Kanpur:
It’s hard to do better than Mayawati, the Uttar Pradesh (UP) chief minister, in a rally. An estimated 60,000 people from 10 zillas have come to listen to her in Kanpur. There are certainties in store for them, like her punctuality. Unlike the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders who are disgracefully late, Mayawati does not keep her constituents waiting even a minute. At 3.55 pm her helicopter appears in the distance, and the Lioness of UP steps up the dais at exactly 4 pm to speak. The ground itself is neat and festooned with the blue flags of her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and two hoardings on which the local candidate shares space with her. And the warm-up songs are creative. They call her the Devi (Goddess) of Justice, the Lioness of UP, the Iron Lady. They are clearly positioning her for a place in Delhi.
Her speech is confident and delivered in a monotone, but the audience is rapt. She apologises for her past mistakes of choosing the wrong candidates to represent her people, and takes on her rivals point by point. That the Congress at the centre is holding back development funds for UP, that the national opposition BJP has been scandalously corrupt in Karnataka and can’t be trusted in UP, that the goons of the Samajwadi Party (SP) of Mulayam Singh Yadav have been kept at bay but could return if she is unseated. Her development programmes have also helped both the Muslims and the upper castes, and there is more development in terms of electricity and employment to come when she is re-elected. When she is done, she leaves quietly but without the usual public interaction of the other politicians, the ground clears out. There is an unaccustomed discipline here.
Mulayam Singh Yadav (Right) of the Samajwadi Party
Her main rival, Rahul Gandhi, who Mayawati condescendingly refers to as “the Prince,” is more accustomed to the adoration of the crowd. His family has been at the receiving end of it for three generations now. Gandhi walks into his rallies surrounded by his young acolytes, some of whom are policy wonks, and speaks with more passion to his followers. He is the quintessential aristocrat: polite, well-bred, refreshingly handsome – and sometimes feudal. He refers to himself in the third person, and speaks only of people’s poverty, and his simpatico with their empty bellies.
His negative campaigning about his opponents is at odds with someone who should instead be a beacon of positivity and new ideas that can capture the imagination of this young country (like his father did). After all, he has had every privilege and opportunity, and his opponent Mayawati has had nothing but struggle. Yet she is the optimist, and his is the language of grievance – an outdated concept in an India that has moved on.
Just for the record: the rallies of the BJP we saw were poorly attended, and without excitement. The party leaders are not hopeful of a win, and are focused on the numbers like nerds. They’re like the Nawabs, playing a game of chess while the armies fight in the fields beyond.
Despite that, the BJP is a player in this election. So is the SP, so is the BSP and so is the Congress. In fact, it is a four-way fight, and the votes may get split evenly between the four main parties. In which case there could be a repeat of the Bihar election of 2005, where an uncertain win wrung President’s Rule in the state – that means Congress rule from Delhi. By the time another election comes around, six months to an hour later, the Congress stands a very good chance in UP – after 22 years of being out of the running as a force in the state, say seasoned analysts.
This is evident from the vox pop polls we conduct along the road from Kanpur to Jhansi. The small town of Derapur is a microcosm of the election in UP. Here, there seems to be equal support to the four top party candidates and also the smaller parochial parties like Peace Party and Apna Dal. The population is a mix of Brahmins, Dalits, Yadavs and other OBCs, and Muslims. The traders and Brahmins who support the BJP, complain about Mayawati’s favouring the Dalits, the Congress’ corruption in NREGA schemes, and the inability to speak openly to candidates who campaign because their goons won’t let people be critical.
Congress Party flyers in Uttar Pradesh
One young man who runs a pharmacy says the corruption is so deep that the official Rs. 3,500 license fee he had to pay to set up his new shop was meaningless; instead, the going rate in the market and with local officials was Rs. 70,000 – which he duly paid. It will take him a long time to get profitable.
He doesn’t say it, but this is how spurious drugs get into the market; the margins are higher and traders can recover their investment quicker. As usual, corruption is an onerous, life-threatening tax on the poor alone.
But everywhere we went – Dera, Jhansi, Ercha, Salempur, Bhognipur – we saw an astonishing change. Every village had a school, a college, a clinic or a hospital, and roads paved inside the villages (even while municipal roads are terrible). There is reasonable Hindu-Muslim harmony, and the young girls are going to school as much as the boys. All the young have an education and if parents have a grouse it is that they aren’t able to get their children a better private education. That’s what they really want – a better education, and jobs and more jobs. There are government jobs available for young rural women as anganwadi or childcare workers, and a massive recruitment of teachers. But not everyone is suited to be a teacher. Industry is desperately required. Underemployment is the norm, and it doesn’t have to be.
That’s why Rahul Gandhi isn’t able to set the crowd on fire. He refers to UP’s people as poor and hungry, while they say their stomachs are full but they want better and more education and jobs. He is young and attractive enough to take a leap of faith and appeal to the wider imagination of young UP. Kanpur was the Manchester of India and though rundown, still has a dynamic commodities, fruit and meat market, and a huge leather industry that can be brought into the modern market space with a little bit of local training and creativity. The excellent IIT-Kanpur can be used to create innovative solutions for this.
So far, however, no candidate is thinking of the future. They’re thinking of the five years after the elections. They’re thinking of dynasty – the Gandhi vs. The Dalit. Meanwhile the people of UP are giving them a roadmap: look they say, at how Bihar is progressing next door. Perhaps Nitish Kumar should run for election in UP. It will end the four-way fight and produce a decisive win for UP.
Manjeet Kripalani is Executive Director of Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations.
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