(Ashok Malik is a columnist and writer living in Delhi)Reflecting on Uttar Pradesh (UP), it is tempting to borrow the title of Ahmed Rashid's 2008 book "Descent into Chaos". A murder a day, an egregious crime a week, BJP politicians being picked out and killed, policemen targeted and murdered by criminals with astonishing brazenness - UP has become a byword for lawlessness. It was not as if India's most-populated state was an epitome of amity and peace earlier, but even by its own standards, the past few weeks have been horrific.
In a sense, this is happening because the government of Akhilesh Yadav has lost its nerve. Powerful individuals and sub-regional leaders in the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) have turned desperate, convinced they must seek a future elsewhere or make it by their own means, however disreputable.
In some cases, this is leading to vengeful violence against the BJP, which (with its allies) won 73 of UP's 80 Lok Sabha seats. In other cases, it is causing MLAs and groups that backed the SP when it swept to power in local elections in 2012 to shift away. The shift was visible during the Lok Sabha election itself. Now it threatens to become an avalanche.
What we are seeing resembles the cracking of the UPA government in 2011, when the Anna Hazare protests began. The Manmohan Singh ministry still had its parliamentary majority but after that summer of 2011 got demoralised beyond repair. Its effective life was over, though it limped along for three years.
For Akhilesh's government, survival till 2017 is seriously in question. Internal contradictions could be irresistible. The SP came to office in 2012 by building on a strong Yadav-Muslim base, and using a younger and supposedly gentler face - Akhilesh rather than his father Mulayam Singh Yadav - to attract incremental voters, whether Rajputs or urban residents.
For their own reasons, the latter were looking for an alternative to Mayawati's BSP (admittedly other urban segments did stay loyal to her). Akhilesh appeared the only option. The BJP was a non-starter in the 2012. The Congress' high-profile campaign, led by Rahul Gandhi, excited only the media.
Today, much of the incremental vote that Akhilesh and the SP won has moved away. A big chunk went to the BJP and to Narendra Modi in 2014. If the BJP keeps its momentum, then it could well return to the secretariat in Lucknow. Of course, Mayawati cannot be entirely ruled out. Her party, the BSP, won no Lok Sabha seats but picked up 20 per cent of the vote. If she can even partially construct the rainbow coalition - Dalits, Brahmins, urban voters, a slice of Muslims - that gave her such an impressive victory in 2007, she could be back in the game.
For Akhilesh and Mulayam, the challenge is simply to complete a full term. So demotivated are party workers, the SP is finding it difficult to hold on to old-time Yadav and Muslim support. While both Mayawati (in 2007) and Modi/the BJP (in 2014) went beyond identity politics to upgrade their appeal, Mulayam and Akhilesh remain stuck in the formulaic politics of the 1990s. They have completely unlearnt the lessons from the mandate of 2012, if they learnt them in the first place.
The SP won five seats in the Lok Sabha election. Two of these went to Mulayam, who contested from Mainpuri as well as Azamgarh, two went to his nephews, and one to his daughter-in-law, and Akhilesh's wife, Dimple. The immediate headache for Mulayam will be the by-election caused by his resignation from one of the two seats. A by-election in Azamgarh would be risky. The BJP's Ramakant Yadav ran Mulayam close and could be expected to beat any other SP candidate. Mainpuri is a safer bet.
Earlier there was talk of Mulayam giving up Mainpuri for his second son, Prateek. Now Mulayam and Akhilesh are reportedly considering a Muslim candidate as the proverbial "signal to the community". Can such hollow symbolism arrest the SP's decline? One doubts it.
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