Opinion SP’s takeaway

The Samajwadi Party has performed well in the UP bypolls, in which voters could be said to have registered a no-confidence vote on the BJP’s polarising campaign. But have they also given a thumbs-up to the Akhilesh Yadav government? Certainly, wresting seven assembly seats from the BJP, especially after the latter’s spectacular performance in the general election in May, marks a great comeback for the SP. Yet Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav may need to do much more if he wishes to consolidate the gains when the state goes to vidhan sabha polls scheduled two years from now. The party has shown it has the organisational machinery to mobilise votes but that would be useful only if it also has a governance record worth defending.

By all accounts, voters punished the BJP in the bypolls for veering away from its promises: its leadership spoke of jobs and lower prices in the run-up to the May elections but the party turned to polarising campaigns in the state soon thereafter. With the BSP skipping the bypolls, and the Congress campaign a non-starter, the SP seems to be the beneficiary of the people’s alienation and anger. But UP is also the site of another story of promises betrayed. When the state voted the Akhilesh government to office with a decisive majority in 2011, it was because his pledge to break with the politics and governance of the past resonated with the people, across castes and communities. He has only two years to undo his poor record so far as an administrator.

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The Mainpuri result was on expected lines since it is a pocketborough of the Mulayam Singh family, but with Tejpal Singh Yadav making it to the Lok Sabha, the Mulayam family contingent in Parliament has bulged to seven MPs. Samajwad in India has seldom looked so family-centric. Mulayam’s ideological mentor, Ram Manohar Lohia, held that the Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru was elitist and an impediment to representative democracy. Lohia was prescient about the perils of power being concentrated in one family, no matter how well-intentioned, but his legatees seem set to build political dynasties that dwarf the Gandhis in size if not in influence. Keeping it all in the family indicates Netaji’s distrust of his party colleagues. It will hurt the SP in the long run.