POLITICS and its discourse are as enduring to Uttar Pradesh (UP) as the Ganges that flows down the middle of this most socially diverse province of India. With nearly 15 per cent of India’s parliamentary seats based in UP and a population of over 200 million, no political party with aspirations for power in New Delhi can ignore the mood of this state; nor can it offend the political sensitivities of its voters without incurring enormous political cost.

Keeping these realities in mind, this last spring before the next general election is due has seen hectic activity and manoeuvring by both the key protagonists in UP – the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The Indian National Congress which leads the United Progressive Alliance, in government at the Centre, is completely reliant on the brittle foundations of the SP and BSP’s brick and mortar to keep its edifice from crumbling. In some combination, the UPA government currently has the support of 69 MPs from UP (this includes 21 Congress and 5 RLD MPs). UP is, therefore, what keeps the UPA alive.

Back in the province, the beginnings of a churning are in evidence, but only just. This article examines the circumstance of each of UP’s political parties and the likely set of strategies they might adopt, going forward to the next Lok Sabha election.

Over the last decade the SP has been winning the largest chunk of UP’s seats to the Lok Sabha. Unhappily for the party leadership, this has not corresponded with any power sharing in government at the Centre. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s long cherished aim of a dual power structure – a role in central government and a SP government in UP at the same time – has perhaps never been as achievable as it appears to be today. Even so, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s target, to win 60 parliamentary seats, is an impossible objective. Deeply localized caste combinations, which vary from district to district, a chronic sense of anti-incumbency, well-entrenched and independent political barons, moody minorities who will divide themselves to support anyone who can defeat the BJP, and the SP’s own temperamental second-rung leadership, means that the SP will be lucky to reach 40.

Naturally, the formidable Mulayam has already wrestled with potential obstacles and is busy formulating coping strategies to mitigate these. Foremost among them is to add another slab of caste support to his existing OBC, Muslim, and Thakur confederacy by positioning himself as the leading alternative to both the UPA and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Who comprises this additional slab? Last month, Lucknow provided the location for an unprecedented eulogy by Mulayam Singh. Hyper-praising the Brahmin community in a language and form that would embarrass the most grovelling sycophant, MSY wrapped a large gathering of UP’s Brahmins in a verbal embrace. He appealed to them for direction and guidance and was at pains to point out his government’s contribution to the promotion of Sanskrit, a harmless political stunt but one which robs the BJP of its molars, though not its canines.

 

The Prabuddh Varg Sammelan, a conference for enlightened sections, pronounces a more esoteric practice of caste politics than any attempted before. The nomenclature itself bestows an official obeisance to the Brahmin community and they want little else, especially after 13 members of the SP government’s cabinet belong to the Brahmin community.

Akhilesh Yadav has lost support even among the newly converted young urban crowd that flocked to him during the last assembly elections, a year ago. It is a development his father, Mulayam Singh Yadav has observed and left unaddressed, because the young chief minister is only a face, a symbolic gesture, whose whole purpose in politics was to attract what some political pundits condescendingly refer to as ‘the laptop brigade’ for the 2012 assembly election. Mulayam Singh believes he can arrest, rectify and reverse what currently appears to be a decline for the SP.

How does he intend to do this? Partly, the attempt is, in the tested, old-fashioned SP tradition, of giving free reign to local satraps closer to an election and raising the bogey (not wholly unreal) of Mayawati’s inherent tendency to entrench Dalit domination – at the cost of all else – within the state’s power structure. The hammering received by the rural upper caste voters of UP at the level of thana and tehsil during Mayawati’s last government is unlikely to be forgotten soon. To retain this support Mulayam needs to be aggressive with the BJP and portray Congress as a weak and tottering alternative.

 

Hostility towards the BJP helps to shore that other, most crucial vote of the minorities in UP that moved in large numbers towards Congress and which is now more ready, than ever before, to transfer its support to smaller, albeit new formations like the Qaumi Ekta Dal and even the beleaguered Peace Party, among others. Many of these small parties enjoy concentrated support in isolated, island-like constituencies and even if they are collectively able to win only four to seven seats in the Lok Sabha, their campaigns and interventions spell a game changer for the protagonist parties in the state. These regional Lilliputians are the cogs that can shift critical vote percentages in specific sub-regions of the province, a process that creates a multiplier effect with consequences for the bigger parties. No surprise then that the SP is desperately trying to merge them into itself, just ahead of the election.

Finally, the SP’s old warhorses continue to make cavalier charges in skirmish like interventions which might cut both ways for the party. The taciturn, complicated but indestructible Azam Khan is one such veteran. An inherent repulsion for the Congress Party and for any kind of politics to the right of socialism is what drives Azam Khan. He is one of only a few politicians with a capacity to take on the Muslim clergy and reduce their influence in state politics, as he memorably did in the middle of the 2012 assembly election. His short-lived estrangement from the SP, around the last Lok Sabha election, resulted in the party losing big chunks of its core Muslim vote. Azam Khan is a potent pillar around which the SP’s forthcoming election strategy will revolve.

Unlike Maharashtra where regional identity is highly politicized, in UP the significance of coming from this province is taken for granted and is not a political issue, though it is often clubbed with the rise of regional politics. What is highly politicized is caste identity and only two factors are able to weaken its grip on voter preferences. The first is individual economic benefit, and the second, a sense of public security; all else, including development indices, are secondary and peripheral at best only helping as ancillaries to the aforementioned conditions. Where the SP government has succeeded is in linking economic patronage to development by granting its satraps control over infrastructure projects and other factors of influence, brazenly and unashamedly. Like medieval mansabdars, these beneficiaries must bring in the numbers at the time of electoral battle if they wish to retain their stake in the economic pie of the state.

 

An examination of two disparate election results is enough to make an assessment about the position of the Congress party in the state. The first was the 2009 Lok Sabha election which resulted in an extraordinary triumph for the party, surprising even its own members. The second was the shocking debacle, despite a very pronounced and aggressive campaign led by (then) party General Secretary Rahul Gandhi in the 2012 Vidhan Sabha election.

Results of provincial elections in UP traditionally do not have a resonance for parliamentary elections. (Mayawati’s sweeping victory in 2007 in the state had little in common with a less than average showing in the general election only two years later.) Nonetheless, battling strong anti-incumbency at the Centre and long entrenched organizational weaknesses in the state, the party must rely on factors it cannot plan around or prepare for to retain seats. The Puraan Party, as it is referred to by older generations of voters in UP, will definitely win some new seats, but these will only serve to buffer the deficit created by the loss of incumbent constituencies.

 

The party’s use of government patronage (and of Parliament) was disappointingly underutilized in this current term of office. It was additionally hampered by a vague, wandering and directionless moral political consensus that sections of the Congress wish to follow without really knowing where they want to go with it. The farmer’s subsidy preceding the 2009 general election was a move that won voter support throughout rural UP and played a significant role in fortifying the Congress party’s outstanding results in the state. The move also resulted in voters expecting a generous rationing out of the central budget for UP, an expectation that the party’s ground handlers have found difficult to manage in this tenure. A similar strategy might work provided the long pending and crucial Food Security Bill is passed through the Lok Sabha, at the very latest by the monsoon session. The bill requires time to germinate and let its effects be felt; implanted into the statute books too close to an election means it will be stillborn with no electoral advantage to be reaped.

Furthermore, the thekedari system of UP’s political economy – whereby political patronage is granted to influence support through government contracts – is something Congress has deliberately tried to exclude itself from. While the policy intent is of long-term importance and extremely well-intentioned, the dynamics of the politics of patronage require a stopgap arrangement through which Congress loyalists can at least extract a living. The attractions offered by the SP in particular are too tempting to ignore, especially for regional lickspittles of the party who hover between attendance at its rallies when addressed by members of the Gandhi family, but nominally spend most of their time – hatching and plotting in intimate encounters – in Lucknow, at homes of the SP’s more powerful ministers.

It is this strata of the Congress party’s state leadership that will do its utmost to sabotage the party’s attempted return to dominance in UP, because any potential return of a Rahul Gandhi-led Congress force in the state spells economic disaster for the party’s obsequious middle management. It is an unenviable condition for Congress given that it has yet to create any kind of perennial support base for itself.

 

The party also remains confused about its approach to caste formulations in general. A public display of egalitarianism, social unity and a pronounced distaste for caste identity that borders on a tirade is compromised by internal considerations bullied by a sense of fear and apprehension about ignoring caste equations, particularly in the selection of candidates. Very few political formations in India possess individuals who are able to transcend the vagaries of caste and religious identity, but the Congress has more such social transcendentalists than others. It just needs more of them to hold on to its currently impressive count of parliamentary seats in the state.

The choice of its prime ministerial candidate, even by implication if not declaration, will subtly determine how the party is able to compete in UP. A perception of fatigue or loss of confidence in a prime minister resonates rapidly in the public mind and is a source of demoralization for sitting MPs as well as prospective candidates.

 

The BSP’s ‘Elephints a-pilin’ teak, In the sludgy, squdgy creek’ attitude and actions in office desecrated its own carefully engineered social contract – that memorable amalgamation of a Brahmin, Muslim and Dalit coalition, buttressed by all those who had reason to hate the SP in the past. An exaggerated use of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act by Mayawati’s government led to a stinging electoral reprisal against her last year. How far can she shift course, even if it is only posturing, from her Dalit agenda to win back lost support? And even if she does, how many stakeholders in the caste dynamic will still be willing to buy into her pitch?

Within 24 hours of demitting office after her defeat in the 2012 Vidhan Sabha election, Mayawati was rendering her own analysis of her defeat to a packed press conference. Her performance (for that is what it was, devoid of feisty, fuming retorts) was clinical and comprehensive. She admitted to a breakdown of her own caste consensus, particularly with reference to the minorities and Brahmins – a breakdown she has already begun to repair, even before Mulayam Singh began his own raids on the Brahmin vote. With a prophetic precision, Mayawati issued a warning, in the same press conference, about an inevitable breakdown of law and order that would follow her departure from office. That is exactly what happened, and a rise in violence, arson and a general sense of public insecurity has indeed become the defining characteristic of the SP government in UP.

The BSP has already declared 36 candidates for the Lok Sabha election scheduled for May 2014, and these prospective MPs have been given more than a free hand, something Mayawati’s partymen are not accustomed to, by the Dalit devi. Interestingly, 19 of these declared candidates are Brahmins.

 

The BSP has also chosen to be less antagonistic than the SP towards the UPA government, a clear intent if any were required that she needs time to put her house in order before rocking the boat in New Delhi. This gives rise to a situation where she is engaged in brinkmanship with her most hated enemy, Mulayam Singh, over who will be the last to withdraw support to the UPA. The further the present central government falls into decline the better it is for Mayawati who does not suffer from anti-incumbency at either the Centre or the state.

A cursory look at the accompanying Table demonstrates that the BSP is the only party in Uttar Pradesh recording, albeit marginally, an increase in the number of its Lok Sabha seats, as well as a corresponding rise in its percentage of votes, a trend that has been consistent at least for the last fifteen years. What does this demonstrate? First, this is evidence that pre-electoral caste alliances have served the BSP well and that it is a recognized alternative force to its other competitors. Nonetheless, the fact that a nearly 5% increase in her vote share over a ten year period has only resulted in an increase of six seats over the same period, equally illustrates an inability to forge alliances with other smaller political groups that continue to chip away at her support base.

In the ‘sludgy, squdgy creeks’ of Gangetic politics, how is the BSP’s elephant positioned to romp home without compromising or in some way diluting its Dalit agenda? Some would argue that its position has already undergone considerable dilution. As perhaps the only politician in the country who enjoys a perennial and unshakeable ‘vote bank’, Mayawati’s best bet is to pitch for the Brahmin vote too. She will also garner Muslim support in whichever constituency her party looks like defeating the BJP, and will appear as a ‘secular alternative’ to both the Congress and SP. Finally, she will play on the sense of insecurity in the general citizenry of UP by raising the possibility of an even further decline in law enforcement if the SP were to improve its position at the Centre.

 

Uttar Pradesh is the centre and still holds the organic foundations of the BJP’s divisive agenda, which once propelled it to power at the Centre. Only two factors gave the BJP its massive political mandate, both entrenched in UP. The first was the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid movement and the second, the propagation of Lucknow’s former MP and former Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, as the last word on its politics. With the latter quietly retiring from politics following his defeat in 2004, the party has still not been able to find a replacement for this grandmaster. With no succession strategy and its whole wujood or identity being linked to and drawing recognition from the personality of its last prime minister, the BJP has fumbled from one leadership crises to another in the state of its birth.

Having tried and tested formerly estranged stalwarts such as Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharti, the fold has once more retained its trust in Rajnath Singh. They would have done better to have chosen an invisible and absent Atal Behari Vajpayee, whose posters are likely to garner more votes than Rajnath Singh campaigning from Ghaziabad to Ghazipur every day. The SP has already pipped the BJP to the Thakur vote, Rajnath Singh’s own community. The Brahmin lobby is much contested territory and no one really believes the party can deliver the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya any more.

With a stunning defeat for the party in Karnataka in May and anti-Congressism as its only visible election issue – a theme for which there are better proponents – the only likely basis of support for the BJP is the declaration of Narendra Modi as their prime ministerial candidate. At best, he might add another half dozen seats to the party’s kitty in UP, a paltry gain and huge loss, given that his elevation to prime ministerial candidate may mean the end of the NDA in its present form.

 

Nor can the BJP hope for an alliance with regional parties, given that both the SP and the BSP need crucial Muslim votes that form over 16% of UP’s electorate. Until the party is able to become a force on the national firmament to reckon with, it is unlikely to feature as a major player on the UP scene. Unlike the narrative of former years, UP is no longer structured to provide the BJP with a base to build a national presence. Its only succour lies in knowing that Congress may not do any better in the politics at the heart of India.