — or so her detractors insist.
BJP leaders, who till the other day hoped she would deliver them the Dalit vote, now openly abuse her politics. BJP state chief Vinay Katiyar thundered, ‘‘Dr Ambedkar ko unhone bhu mafia banakar rakha hain ( she has used the name of Dr Ambedkar to create a land mafia)’’ while the more seasoned Kalraj Mishra says, ‘‘Mayawati is not sincere about the upliftment of the Dalits — she only wants to be worshipped as the goddess of the Dalits.’’
Is it really all that bleak? Is UP — the cradle of the national movement that provided the home ground for both the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League — doomed to be a cauldron of caste and sectarian politics, suffering chronic political instability and economic gloom? It might seem like that today, but the reality is a lot more complex. Though it is fashionable to blame the ‘‘casteist’’ politics of the SP and BSP for the ills facing UP, the truth is that successive Congress regimes in the state didn’t exactly make it a paradise.
The leadership of the SP and BSP may be a lot more vulgar in their accumulation and display of wealth — but their followers worship them despite, or may be because of, this. BJP and Congress leaders privately admit that for a long time to come, no government in Lucknow can be formed without either SP or the BSP. Nor can any one party ride to power on its own. For the people of UP, there is a lot more theatre in the offing.
And by Friday, it would all be different — the colour changing to a red and green combination, the elephant transformed to a cycle and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s smiling visage at the same roundabouts. The promises on the posters, though, remain unchanged: a stable government, a caring administration, a prosperous state.
Although that last bit has eluded Uttar Pradesh since God knows when (some say they haven’t had a good administration since the days H N Bahuguna was CM, others go further back to Govind Ballabh Pant, and still others to the Nawab of ‘Oudh’), neither the people of this state nor the denizens of this city seem tired of politics.
Politics drives this city, literally. There are more SUVs in Lucknow than perhaps any other town in the country because it’s the kind of big car politicians love to drive. It has replaced the white ambassador and the olive green jeep of the old days, and every political worker has or aspires to have one. And Lucknow — indeed every town and kasba in UP — has ‘‘aspiring’’ politicians in every home. One reason is that politics is lucrative business in an unstable polity. But the more important reason is that there is little else on offer.
Over the last decade as economic reforms transformed much of India, UP has remained a stagnant pool. There has been little development, practically no private investment from outside, and hardly any avenues of employment.
Politics has been the only ‘‘vibrant’’ industry — its vibrancy visible every time a coalition government breaks and another is formed. Erstwhile partners abuse one another, new alliances are made, ‘‘rebels’’ become ministers, common minimum programmes get drafted — and karyakartas and samarthaks emerge out of the woodwork to dance before TV cameras once their leader is anointed. It’s show time folks, but in UP its also boom time — every time a new government is made, money flows. New posters and banners cost money, and so do the sweets and drums, and letters of support that a governor wants don’t come for free either.
The drama that unfolded in Lucknow last week, for all its moments of low tension and high theatrics (with Bollywood stars and Bombay socialites flown in for the grand finale), was a replay of an old script. Barring the brief single party rule of the BJP in 1991-92, the state has been governed by unstable coalition partners for over 10 years now. First Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, then BSP and BJP, then three BJP-led governments (Kalyan Singh, Ram Prakash Gupta and Rajnath Singh) dependent on a host of defectors-turned-allies, and most recently the BSP-BJP alliance again.
According to Ramesh Dikshit, professor of political science at Lucknow University, it is this decade-long period of instability and caste politics that is the bane of UP, pushing the state almost to the bottom of the development scale.
The lack of political stability, according to Dikshit and his ilk, has meant that every government over the past 10 years has only been concerned with survival. Development issues have taken a back seat with chief ministers too busy luring MLAs from other parties, keeping an eye on their own flock, and spending crores not on development but on ensuring the ‘‘stability’’ of their coalition.
Second, the upsurge in social consciousness evident through the rise of SP, BSP and other caste-based parties has not been matched with any broader vision for the state. True, Mayawati has politically empowered the Dalits of UP as no one before her ever had, but this empowerment has not improved their material circumstance substantially — or so her detractors insist.
BJP leaders, who till the other day hoped she would deliver them the Dalit vote, now openly abuse her politics. BJP state chief Vinay Katiyar thundered, ‘‘Dr Ambedkar ko unhone bhu mafia banakar rakha hain ( she has used the name of Dr Ambedkar to create a land mafia)’’ while the more seasoned Kalraj Mishra says, ‘‘Mayawati is not sincere about the upliftment of the Dalits — she only wants to be worshipped as the goddess of the Dalits.’’
Is it really all that bleak? Is UP — the cradle of the national movement that provided the home ground for both the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League — doomed to be a cauldron of caste and sectarian politics, suffering chronic political instability and economic gloom? It might seem like that today, but the reality is a lot more complex. Though it is fashionable to blame the ‘‘casteist’’ politics of the SP and BSP for the ills facing UP, the truth is that successive Congress regimes in the state didn’t exactly make it a paradise.
The leadership of the SP and BSP may be a lot more vulgar in their accumulation and display of wealth — but their followers worship them despite, or may be because of, this. BJP and Congress leaders privately admit that for a long time to come, no government in Lucknow can be formed without either SP or the BSP. Nor can any one party ride to power on its own. For the people of UP, there is a lot more theatre in the offing.