UPs changed

If Azam Khans recent re-induction into the Samajwadi Party was to have been part of a positive re-invent after the partys reversals in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections,things clearly have not gone according to plan. Khan,who has a rich record of getting into a controversy for all the wrong reasons,set off a storm by the manner in which he chose to count the Muslim cabinet ministers in the UPA government. The point was not that he got his arithmetic wrong but the spin he gave to Ghulam Nabi Azads representativeness,saying he is not from India,but from Kashmir,before noting that we do not know whether it Kashmir is part of India. Khan must retain the burden of sorting out what it was that he was suggesting,but SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav should worry that there could be consequences for his re-invention exercise over the last year. The party went into the 2009 Lok Sabha elections with a backward-looking manifesto bristling at computerisation and the English language. The results of the election in Uttar Pradesh,which saw the Congresss revival and Mayawatis BSP holding its own,jolted the SP into a large-scale makeover,culminating in the recent return of Khan to the party fold. But if the party believes this latest episode of resentment-creation among Muslims is the template to revive what it sees to be its votebank,its missing the current of aspiration thats announcing itself in election after election the most recent being in neighbouring Bihar,where Mulayams comrade-in-arms,Lalu Prasad,has just landed himself on the wrong side of history. In Bihar,Lalu tried to use the Ayodhya verdict to set off a familiar polarisation but to no effect. Unfortunately,political players in UP have still not seen that to be a cautionary example,given also the Congresss recent submission to conspiracy theories on former Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare. Like Bihar,UP has changed. And it has changed in part because,like Nitish Kumar in Bihar,Mayawati has transcended the comforts of polarised votebanks and expanded the centre-ground of state politics. For her challengers the SP,Congress and the BJP it could be a long run-up to the next assembly poll. Theyd do better than clutch at straws.