An American university campus is not where one would expect to see young Samajwadi Party (SP) politicians training for the rough and tumble of heartland politics in India. Nevertheless, several young SP politicians spent three months at the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron in Ohio during last year’s U.S. elections.
Among them was Nidhi Yadav, the 33-year-old party candidate from Handia, a semi-rural constituency in Allahabad district. Nominated three years ago as a member of the State’s Tourism Board, headed by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, she is now part of his core youth team.
So what did she learn in Akron? “Well, politics in U.P. is very different from the U.S. The economic scenario is very different,” she admits. “But there were some useful lessons on the use of social media.”
Educated and professional
Politics was not this young woman’s first career choice: after a management degree, she worked for several years at SBI Life Insurance Co. Ltd., rising to Manager, NRI Services, before leaving it to open a boutique in Mumbai. Finally, three years ago, she returned home to Allahabad to manage the family-run schools and colleges, as well as a dairy that promotes native breeds of cows.
Ms. Yadav’s father, Vasudev Yadav, retired as Director, Secondary and Basic Education, U.P., before being nominated as an MLC by the SP. His proximity to SP patriarch Mulayam Singh provided the link to the party. But she is the first person in her family to contest an election and that too, one where she is replacing a sitting SP MLA who, not surprisingly, is not very happy.
But the choice of candidates like Nidhi Yadav — as much at home in a metropolitan setting as in the rural hinterlands — is part of Mr Akhilesh Yadav’s desire to reinvent the SP, making it more appealing to an educated non-denominational middle class.
“After winning in 2012, the new CM set a new trend of development. He’s progressive, optimistic, far-sighted and above caste politics ... caste is a reality, but he would like to get out of its web,” Ms. Yadav says.
She, clearly, is an admirer of her young mentor and through our conversation, quotes him frequently, especially bits that reflect his belief in the power of highways to create opportunities: “Akhilesh ji always says, ‘Roads made America; America did not make roads’,” she says.
To a question on how the party plans to stem the flow of members of the new Yadav middle class — a post-1990s phenomenon — to the BJP, who want to disassociate themselves from the popular stereotype of lathi-wielding Yadav musclemen, she says, “Those community members who had moved forward, become economically sound, and moved to the BJP, will all come back because Akhilesh is seen as forward looking.”
But she emphasises that the SP’s focus will remain the 70% at the bottom.
And it is with that thought that Ms. Yadav sets out each morning, in a crisp white kurta and churidar and a woollen bundi (jacket).
Correction
This story has been corrected for a factual error
