Mandals two

Can Mulayam and Lalu find an escape to the politics of aspiration?

As personalities,Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav could not be more different. The first is a performer with a unique knack for summing up an occasion with a winning gesture,the other apparently engaged in perpetual struggle to show the animation needed for a politics constructed on sustained public interaction.

Together,they are children of the vote of 20 years ago,when the Congress lost power to a third front,albeit one supported by the BJP and the Left. A few months after that government took power,implementation of the Mandal reports recommendations was announced,beginning the long-lasting Mandalisation of Indian politics. Lalu and Mulayam were among its primary beneficiaries and icons. As they now,after the mandate of 2009,accustom themselves to their diminished places in Indias and their respective states politics,it is an apt moment to take stock of the movement that sustained them beyond those heady early years of Mandal.

In the early 90s,as the Congress failed to retain the grand social coalition that had given its politics a centre of gravity,especially in UP and Bihar,Mandal along with Mandir was a plank used to occupy the spaces left vacant. That completely altered the two states electoral map. The original Janata Dal fragmented,the successor parties were often hostile to each other,and the electoral fortunes of the BJP and BSP kept the power game volatile but the two Yadavs were dominant. They even showed remarkable resilience. Now,however,the questions can be asked: has their old politics reached its limits? And,if they are not to be written off,what are the trends they must acknowledge?

The vote for Nitish Kumar in Bihar and the Congress revival in UP articulate an impatience with the Yadavs politics. In the defeat of candidates put up by their dons,it marks impatience with the compromises in governance made in the guise of empowerment. In the early 90s,when resentment was rife among large sections of north India against social and economic marginalisation,Mandal politics was seen to be a vehicle for empowerment and security. It offered an alternative narrative to the Mandir politics also then on the ascendant. It,however,never seemed to offer much else,and certainly not any response to the aspirations that were sweeping an India more at ease with itself.

Increasingly,in state and national elections,votes are being cast on hopes for the future. Those who want to stay in the fray had better reform their politics accordingly.