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Politics and Public Policy in India

March 6, 2012 • 10:32 am 34

Samajwadi Party sweeps Uttar Pradesh – 3 Yadavs shine

Predicting electoral outcomes in the treacherous swamps of heartland politics in India can be dangerous.

That the Samajwadi Party was on the rebound has been the news since Ashok Malik’s initial observations.

That there was a wave of anti-incumbency against Mayawati was less than obvious as noise from Delhi filled the air and extraneous issues took center stage from land acquisition to a Muslim sub-quota.

That the BJP’s Mahasangram, Jan Chetana had bombed was amply clear from the manner in which the election campaign in Uttar Pradesh became a below the radar, backroom affair with a belated Uma Bharti entry.

That the Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Vadra factor was good TV in as much as Anna Hazare was good for TRPs also became amply clear as multiple rounds of lowering of expectations began as well as the Congress foolishly persisted with its desperation over the Muslim vote.

But who would have thought that the voter in Uttar Pradesh would hand such a decisive verdict to the SP ?

In this victory for Akhilesh Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav it is odd that a 3rd Yadav should partake of some limelight. Yogendra Yadav stuck his neck out to go where no pollster has gone before in recent memory. Guess he may have overcompensated for some of that SP performance to err on the higher side.

Back in September of 2011 when the miasma of asinine cliches that passes for news and opinion in Delhi’s studios was focused on Sonia Gandhi’s health, Anna Hazare’s fast, the Social Spectator – an obscure online magazine carried a prolific piece of prose by Frank Huzur writing from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. The piece was titled “Chariot of Hope – Cycle of Change“. and it opened with these lines:

He may not be Harrison Ford. But he is surely James Dean. The rebel with a cause for socialist celebre!

In all of 2011, Google News Archives show at least 5000 odd stories on “Rahul Gandhi”. No, Frank Huzur was not talking of “Rahul Gandhi”, he was writing on Akhilesh Yadav who according to Google News Archives in 2011 managed a paltry 21 news stories. From that obscurity in 2011, Akhilesh Yadav has clearly come a long way to script his father’s comeback in Uttar Pradesh.

While the results will be analyzed threadbare in the next few hours, days and weeks there is a sobering lesson for those of us who have been conditioned to view politics in India from a Delhi lens.

No it is not on the Rahul Gandhi hype, which we were always sceptical about.

There is a deeper lesson on our conditioning that forces to think of Uttar Pradesh in purely casteist terms. This blogger had been immensely critical of a campaign strategy that focused purely on the calculus of caste while failing to project a pan-Uttar Pradesh agenda. There in lies a lesson for both analysis that held out some hope for Mayawati’s BSP as well as for a campaign strategy that viewed the BJP as a dark horse in Uttar Pradesh.

Rahul Gandhi has bombed before, and this outcome in UP is more confirmation of his limitations as a future leader for the Congress. The Nehru Gandhi brand may disproportionately sway the national discourse but it continues to underwhelm in state elections.

What is however stunning is how deeply the BJP leadership in Uttar Pradesh had its head buried in the sand. Instead of blaming amateur psephologists for decisions that ought to have been the Leadership’s gambles, the BJP needs to wake up to the reality that its status quoist strategies of incremental linear growth have run their course. There is no new ground left to break and there is little hope of reclaiming old ground.

The BJP has indeed emerged as a dark horse albeit on its way to nowhere. That the BJP needs a radical overhaul is an understatement !

Postscript:

- The BJP’s resounding win in Goa results and its partner SAD doing extremely well in Punjab to make history do little to hide the fact that it has been squeezed out of the largest state.

Tailpiece:

- The Presidential election later this year is now in flux unless the Congress manages to drive a hard bargain with the Samajwadi Party

Filed under: Advani Yatra against Corruption, Anna Hazare, Assembly elections 2011, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, उत्तर प्रदेश २०१२, Baba Ramdev, betrayal of aam admi, Indira Gandhi, Internet Hindus, Left Liberalism, Manmohan Confidence Vote, Mayawati, Narendra Modi, Nitin Gadkari, Offstumped, OpEds on Uttar Pradesh Polls 2012, Two Indias, UPA-II Critical Appraisal, Uttar Pradesh Polls 2012, Varun Gandhi

March 6, 2012 • 12:00 am 9

Uttar Pradesh Results 2012 – Live Blogging

Many reputations are on the line as Uttar Pradesh and the other states count their votes.

Will the tsunami predicted for the Samajwadi Party by CNN-IBN and CSDS’ Yogendra Yadav manifest in a near absolute majority ?

Will Punjab persist with its flip-flop trend of voting out incumbents ?

Will Uttarakhand go the way of Goa and other small states from stable bipolarity to unstable multipolarity ?

Will Manohar Parrikar make a comeback in Goa ?

Finally who among the BJP, BSP and Congress will end up with bragging rights if not prizes for coming second, third and fourth in Uttar Pradesh ?

Follow Offstumped live during the coverage of the counting of votes in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa at the below:

More updates as the day unfolds …..

For the complete archive of the full coverage of Uttar Pradesh Polls 2012 so far including pre-poll and post poll podcasts, all OpEds, all BlogPosts and the detailed phase wise, seat by seat analysis click here.

Filed under: Advani Yatra against Corruption, Anna Hazare, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, उत्तर प्रदेश २०१२, Baba Ramdev, betrayal of aam admi, Internet Hindus, Live Events, Mayawati, Narendra Modi, Nitin Gadkari, Offstumped on Twitter, UPA-II Critical Appraisal, Uttar Pradesh Polls 2012, Varun Gandhi

March 2, 2012 • 7:16 am 48

Uttar Pradesh Polls 2012 – 7th and Final phase analysis

This phase was supposed to be the first phase by the original schedule. This phase comprises seats  where the Congress did extremely well in 2009. 60 seats go to polls in this phase. The most interesting aspect of the seats in this phase is in 2009 that more than half of the seats voted for a party other than the party to which the incumbent MLA belonged. The Congress was the biggest beneficiary of this trend by leading in nearly half of those seats that had turned against the incumbent MLA.

The significance for the Congress in those 12 odd seats was that it was nowhere in the picture in 2007. The BJP too benefited from this trend largely on account of the Varun Gandhi factor by leading in at least 8 seats in 2009 where the incumbent MLA was not from the BJP. The BSP suffered the most in 2009 failing to lead in at least 20 seats where it had an incumbent MLA. The SP on the other managed to offset losses by picking up leads in new seats.

It is also interesting that in atleast 7 seats that saw close contests in 2007, the 2009 leads were decisive while 7 other seats saw the exact opposite phenomenon. Perhaps a manifestation of delimitation among other factors.

A special thanks to Parag Tope and Gopi Maliwal for providing valuable analytical inputs that went into the seat by seat analysis across the phases. Parag also a has a different take on why the turnout is high, drawing attention to the under reported  Baba Ramdev factor through this YouTube video showing a significantly large crowd in  a village with a relatively small population.

Also read more from Parag here on the Ramdev phenomenon.

Fingers crossed for the exit polls and pre-poll, post poll surveys as they tumble out on the 3rd of March 2012.

Seat by seat analysis for this phase can be found here via Google Spreadsheets.


Filed under: Anna Hazare, उत्तर प्रदेश २०१२, Narendra Modi, Nitin Gadkari, Uttar Pradesh Polls 2012, Varun Gandhi

October 14, 2011 • 7:36 pm 4

Mayawati needs an eco-system

In the Theater of Indian Politics, UP Chief Minister and BSP Supremo Mayawati has proven to be second to none. With the inauguration of a massive park in NOIDA dotted with Statues of Dalit Icons and subliminal messaging of her party’s election symbol Mayawati ensured she got her share of national television without quite having to court Delhi’s news channels. One may see unbounded narcissism in Mayawati showering petals on her own statue, but perhaps it was her way of mocking at the Nehru-Gandhis who have for six decades abused the goodwill of the nation to perpetuate their family.

With a district in Uttar Pradesh named after her, Mayawati may have done all that was to be done to boost Dalit Pride while cocking a snook at the Nehru-Gandhis the fact remains that she has fallen way short of her own expectations. For sometime now she has not been shy of expressing ambition of being the first Dalit Prime Minister and a woman at that. Her own track record in improving Dalit woman turnout in Uttar Pradesh (at just 40%)  has been less than impressive.

Nevertheless Mayawati’s inability to expand her base beyond Uttar Pradesh has been a disappointment. Since the impressive win in 2007 in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, it appeared that Mayawati was well positioned to grow at the Congress’ expense across the Hindi heartland. With the Congress appearing to be a poor fourth in UP and out of power in almost all states except Haryana, if there was a moment when the Congress was at its most vulnerable, it was in 2007.

But Mayawati despite all her aspiration and ambition could not demonstrate the capacity and the political savy to go for the kill against the Congress by the 2009 Lok Sabha elections which saw the Congress make an impressive comeback.

Being a lone woman leader of a party built around her persona, perhaps the demands of running a tight ship and her own insecurities saw her achieve far less than where her sights were set at.

Mayawati needs to invest in an eco-system and savvy political mentors if she ever hopes to see her ambitions travel from Lucknow to Delhi. She also has to recognize that the BSP needs to expand into an Institution rather than being an opportunistic cult around her persona.

As a grassroots achiever and a Dalit woman at that, Mayawati is far more deserving a candidate to don the mantle of leadership of the Left of Center coalition in Indian Politics. The Nehru-Gandhis with their politics of patronage and entitlement have for far too long been gifted with that mantle by default.

Can Mayawati displace the Nehru-Gandhis, to emerge as the primary pole of Left of Center Politics in India ?

Filed under: Advani Yatra against Corruption, Ambedkarite Constitutionalism, Anna Hazare, उत्तर प्रदेश २०१२, Baba Ramdev, betrayal of aam admi, Mayawati, Narendra Modi, Nitin Gadkari, Two Indias, UPA-II Critical Appraisal, Uttar Pradesh Polls 2012, Varun Gandhi

RSS Now Playing on Offstumped Live

  • On Third Front day dreams and Uttar Pradesh nightmares – Wrap up Podcast March 14, 2012
    A podcast conversation with  @dubash (http://phalaka.com) where we wrap up the Uttar Pradesh polls discussion with a look at the final numbers and analysis of vote shares. We also look ahead on all the buzz around Akhilesh Yadav, the rise of the Samajwadi Party and all of the day-dreaming over a possible Third Front Government [...]
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Opinions expressed on this site using the alias Offstumped are the blogger's personal opinions and do not in any way reflect the views of the blogger's Employers.