P E R S P E C T I V E

india votes 2014
Why UP counts more than ever
With its 80 MPs, UP is crucial to every party. Since none has a definite edge, all possible polarisation tactics and formulae are being worked out ahead of the general election to gain maximum seats.
By Shahira Naim
It is famously claimed in the political lingua franca of India that the road to Delhi passes through Lucknow.


UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav (L) and Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav (R) with Maulana Arshad Madni, president of Jamait Ulema-e-Hind, at a rally in Saharanpur. PTI

Red Fort Express rolls out from Jaya station
Tamil Nadu CM Jayalalithaa is keeping options open for post-poll bargaining with national and regional parties.
By S Srinivasan
Is India ready for the next Prime Minister from Tamil Nadu? Historically the state has played an important role in Indian politics but the high office of the Prime Minister has eluded her so far. In 1996, the state came tantalisingly close to coronate one of its own sons to the all-important post but the crown slipped away to the neighbouring state of Karnataka.

india votes 2014
Why UP counts more than ever
With its 80 MPs, UP is crucial to every party. Since none has a definite edge, all possible polarisation tactics and formulae are being worked out ahead of the general election to gain maximum seats.
By Shahira Naim

Narendra Modi may  contest from UP too.

Rahul Gandhi can’t let Amethi go.

Mayawati may be the game- changer.

Kumar Vishwas hopes to take on Rahul.

It is famously claimed in the political lingua franca of India that the road to Delhi passes through Lucknow, indicating that the 80 elected MPs that Uttar Pradesh sends decide the fate of the country’s politics.

This obviously is not to be taken at face value as the road to Delhi remains completely uncharted. To substantiate, in the 15th Lok Sabha — the term of which is about to end — both the Congress and Samajwadi Party won 22 seats each. Clearly, their respective strength in Delhi was completely unrelated to their Lok Sabha performance in Uttar Pradesh alone.

However, the 80 seats of Uttar Pradesh appear too promising to be taken lightly by any political outfit and sizeable numbers won here will definitely add to the bargaining power of parties like the SP and BSP.

Of the three clear claimants for the Prime Minister’s post two — Rahul Gandhi and Mulayam Singh Yadav — are contesting from Uttar Pradesh and the third — Narendra Modi — is also rumoured to be taking the plunge from here to prove his all-India popularity and standing as a national leader.

While it is too early to make a serious assessment of the way things would go for them, the political environment building over the last few months indicates the political calculations that they may be making.

Both Mulayam Yadav and the BJP are tacitly in overdrive to polarise the political environment to their respective advantage. As of now, the battle in the state is clearly about how they can drive the wedge deeper and deeper.

After the Akhilesh Yadav government assumed power in March 2012, with a landslide majority of 224 seats in a House of 404 based on the invincible Yadav-Muslim formula, the SP patriarch, Mulayam Singh Yadav, rolled out his plan.

It was clearly to use this magic formula in order to win adequate seats to help him fulfil his ambitions dream post-2014, which as per his own admission is his very last shot at the prized prime ministerial seat, and hence his visible desperation.

Politics of riots

In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha on February 5, Minister of State for Home RPN Singh stated that in 2013 alone, 247 communal violence-related incidents claimed 77 lives in the state.

According to the Union Home Ministry, Uttar Pradesh also recorded a maximum of 360 persons being injured in these incidents in 2013. The state registered a maximum of 118 communal incidents in 2012, in which 39 persons were killed and 500 injured. Hence, 365 communal incidents took place in less than two years — almost one every second day! Officially, 116 persons succumbed to this violence and 860 were injured.

However, the amount of communal poison each incident released in the political space is difficult to measure. In the Hindi heartland of Uttar Pradesh, it has once again revived the communal discourse which had appeared to have outlived its utility during the UPA era.

Coupled with this were the various high-profile state government schemes for the Muslims launched with much fanfare like ‘Hamari beti uska kal’, provoking the BJP to further intensify its age-old ‘Muslim appeasement’ propaganda.

Both Narendra Modi and Mulayam Singh Yadav have addressed seven well-attended rallies across the state, where both parties are virtually competing in erecting grand flower-bedecked stages and setting up technologically savvy screens across the grounds.

On more than one occasion, Modi’s ‘vijay shankhnaad’ rally and Mulayam’s ‘desh bachao, desh banao’ rally have strangely coincided. Addressing one such well-coordinated rally on January 23 at Varanasi, Mulayam hit out at Modi, questioning his capability to rule the country and attacking the Gujarat model. He proclaimed that Modi’s hands were soaked in the blood of the innocent. “Did the BJP have no better candidate than him?” he had asked.

Modi timed his speech in Gorakhpur almost immediately after the SP patriarch finished, and scoffed at the father-son duo for virtually chasing him. He also conveniently used the opportunity to clarify every single point that Mulayam had raised, including demystifying the Gujarat model.

Muslim votes

Both Mulayam and Modi are deftly playing their aces. Mulayam is attempting to put the fear of the so-called Modi monster in the hearts of Muslims and attacking the Congress for being half-hearted in protecting them and addressing issues related to them. Projecting the SP as the only saviour of the Muslims, the senior Yadav is attempting to replicate the Muslim-UP combination that worked its magic for the party in 2012.

While all other non-BJP players like the Congress, BSP and RLD are in some degree trying to hard sell their pro-Muslim credentials, the SP is the only party in overdrive, resulting in an equally strong counter polarisation being mounted by the saffron undivided family to drive the Hindu voters to the BJP.

In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, it was a decisive Muslim voter that strategically voted to reduce the BJP to a dismal 10 seats in its erstwhile stronghold of Uttar Pradesh. The bounty had been divided among the Congress (22), SP (22), BSP (20) and RLD (5). There was a definite method in Muslim voting in 2009 which evidently threw up a fractured mandate but kept the BJP out of the reckoning.

That the polarisation strategy is working in Uttar Pradesh is clear. While the BJP is apparently gaining ground, as evident by the attendance at Modi’s rallies, whether the support will convert into votes is debatable.

Where parties stand

Red Fort Express rolls out from Jaya station
Tamil Nadu CM Jayalalithaa is keeping options open for post-poll bargaining with national and regional parties.
By S Srinivasan

Is India ready for the next Prime Minister from Tamil Nadu? Historically the state has played an important role in Indian politics but the high office of the Prime Minister has eluded her so far. In 1996, the state came tantalisingly close to coronate one of its own sons to the all-important post but the crown slipped away to the neighbouring state of Karnataka. Can Tamil Nadu get the honour in 2014? Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa has already thrown her hat into the ring with a calculation that if a non-Congress, non-BJP government becomes a reality she could be the front-runner.

The drumbeats of her intent to arrive on the national scene were sounded on December 19, 2013, at a meeting of her party in Chennai. The faithful who gathered at the meeting resolved that “there have been Prime Ministers from other states like Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat, and this is the time when somebody from Tamil Nadu must lead the country”.

While it was clear to everybody in the audience who this “somebody” was, Jayalalithaa went on to say, “Our party was converted into the St George’s Express and has reached St George Fort (Tamil Nadu secretariat) six times. We had a successful journey — three times under MGR’s leadership and thrice under mine. Now the 2014 elections are approaching. We should change ourselves into the Red Fort Express to reach the Red Fort in Delhi.”

Lost opportunity

In 1996, the CPM — the party of Reds — would have actually captured the Red Fort but for the “historic blunder” of its politburo. Veteran West Bengal leader Jyoti Basu was all ready to become the first Communist Prime Minister of the largest democracy in the world, but that was not to be. Instead, the mantle fell on Janata Dal’s Dewe Gowda. The leaders of the United Front, after many meetings, failed to arrive at a decision on who would be Prime Minister as there were disagreements among leaders from the north. It was decided to elect someone from the South. The first choice was GK Moopanar, leader of the Tamil Maanila Congress. It is said DMK leader M Karunanidhi quietly shot down the proposal. It was serendipity that the choice fell on Karnataka’s Gowda.

By refusing to endorse Moopanar, an ambitious Karunanidhi might have warded off a competition in his own backyard but he would have hardly imagined that 18 years on, his biggest political rival, Jayalalithaa, would be mounting an audacious attempt to capture power at the Centre.

Getting it right

Preparations for Jayalalithaa’s long train journey had begun for more than a year as posters and banners begun to appear in prominent areas in Chennai, exhorting party men to work hard so that it could win all 40 parliamentary seats, including one from Puducherry.

There are many reasons behind Jayalalithaa’s decision to take this plunge. At 67, she is Chief Minister for the third term, with very little left to be accomplished in the state. In the May 2011 Assembly elections, she decimated her arch rival Karunanidhi and he could not recover from the impact. Learning lessons from the past, she is providing the state with mature administration. In her third term, she refrained from indulging in politics of vendetta, and yet kept a tight leash on her rivals. Though she faces a tough challenge in the form of acute power shortage in the state, she did not allow that to become a rallying point for any dissent. With Vijaykanth of the DMDK unable to make any major impact after his initial win in the Assembly polls, and other regional parties too falling by the wayside, she is truly in a commanding position in the state.

On national politics, she has largely remained aloof and has kept away from any controversy. She kept her lines of communication open with the BJP, but did not readily walk into an alliance.

In Tamil Nadu, elections are all about alliances and she knows she has an advantage over others. She has so far tied up only with the Left and this gives her two gains: one, Left has 5 per cent votes in the state but does not have the clout to bargain for parliamentary seats, and two, it could help her outside the state in stitching a national alliance. The secular pitch could help as Tamil Nadu has 10 per cent combined votes of Christians and Muslims.

Reworking alliances

Though BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is drawing huge crowds in the state, there is a question mark on how much of it could actually be converted into votes. The best tally of the BJP has been four out of the five seats it contested in 1998. What helped the party were the Coimbatore bomb blasts targeted at party leader LK Advani. A year later, the party in an alliance with the DMK could win only three seats. The BJP has already tied up with the MDMK and another small party called IJK. Both have very little clout in the state. Its prospects could improve if it ties up with Vijaykanth’s DMDK and Dr Ramdoss’s PMK. Both parties have been non-committal so far.

The DMK on the other hand is also looking for a tie-up with the DMDK and PMK. It has a truck with other minor parties, including VCK or Dalit Panthers. The cadre-based party expects to retain its ‘loyal’ votes but in Tamil Nadu, votes always swing decisively one way or the other. Right now the AIADMK seems to be on a solid wicket.

Extending her allegory of train, Jayalalithaa hinted at the possibility of support from other parties. She said: “People have given us the green signal. I am there to be the engine driver. We would take them safely to reach Delhi”. The Opposition is not that optimistic. MK Stalin, heir to Karunanidhi, believes that Jayalalithaa is daydreaming and warns that if her dream comes true, “entire country would plunge into darkness”. His reference was towards the poor power situation in the state. The Congress, which is facing a real threat of marginalisation as it could end up with no allies, is using bravado as a fig leaf. Its leader GK Vasan commented: “Our target is 275 seats. Why bother about someone who is just targeting 40 seats?”

If Jayalalithaa is aspiring to be the engine of the ‘third front’, it does not look it can form a government without the support of either the BJP or Congress. It is unlikely that the combined seats of the two national parties would be below the halfway mark of 272. Jayalalithaa will have to face many hurdles in the journey to Red Fort which has just begun.