by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
It is the last week-end before the fate of the Maha Gathbandhan or Grand Alliance of the non-BJP parties in Uttar Pradesh is decided. While the SP and Congress have finally agreed to a seat-sharing arrangement, others have yet to chip in. In the state with 403-strong assembly, the young SP supremo and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav inarguably holds an image hugely surpassing that of Congress’ Rahul Gandhi. While SP won 224 seats in the 2012 election, the Congress got only 28, or a little over a tenth of the former. However, while SP bagged 29.13 per cent of votes, Congress tally was 11.65 per cent, which is not so abysmally low in relation to the winner. While the ‘grand old party’ had very few strong candidates in any region, including Awadh, its historical forte, it had, and possibly still has, flocks who’d still swear by the centenarian party.
And that perhaps explains why the 2017 alliance between SP and Congress is crucial for both SP and Congress. Akhilesh has just maneuvered his way out of the grip of old-timers led by his father Mulayam Singh Yadav, SP’s founder, and his crafty brother Shivpal Singh. Despite being the young, affable and smart CM of UP much of Akhilesh’s inability to pull it out of its disappointing image of being a lawless land lies with his father and his associates. These old-timers had imposed their authority on the young leader. After a lot of public spat, and jousting with an army of “uncles”, Akhilesh has finally secured the liberty to shape his legislative party the way he wishes. But he is neither cut in the mould of the Yadav clan’s rebellious child, nor would it give him any electoral percentage if he does so. SP under Akhilesh has to be a ‘compromise’ with SP of his father, who still enjoys some following. It’s a necessity that has driven Akhilesh to offer a ticket even to Shivpal and Azam Khan.
That is quite a tight-rope walk and is risky as Akhilesh alone cannot bring about an image makeover of the SP, which is identified with patriarchy, misogyny and gangster-worship. An alliance with Rahul, the young leader of an old national party, is expected to go a long way in wrapping up the Akhilesh-led combination in an aura of youthfulness. Besides, the Congress party’s traditional link with the state’s large Brahmin community (12 per cent) is a bonus.
The alliance looked wobbly until the last minute as Congress was playing pricy by demanding more than it deserved based on the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The Congress won just two seats, those of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi while the SP managed to win 5 against the ‘Modi storm’ and the decline in its vote share was much less than Congress’ cliff diving. To nurture its pocket-boroughs, the VIP Lok Sabha constituencies of Amethi (Rahul Gandhi) and Rae Bareli (Sonia Gandhi), Congress demanded maximum assembly seats in that area.
In the tough bargaining between Akhilesh and the Gandhi clan, the latter’s leverage is the Brahmin support it has always attracted. In Uttar Pradesh, Brahmins are more than a caste. They’re opinion makers as they interface with the public—be it in the local media, educational institutions or the bar associations or religious institutions. It is from these platforms that the hawa, or the popular consensus, moves as to which side is ‘winning’. And this verdict motivates fence-sitters, who represent majority of voters in a state like Uttar Pradesh where ideology, unlike, say, in Kerala, counts for very little. In 2007, it’s the hawa fanned by the upper caste that had made fence-sitters believe it was Mayawati’s turn, and she made it to the top office. In the last Lok Sabha election, the upper caste voters including Brahmins voted overwhelmingly for Narendra Modi as they saw him as a symbol of both conservative Hindutva and a modern reformer. But, over the years, BJP in Uttar Pradesh is perceived as an outright communal party with OBC groups at its core. Keshav Prasad Maurya, an OBC leader, now holds the post of BJP state president. BJP MP Yogi Adityanath, much criticised for his communal hate-mongering, has been chosen among the party’s main campaigners. Besides, the memories of riots at Moradabad and Saharanpur are still raw. It peeved the educated class that expected Modi to usher in a wave of modernisation, but got communal slugfest in its place.
From Akhilesh’s perspective, Congress’ demands of 125 seats were undoubtedly irksome. But the dividend he can expect from an SP-Congress unity, extending to JD(U), RLD and even Mamata Banerjee’s TMC being on board, goes a very long way. If the future alliance ultimately trounces BJP in India’s most populous state—and that too three years after BJP had grabbed 73 of its 80 Lok Sabha seats—it will get flagged as evidence of the 2014 victory of Modi being a purely temporary phenomenon, something like a flash flood. If the BJP-Akali Dal combine also flounders in Punjab, it will lead to considerable diminution of Modi’s stature as winner in 2019.
By emerging as the new face of his party to defeat the old cabal of men with backward ideas and orthodox mindset, Akhilesh has already positioned himself as an icon of young voters. If he can forge and lead a powerful alliance in the next two years, he can become the unquestioned national alternative. That should make BJP see its nemesis coming on a bicycle (SP’s poll symbol).
