TOP STORY If a week is a long time in politics, two years must be an eternity, at least for the Samajwadi Party. In 2012, the SP – famous for its thuggish, sectarian politics – seemed to have turned a new leaf. The campaign then was led by the 38-year-old Akhilesh Yadav, the foreign-educated son of party chieftain Mulayam Singh Yadav.
It was futuristic in its vision talking the language of aspiration winning the hearts and votes of constituencies beyond the SP’s traditional Yadav-Muslim vote bank. In comparison, the competitor campaigns of the BJP and Congress seemed rooted in the past -- entitlements for the Congress and historical grievances for the BJP. The incumbent BSP was too rooted to corruption to stay in office.
The SP had captured the imagination of India’s largest state in a manner no party had in more than two decades. It could have been a platform for power at the Centre, until it all fell apart. And in that falling apart are lessons for all political parties.
In 2014, the SP is has turned its back to the future. Its old guard has destroyed the youthful promise of Akhilesh Yadav. Its campaign has degenerated into vile thuggish-ness. So, Mulayam Singh Yadav terms rape as a minor transgression which doesn’t deserve severe punishment. His alter ego Azam Khan is whips up communal rhetoric everyday to win the Muslim vote.
And Abu Azmi rejects all pretence of modernity when he declares that women who indulged in sex outside marriage deserved punishment. Akhilesh Yadav, the hero of 2012 is missing. In comparison, the campaign of every other party, whether the BJP, Congress or BSP – not necessarily the cleanest or more honest ever -- seems forward looking. The story of the SP’s rapid degeneration is a lesson in the perils of reinventing political parties.
Let’s give Akhilesh Yadav some credit. In 2012, he tried to give the SP a different shape. Significantly, his father Mulayam Singh Yadav allowed his son leeway by containing the power of the old guard including Azam Khan and the extended Yadav family. Unfortunately, the empire struck back as soon as the SP entered Government. Akhilesh Yadav was unable to assert himself. The old guard led by Azam Khan forced its way into Government.
The party’s lumpen cadres began to destroy law and order in the state as Akhilesh’s administration looked on. Mulayam Singh Yadav could have rescued his son and the party, but his own ambition for power in Delhi was all consuming. But even the wily Mulayam miscalculated how quickly his party would lose its sheen if it returned to business-as-usual. If he had, he would have brought down the UPA in 2012 and won a large share of the state’s 80 seats in an early General Election.
The old-fashioned Mulayam was unable to see that the electorate of UP, even his core supporters, would not support a return to the past. The SP’s reinvention was short lived. It will cost it dearly in the General Election. There are lessons in the SP’s tragic tale for other parties, even the Congress and BJP. The grand old party will almost certainly face defeat come May 16. In theory, that could pave the way for Rahul Gandhi, the presumptive next Generation leader, to reinvent the moribund Congress. He has failed to reinvent the part despite all his rhetoric over the last five years.
The old guard, including his mother, would not permit him to. Rahul wanted Nandan Nilekani to become Education Minister in UPA 2 – it could have been a n inspired choice which would have made a difference – but the oldies stopped him in his tracks. That risk of backlash will threaten Rahul even as his party moves into Opposition. In fact, his father Rajiv Gandhi, who took office in Delhi in 1984, with as much promise as Akhilesh took office in Lucknow in 2012, was quickly tripped by the party’s old guard resistant to change.
The problem with Rajiv, Rahul and Akhilesh is that they all inherited their mantle and lacked the experience and cunning to sideline the old guard permanently. So might Narendra Modi, who emerged from the grassroots, be more successful in reinventing the BJP? Modi has taken some bold steps to sideline the old guard, which led to howls of protest from those being consigned to the backbenches. But that may have been the easy bit. Can Modi actually convert his party into one that believes unreservedly in the free market?
After all, there are sections in the party which have more in common with the policies of the Left than with the Gujarat model. Can Modi move his party away from the fringe elements of the Sangh Parivar as he has done in Gujarat by persuading it that development rather than extremism delivers electoral dividends?
The early indications are that Modi will try to reinvent the BJP and shed its old guard. He will encounter resistance but if the thought of surrender ever crosses his mind, he only needs to think about how quickly fairy tales in politics turn into horror stories. Akhilesh Yadav and the Samajwadi Party should send the alarm bells ringing.
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