Maulana Mulayam plans a comeback and that too in amnner bound to stun his opponents. In the aearly 1990s a senior journalist Osama Talha while penning an article for a national daily came up with a new title for a wrestler from Etawah, he called him Maulana Mulayam and the name struck to Mulayam Singh Yadav and saw him in good stead in the 1990s. The Samajwadi Party rose to heights even it could not have imagined and then came downfall in the last Assembly elections. The latter half of the first decade of the 21st Century was not as rosy as it should have been for this great grassroots leader. Even journos forgot that he was Maulana Mulayam and so did his vote bank.
His constant wooing of Amar Singh and his attempt to cuddle up to Kalyan Singh were both disasters in the making and a few months ago political pundits in the state were virtually writing off the Samajwadi Party as a non-player in future elections. They were justified in doing do for the silence in the SP ranks was deafening.
But now MSY has finally broken a studied silence. He has apologized to the Muslim masses for having neglected them, Amar Singh the man who his aides and prominent parties leaders had differences with has left the party and Mulayam has nothing to do with Kalyan Singh the man who is seen as the BJP face behind the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya.
It is obvious now that Mulayam is staging a comeback with a multi-star cast of Muslim leaders, an act which may well make him popular with the minority community and make him the darling of the voters of Uttar Pradesh once again.
Mulayam Singh has been seen as the right vehicle for delivery in regional politics by the voters of Uttar Pradesh. They still have a lot of confidence in the man’s words and there are still two years to go for the next Assembly elections. In such a situation MSY may actually succeed in pulling his party back from the brink and do it in a manner no other party leader can hope to do so.
Political sources indicate that the timing is just right. With the holy month of Ramzan just a few weeks away religious fervor and sentiment will be high among the minorities and MSY can cash in on this sentiment. It is rumored that the parties most favorite Muslim leader Azam Khan may rejoin after Eid and so will a battery of Muslim leaders to reinforce the dwindling ranks of the SP with new strength.
While those who take a simplistic view feel Amar Singh’s departure has left the Samajwadi bereft of Thakur support others feel differently. They feel Amar and MSY are playing a new game and Amar’s new manch could be SP in disguise. So has Mulayam divided his army into two flanks to catch the BSP in a double whammy?
Let us take a look at the last Assembly elections. The astute political wrestler that he is MSY knows he was literally beaten by Mayawati by a split second. In more than a 100 seats the Samajwadi Party lost by an average of 500 to 1500 votes to the BSP which pulled off its victory based on its social engineering by becoming a Brahmin dominated party overnight. In such a defeat Mulayam sees his victory. He has identified the main reasons for his defeat, the departure of the Muslim vote from his party’s fold.
Take the case of Raja Bhinga a six-time sitting MLA and one who can be termed a winning candidate in every sense. The Rani Sahab contesting on a SP ticket lost to Laddan Mishra by 1,500 votes. Then take the case of Nakul Dubey who won by less than 3,000 votes in Lucknow. Mulayam, say sources, feels all it will take to win these seats is political fine-tuning and the fact that the anti-incumbency factor will not work against him this time.
No doubt Azam Khan’s return will be celebrated among a section of the minority community. But the last few years have seen the rise of new Muslim parties too. Take the Peace Party led by Dr Ayub Ansari in the Devi Patan division, the Momin Conference of Rais Ansari in Sandila and several others, which have fragmented the Muslim vote. But Amar Singh is now being seen in political circles as a person who is closeting up to the small Muslim Tanzeems in the hope of creating a confederacy of Muslim tanzeems to forge together a new political cavalry so to speak. Armed with the language of the Sermon of the Mount these leaders can both destroy or recreate the new Samajwadi Party. So what is Amar Singh’s role here? Is he ought to destroy MSY or rebuild him? Only time will tell. Which leaves one more question unanswered. IF Azam Khan can return will other leaders, Muslim and even non-Muslim follow suit?
A nexus of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats have created, institutionalized and manualised a sytem of corruption aimed to drain away development funds from Central and State projects into personal and political kitties. This system is based on complete transparency and honesty in the ratio each official and politician will get out of the project. So while UP’s politicians drive Pajeros there are no roads in the state and while there is no water for its poor to drink in summers the children of its bureaucrats spend their summers in Switzerland.
Imagine a governance black hole, which eats up the resources of the Centre and creates poverty amidst plenty in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Can such a governance vacuum exist? How does it work and what does it do. It promotes prosperity based on corruption in governance for a few and poverty for the many. It turns facilitator into party cadres seeking only one thing; loopholes in the system to ferret out resources meant for the common man and divert them into the creation of disproportionate assets for those who hold the reins of power.
How can such a power center emerge that literally has one objective to bleed the center white and use those resources to run its personal and political machinery.
India and its unity and diversity which combine to make it a great nation are today under a new threat, not Naxalism, not separatism, not terrorism not the foreign hand but destabilizing forces working slowly and steadily in the heartland of the nation. Surprised? I hope I am wrong but there are indications in the nations most populous and largest state Uttar Pradesh that this may already be happening.
Despite the vision of the founding fathers of the Constitution, despite the safeguards in built into the Indian system to ensure that sovereignty will wrest with the people and despite breaking government into three wings to ensure that one keeps a check on the other to promote the welfare of the common man in Uttar Pradesh there exists a system today that promotes dictatorship and defies democratic norms. Where the power of the government machinery is not used to facilitate the work of the harassed citizen but misused to harass the citizen. Where misuse of power is synonymous with public position and so on. This list of waging war against the common man and the Union of India is endless. I refer to this newfound form of corruption as waging war against the Union of India as it is this corruption which is eating into the vitals of our country today. And unfortunately it begins from Uttar Pradesh.
Is this due to weak central authority? Not really it is more due to the emergence of forces that threaten the basic premise on which India exists, unity in diversity.
Suddenly the emergence of centrifugal tendencies, caste and communal politics and regionalism has dampened the fabric which holds this great nation together.
Forget Kashmir, the Khalistan movement or Mandal and Kamandal politics. A new type of threat is emerging where a state government is setting an unhealthy example of flouting central authority in a manner in which it cant be detected. This is undoubtedly the most dangerous threat to Indian unity and gross disrespect for the institutions that govern the county.
For 25 years the people of Uttar Pradesh have voted for caste, communalism and regionalism, today what has this regionalism given the state. It has pushed it at least two decades behind states like Punjab and Haryana.
Uttar Pradesh has lost everything today. Its factories have shut down, its youth have taken to migration or crime. Its schools and colleges stand in disrepute today and it is a state where parents have learnt to live without their children. Despite this few know that for every One Rupee that the Centre spends on development programmes in India thirty five paise are sent to Uttar Pradesh.
So where does the money go? A viscous mix of regionalism and corruption have ensured that the money is siphoned off to run regional parties, the money goes into the homes of corrupt politicians and ministers and bureaucrats. One very easy way to assess this is to look around the state capital. Lucknow is a city where roads are pockmarked but the elite drive Prados and Mercedes. So where do the cars come from, obviously from funds meant to build roads, fund development and carry out welfare programmes.
Then take the case of the Supreme Court. It says one thing, the state government agrees to carry out its directives and does so on paper but on the ground it goes ahead and does what it wants to do, because two wings of the government each meant to keep a check on each other have entered into an unwritten pact to connive with each other for personal gain. An unhealthy nexus of corrupt officials and politicians have made a mockery of judicial governance.
So Uttar Pradesh is a state where the poor do not have houses but stone elephants worth crores are being built and dumped in government offices by spending public money. This manualisation and institutionalization of corruption is only possible if regional parties remain in power in the state.
The forces, which encourage this manner of corruption, are playing a dangerous game. They wish to use the Centre as a milch cow and usurp the benefits it passes on for their personal gain. Disillusioned masses could very well lose faith in the democratic process and leave the way wide open for a distinct minority to grab and retain power to plunder to the state exchequer.
Having broken the economic backbone of UP regional parties have created their own economy, that is one based on corruption which aims at ripping off the state exchequer. So we have development projects based on construction activity like parks and super specialist hospitals in Saifai from which huge chunks of money can be siphoned off. we have commissions on all projects from sewer lines to road building and the more money the centre pumps in the more it fuels corruption, in fact it is a Kashmir like situation where despite huge deveolopment money being sent the terrorist takes away everything in the end. In such a situation development in UP will take a back seat as the ruling class will only be interested in its own development.
The children of ministers and former ministers drive around in super luxury cars and the children of its officials spend their summer holidays in Switzerland and Canada. The rape of the economy is beyond parallel in UP. Take the state capital Lucknow, the roads are pockmarked, the drains overflow, the sewers choke. Low voltage plagues power supply, the elite of the city drive Pajeros and Fortuners and even Mercedes. Some of them only first generation politicians.
For a politicians to be rich if he comes from a super rich state like Andhra or Maharashtra or Gujarat there are several explanations, today there are ministes who own several businesses. While one has a retail coffee outlet from down south, another owns a fruit juice company and so on. They earn millions and can live well. But for an impoverished state like UP where there is no industry or business or trade, where do politicians get money to splurge? Obviously by stealing from development schemes meant to take the state ahead. And therefore the Centre is caught in a catch 22 situations. The more it spends on development the more it fuels corruption and a classic example is MNREGA.
Why is this silent defiance of Central authority more dangerous than a militant movement? It is more dangerous because it works within the system and spreads like a virus. The state can only have one response to it that is to Change the Government. But that is not in the hands of the state for sovereignty wrests with the masses in India and this is for them to decide.
A strong India means prosperity and a weak one penury. An empire or a nation breaks up in the absence of strong central authority. The Centre of an empire is always the last to fall. Circulation ceases first on the peripheries of the nation. So with a strong national party like the Congress in power at the center should one bother about the fear of Balkanisation in India? More so in the present scenario feel political pundits.
The Congress received a windfall in the form of 20 MPs in the last elections in the nation from UP. But it has lost in all the byelections with the sole exception of Lucknow west MLA and Ferozabad MP.
Among the other centrifugal tendencies emerging today in Uttar Pradesh are a host of Muslim parties. Most Muslim parties and Muslim leaders are offshoots from the parent party known as the All India Muslim Forum. Several members of this organization became ministers like Abdul Mannan in the BSP, others like Ayub Ansari launched the Peace Party. These hold the balance of power in UP today.
They can upset all political calculations of any party relying upon minority votes and dalit votes to win (the traditional vote bank of the Congress).
So will the absence of the Congress in UP eventually upset the Centre and the Unity of India? Why not? UP sends several score MPs to the Centre, only a score of Congress MPs will be unable to do anything for the party and the deeper UP sinks into poverty crime and chaos the worse it will be for the Centre.
One of the reasons for the French Revolution taking place and the monarchy being abolished was that the system of governance in France had become rotten from within. Government posts were being sold by the king to the highest bidder. These bidders then extracted money from the poor and turned their post into a business enterprise and investment. Today the regional vision of parties has done the same in UP. Government jobs are sold to the highest bidders, we have police recruitment scams and officers pay annual fees to ministers to retain plum assignments. The state is also known to have a transfer posting industry. So will those who so conveniently forget the lessons of history not be condemned to repeat it?
On an average a police inspector is expected to take home a couple of lakhs a day and a PCS more than that. What is the use of being an IIM MBA in UP when all the role models in the state are wrong? Today the youth is entering into politics in the country in the hope of making money and only making money. A sorry state of affairs indeed.
The location of UP makes it very important too. Take the state capital Lucknow and its proximity to Nepal. Any terrorist wanting to enter it has to take a direct flight from Islamabad to Kathmandu, then drive down to Bahraich and enter India. He can do so with counterfeit currency, guns and explosives. What can be more dangerous to the unity of India? Will a corrupt officialdom bother to check this? I doubt it. Nationalism is the first casualty when the mindset becomes regional.
The Central government is in a bind today. How does one provide good governance to Uttar Pradesh?
The solution
The Solution lies in reinventing democracy in Uttar Pradesh. We need to rediscover constitutional authority and do away with the cult of personality and extra constitutional authority, which has emerged in the state. For the last 25 years the persona of local leaders has led the masses astray. Personality cults have converted and perverted each and every institution in the state. Governance has never been worse, as government in such a situation fails to deliver to the common man; it only delivers to those close to the personalities in power.
We need to recreate the right vehicles for deliverance, For this we need to recreate a system and mindset which recognizes all men as equal before law and recognizes that misuse of power is as great an offence as breaking any other law. The basic premise of democracy. For this we need heroes as heroes are needed to set examples to change mindsets. We need heroes equivalent to the knights of the round table we need to reinvent the quality of our legislators, we need warriors and not knaves. And lastly we need a prince to lead these brave men to fight a war for the independence of Uttar Pradesh to give it freedom from corruption, from nepotism, from communalism and from casteism. Such a prince should be capable of pulling out a sword from a boulder.
Since the dark ages the world has full of legends of magic swords. In the years before history they called it Excalibur the sword of King Arthur. In the picture Lord of the Rings it was the sword of Isildor who died defending Earth from the dark forces of evil. I wonder what they will call this prince in Uttar Pradesh, who his knights of the round table will be. But if we look at the sword as pure metaphor, then we could compare it to the electoral process and the prince to the middle class, which has lost faith in this process. Not only do we need to get the middle class to actively participate in the process, as they are the true knights of democracy, we also need to pull the entire process out of the boulder of corruption into which it has been embedded. We need to make voting compulsory as it is in other countries and we need to give respectability to politics too to ensure that respectable people come into the mainstream of politics.
Only then will we get proper representation in the Assembly and in Parliament. Otherwise I feel we shall have to wait for an Avataar to come and pull out the sword from the boulder to restore rule of law in the state. But I firmly believe that the first alternative if far better. Make voting compulsory so that the people in power actually represent the masses and feel responsible for them.
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