As the U.P. ke ladke (U.P.’s boys) — what their spin doctors have dubbed them — entered Agra on Feb. 3 for a road show, the crowds that filled the streets to see Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi surprised long-time residents. Flags of the Samajwadi Party and Congress fluttered aloft as workers of the two parties marched together. An SP election song blared over the loudspeakers, its refrain kam bolta hain (the work speaks for itself) being a reference to the young Chief Minister’s development record. A 12-km journey took three hours to complete.
At the end, Akhilesh Yadav took the microphone, emphasising that he and Rahul Gandhi represented the “new generation”, one that would carve out a “new path” with a “new outlook”. “I hear and feel the energy here,” he told the largely young, cheering crowds, “our symbol is the cycle and I know sometimes when you get on a cycle, your enthusiasm makes you to ride it hands-free. But now we’ll have the steadying hand [the Congress symbol] of the Congress too.”
A personality contest
In an election bereft of an overriding issue, Akhilesh Yadav's effort — over what has been a difficult six months for him, personally and politically — has been to convert the Uttar Pradesh elections into a personality contest. In ‘Battleground U.P.’, where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) doesn’t have a chief ministerial candidate, and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati has trailed Mr. Akhilesh in popularity in every opinion poll, he wants to make this election an “Akhilesh vs. the rest’ contest.
The SP could have contested the elections on its own. But, by the time the Yadav family battle was resolved in mid-January, with the cycle symbol going to the Akhilesh faction, some damage had been done to the party’s image. Ms Mayawati’s all-out effort to forge a Dalit-Muslim platform also posed the possibility of the minorities getting divided. An alliance with the Congress was clearly what Mr. Akhilesh felt was needed to consolidate the SP’s Muslim base, similar to the way Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had done in 2015 when he formed a grand alliance with Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress. If the RJD and the Congress helped the alliance reach a majority, Mr. Kumar’s enviable clean image played its own role.
The SP-Congress combine in U.P. is nowhere as perfect an alliance as the mahagathbandhan was in Bihar with the BSP being present as a third strong party. Nevertheless, by playing the youth card — and jointly campaigning with Rahul Gandhi — Mr. Akhilesh has projected it as a formidable challenger to the BJP. The objective is to draw in the younger generation.
The personality contest ploy is one that has been used successfully in the past by other charismatic leaders. If Lalu Prasad used it to his advantage in Bihar in the 1990s, Narendra Modi took it to new heights in Gujarat in the 2000s, climaxing in his bid for power at the Centre in 2014. And, last year, Mamata Banerjee, through sheer force of personality, overcame a slew of scams and a negative image to win a second term with an impressive majority in West Bengal.
Having emerged onto the centre stage, Mr. Akhilesh has crafted an image of himself calculated to make maximum impact. In the midst of the family battle, he kept the focus firmly on himself. One video film showed him hard at work in the U.P. secretariat in the first part and relaxed at home at the dinner table with his wife and three children in the second, combining images of a hard-working Chief Minister in control with that of the perfect family man. However, after the Akhilesh-faction won the cycle symbol, SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav re-appeared on its posters. One had Mr. Mulayam occupying the left half with Mr. Akhilesh occupying less than half the space his father did on the far-right, shown respectfully bowed with folded hands, eyes cast down. As a senior civil servant who has worked closely with both of them said, “Akhilesh has not stinted on showing respect to his father.
Above caste and religion
Simultaneously, the hashtag #kamboltahain, a catchy caste-free phrase, encapsulates the vision of a moderniser, focussed on the development of the State. Indeed, as his image-makers say: Akhilesh is above caste and religion. If his being who he is brings in Yadav and Muslim support, other communities, especially the upper castes, are not averse to him either. Indeed, as one travels across the State, it is hard to find anyone, even avowed BJP or BSP supporters, who has anything negative to say against him. By re-inventing the SP, while holding onto its core values as a party dedicated to socialist ideals, Mr. Akhilesh has widened the SP’s support base.
Indeed, this transformation of Akhilesh Yadav’s image is nothing short of a miracle. This when barely six months ago, his public image was that of a loser — an anointed Chief Minister, thwarted at very turn by an overbearing father and a gaggle of power-hungry uncles. Then, last September, the long-simmering Yadav family feud spilled onto the streets. But, oddly, as the battle progressed, Mr. Akhilesh came into his own, displaying grit, tenacity and, above all, grace under pressure.
Having wrested absolute control over the SP, including by winning its iconic cycle symbol, Mr. Akhilesh quickly placed those he trusted in strategic positions. Also, he dumped all tainted MLAs, thus ridding himself of all that was wrong with the party. If Mr. Akhilesh became the symbol of the hopes and aspirations of the youth, he also endeared himself to the older generation by smiling through the crisis, not uttering one word against his father. A phrase often heard among older people about the young Chief Minister is: Why should Mulayam Singh mind his son coming into his own? He has had his day, and Akhilesh, after all, is a layak beta ( a worthy son).
smita.g@thehindu.co.in
