At its three-day special national conference in Agra,the Samajwadi Partys dilemma found utterance in a rebuff on Wednesday. Asked whether the issue of withdrawing support to the UPA government was on the agenda,Mulayam Singh Yadav replied that the query was uncalled for. The evasiveness was intriguing on a day when Yadav raised the banner of opposition to both the Congress and the BSP,even asking the Congress to mend ways or face consequences a day on which a jail bharo agitation was announced with the objective of ousting the UP government and shaking the Centre. Yadavs refusal to engage on his partys support at the Centre frames the dilemma his party has been stranded in ever since its sudden proximity to the Congress during the Lok Sabha vote last July on the Indo-US nuclear deal failed to lead to a cohesive political understanding. This dilemma was made more acute after the Lok Sabha results indicated stirrings of a Congress revival in Uttar Pradesh,a point the party has been emphasising by grabbing every opportunity to take on the BSP government and insert itself into a binary political dynamic. The tenor of the opening day of the SP meet thus reflects the partys fear of irrelevance as politics in UP gets dominated by serial face-offs between the Congress and BSP. In UPs fragmented political landscape,it is especially important for a political party to be seen to be afloat,to be in command of a robust core support base so as to make it attractive for other groups to consider it a viable player. It is in this context that the SPs search for an appropriate attitude to the Congress can be seen. This is part of the SPs larger crisis of political identity. It showed up in the disastrous pre-Lok Sabha election attacks on English-medium education and computers. It was again on display in the monsoon session of Parliament,with the SP conspicuously silent in stating its concerns. Therefore,a search for an identity founded on issues is evident in Agra; the party has spoken of bread-and-butter issues like food prices as well as foreign policy ones like the Sharm el-Sheikh joint statement. Till the party finds its centre of gravity,its dilemmas will be easier read between the lines.
