He may be the elected Chief Minister of India’s largest State, but in effect he is little more than his father’s proxy. As Mulayam Singh Yadav prepares for a national role post-election, he must keep his men in good humour, even if it means inducting criminals into the Cabinet
Recently, Mr Akhilesh Yadav, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, completed his first year in office. His record of governance is for everyone to see. In this past year, Uttar Pradesh has experienced a rise in lawlessness and criminal activity, just as it had done between 2002 and 2007 when his father Mulayam Singh Yadav was the Chief Minister. In fact, the senior Yadav was defeated in 2007 by rival Mayawati after she promised to end the ‘goonda raj’ of his Samajwadi Party. One would have expected the younger Mr Yadav to learn from his father’s mistakes, and make the deliverance of good governance his top priority.
The senior Mr Yadav has himself acknowledged the failure and asked his son to act tough. But he and others too must recognise the fact that the young Chief Minister has inherited a deeply entrenched culture of criminals in politics. It is also expected of him to continue with that culture and accommodate the criminal comrades of his father as MlAs and Ministers. In other words, the shadow of his father’s past continues to haunt the Chief Minister.
Mr Yadav must do the bidding of his father and uncles so as to keep the ‘Samajwadis’ together for the 2014 poll. He is the so-called ‘night watchman’ for his father. How else does one explain the induction of the likes of Raja Bhaiyya in the State CabinetIJ Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav has to keep each one of his well-known musclemen, including influential criminals, in good humour for the forthcoming lok Sabha election in 2014, which is essentially his last chance to make a mark at the national level.
Take, for example, Mr Azam Khan, who is the de facto leader of the Samajwadi Party’s Muslim constituency. He exercises his own authority which is not in consultation with the Chief Minister, but with his party chief. Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav is the real court of appeal when, for instance, Muslim leaders in his party engage in many factional battles.
Similarly, look at what happened when Union Minister Beni Prasad Verma annoyed Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav by casting aspersions against him. The parliamentary board of the Samajwadi Party agreed that ‘Netaji’ will decide on how best to tackle the situation created by Mr Verma. ‘Netaji’ responded by serving a notice to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi to either ‘discipline’ Mr Verma or face the consequences. Clearly, the Samajwadi Party, like almost every other regional party in India, is run as the personal fiefdom of its party chief.
Given that Mr Akhilesh Yadav is just a proxy for his father, it comes as no surprise then that following Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav’s advice, the Chief Minister has now sought to actively mobilise foreign capital for the development of Uttar Pradesh. Of course, it is too much to expect from phoney socialists like Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav to project an alternative model for economic development which is different from that of the Prime Minister’s model of privatisation, deregulation and globalisation which has led to a complete dependence on foreign investment.
Hence, Mr Akhilesh Yadav is simply imitating Mr Singh’s economic model. On March 12, he met World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim and sought assistance of over US$3.5 billion for the next three to four years. This was followed by another meeting of the Chief Minister with the head honchos of 39 US companies on March 13.
Will this economic model help deal with the backwardness of India’s largest StateIJ Uttar Pradesh is primarily an agrarian society and lacks even basic infrastructure for both industrial and agricultural development. But do the politicians really careIJ