UP Events May Have Wide Implications

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

THE recent developments in Uttar Pradesh come as a sort of reaction to the political crisis that has gripped not only the state but the whole country. In such a situation, therefore, the success or failure of the efforts to forge opposition unity against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its cohorts cannot but have far reaching implications for the country as a whole.

CRIMINALS RULE THE ROOST 

AS political observers very well know, it was the BJP that most vocally swore by political morality and probity but buried these values deep when the question arose of gaining or retaining power. First under the BJP rule in 1997-2002 and then under the BSP-BJP rule, a number of known criminals found themselves ensconced in ministerial gaddis and began to receive salutes from the same police officers whose job should have been to bring these criminals to book.

Not to talk of earlier misdeeds of these criminals whose name is legion, a recent case is of Amar Mani Tripathi, a minister in Mayawati cabinet, who has been changing parties just as one changes clothes, and has of late been known as the main troubleshooter of the chief minister. He is also known for his links with one of the mafia groups operating in the eastern UP districts close to Nepal.

Recently, the same Tripathi has been in the news because of his alleged role in the murder of a young girl with whom he is said to have secret liaison. At that time, circumstantial evidence did hint at his involvement in the gruesome case, and therefore the chief minister should have asked him to put in his papers so that he could not have a chance to affect the investigation process. Yet, the chief minister, who is famous (and infamous) for her scant regard for morality in politics, refused to sack him for days together. It was only a huge public uproar that made her ask the minister to resign --- and that reportedly on the express understanding that once his name is cleared, he would be re-inducted into the cabinet.

Since then, the people of the state are talking of only one thing --- that the chief minister would somehow get the said fellow absolved of the whole episode by tampering with the evidence and influencing the witnesses.

In sharp contrast to the case of Amar Mani Tripathi stands the case of Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya of Pratapgarh, who is currently languishing in jail under POTA. This fellow was no doubt a terror in his district, but he lived in a world where a person is valued not for his virtues but for his political utility. That is why he has been a darling to the BJP and then to the BSP for years. It was only after he fell apart from Ms Mayawati and posed a threat to her government that he was arrested, his estate was searched and he himself was booked under POTA.

Both cases, however, have one and the same sordid lesson --- that, in UP, criminals enjoy total immunity till they serve to bolster the BSP-BJP regime and do not pose a threat to it. It is not for nothing that the state capital Lucknow, once appreciated as the centre of a lovely culture, has today become infamous for most heinous crimes including daylight murders.

SORRY STATE OF STATE’S PEOPLE

YET this is only one aspect of the crisis that has engulfed the state under the benign patronage of the BSP and BJP. Maybe a less dramatic but far more potent aspect of the crisis is the open loot of public that is going on unabated in the state. To take only one instance, most of the local bodies in UP stand defunct for want of fund or because a good part of whatever little is allocated to these bodies goes to line up the pockets of the local satraps of the ruling parties. It is therefore not surprising that even the roads leading to the Taj Mahal in Agra, a world famous tourist spot, present a despicable picture, with stinking mud and garbage lined on both sides. As for the plight of other local bodies, the less said the better.

There is nothing surprising in all this. For, just as the NDA at national level, the BSP-BJP alliance in the state represents a marriage of convenience, with no side being sure of when their honeymoon will be over. In such a situation, whosoever is counted as somebody in these parties has only one aim: to corner as much of filthy lucre as one can before the government falls. This is, again, like the situation at the national level where the lust for power and pelf is the only cementing factor for the NDA.

It is therefore not for nothing that all the developmental works have come to a screeching halt in the state. And all this at a time when billions of rupees are being spent on unproductive items like parks, statues and birthday bashes.

On the other hand, three cane growers were done to death is police firing at Munderwa sugar mill in Basti district last year --- on the ‘crime’ that they were demanding the payment of arrears the mills owed them for the cane supplied.

And this is apart from the fact that the growers were not given the same price that they got last year, for the cane they supplied to the mills. The state and central governments remained mute spectators to this exploitation of growers by sugar barons. Vajpayee of course threw a crumb to the growers by hiking the statutory minimum price of cane by Rs 5 a quintal, but that too could not take the cane price anywhere near the last year’s level.

As cane constitutes the main cash crop in UP and a bulk of the peasantry of this predominantly agrarian state is engaged in its cultivation, the plight of most of these peasants may well be understood.

Incidentally, as for the issue of arrears payment, one will recall that a police firing had claimed three peasant lives in Ramkola, eastern UP, in 1992 when the BJP was alone in power in the state.

AJIT SINGH’S RESIGNATION

IT was in this situation that the union minister for agriculture Ajit Singh quit not only his job but also the NDA on May 29, accusing the BJP-led regime of pursuing anti-peasant policies in matters like subsidies, agricultural imports etc. This was followed by the withdrawal of support from the Mayawati government by his RLD MLAs, 14 in number. Right now, Ajit Singh has herded his flock in Srinagar, in order to save them from any poaching by the BJP-BSP combine. The danger is not unreal. For even though Ms Mayawati is at the moment in Switzerland, ostensibly for wooing foreign capital but actually for some sair-sapata as one Mayawati supporter told The Asian Age, her lieutenants are reportedly active and trying to contact the RLD MLAs. Quite in accordance with Ms Mayawati’s tradition which she imbibed from the BJP!

The development has brought the two camps in the state assembly quite close in numerical terms. While the ruling alliance has a strength of 212 in a 402 member house, the Samajwadi Party, Congress, RLD and others account for 188 MLAs while the position of two MLAs is not clear. This means that if only 13 MLAs desert the ruling alliance and come to the other side, it would be the end of an out-and-out opportunist alliance that is holding the state to ransom.

It is this thing that has made the UP politics excessively hot at the moment, more so in view of the fact that with its 81 (earlier 85) Lok Sabha members, UP has always been playing a crucial role in Indian politics. A defeat of the BJP in UP may go a long way in sending the party into wilderness

Naturally, the Samajwadi Party as well as the Congress did not lose time to realise that an opportunity has come for them to throw the BSP-BJP government out. On May 30, leaders of these parties as well as Ajit Singh met the UP governor, Vishnu Kant Shastri, to demand that a special assembly session be convened to test Ms Mayawati’s strength. It is another thing that the governor, an old saffronite, only promised to “consider” the demand without committing to summon a session of the assembly.

The delegation to the governor was preceded by a meeting between Ajit Singh, SP chief Mylayam Singh Yadav and Congress chief Mrs Sonia Gandhi in presence of other leaders.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DEVELOPMENT

THE said meeting was significant from many angles. For years, both Mulayam and Ajit have been suspicious of each other’s intentions, and it was perhaps for the first time that they came together. Moreover, the prospect of opposition unity has also been strengthened by Ajit Singh’s declaration that he was withdrawing from the race of UP chief ministership.

Another positive shift has come in the Congress attitude towards Mulayam. After the UP assembly polls in February 2002, the SP chief gave up his earlier attitude towards Mrs Sonia Gandhi and tried his best to enlist the Congress support for a non-BJP government in the state. The SP had 144 members at that time and the Congress 27, while a number of independents and others were willing to support the coalition from outside or inside. Thus it was clear at that time that if only these two parties join hands on the basis of an agreed programme, the BJP would not get a chance to falsify the people’s mandate and sneak into power by climbing the BSP’s bandwagon.

In fact, there was no valid reason why Mrs Gandhi could not join hands with Yadav in UP; in Maharashtra her party after all joined hands with the NCP led by Sharad Pawar, a bitter critic of Mrs Gandhi, in order to keep the BJP-Shiv Sena at bay.

Mrs Sonia not only stopped at that and her party abstained from voting in the last legislative council elections, thus giving the BJP one seat which it would have been easily denied. All this only exacerbated the animosity between the SP and Congress chiefs.

It is not that this animosity did not take its toll. Because of the poaching by BSP, the Congress tally in the assembly sharply came down from 27 to 16. Though the Congress had been a victim of a similar poaching by the BJP in September 1997, it seems it had failed to draw any lesson from that experience and take measures to avoid any such predicament in future.

As for the RLD, as the Hindustan Times (May 30) points out, “A major question staring the Congress in the face is Ajit Singh’s credibility as a potential ally, not to speak of his ability to keep together his flock of 14.” But no matter whether a concern for the peasantry forced him to quit the union cabinet or a fear of the Tikait factor that threatens to eat into his support base, the fact is that he at the moment appears to be no obstacle in forging opposition unity to try oust the BSP-BJP coalition from power.

CHANGE IN CONGRESS ATTITUDE

BUT apart from a let-up in the Congress animosity towards Mulayam Singh, the Congress attitude seems to have gone a change of late. There was a time when the party’s Panchmarhi conclave had said the party alone could form a government at the centre. But this bravado did cost the party dearly. It not only helped the BJP grab power at the centre by joining hands with a number of big or small outfits (14 in 1998 and 27 in 1999); it even brought the Congress tally in Lok Sabha to 112, the lowest since the first general elections in 1952. In fact, the BJP proved smarter and realised more quickly that the era of single-party governments is over, at least in medium term.

It is against this background that the Congress president’s statement on May 31, concluding day of the Congress chief ministers’ conclave at Srinagar, has to be viewed. Addressing a press conference on the day, Mrs Sonia Gandhi said her party was not averse to pre-poll alliances. True, she said, “It’s really in the hands of chief ministers and PCC chiefs. We’ll arrive at a decision on the basis of their inputs.” Yet she was optimistic about an alliance with the Samajwadi Party, Rashtriya Lok Dal and others in UP.

Strangely, when Arjun Singh, a seasoned Congress leader, suggested the need for pre-poll alliances and the need to fight communalism, it was by and large ignored; instead, the minions lapped up his remarks on inner-party groupism to rail against him. But this was before the Ajit Singh quit the union cabinet. It is obvious that the said resignation did have a role in crystallising the Congress thinking on the issue.

Be that as it may, the main focus of the opposition at present is that an emergency session of the UP assembly must be convened forthwith.

CRUCIAL QUESTION

THIS brings up to a crucial question as to what role the Left parties should play in such a situation. Addressing this question is necessary in view of the fact that some smaller Left parties do not want to have any truck with the Congress, in the name of equidistance from the BJP and the Congress.

The CPI(M) stand on the issue is unambiguous. We do recognise that the Congress is a bourgeois-landlord party, just as the BJP is. Yet we cannot put both of them on par. Contrary to the rank communal BJP, the Congress is a secular party on the whole. It is true that it resorts to compromises and displays vacillations on occasions, but these have to be fought and overcome by means of ideological and political struggles. This is understandable. But we cannot legitimately bracket the Congress and the BJP together.

Another point to note is that there is no question of an alliance or programmatic front with the Congress. In the concrete situation of today, whatever understanding we have with the Congress will be on a limited but yet an extremely important issue --- of defeating the BJP or ousting it from power.  

This contention of course is based on a solid reality of today, howsoever unpalatable it may be to us. And that reality is that the Left is not a big force in the country as a whole and does not command more than 10 per cent of popular support at the most. It plainly means that 90 per cent of the Indian people are still rallied behind ruling class parties of varied complexions.

This is also true of states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Delhi that are to go to assembly polls in November; here only the Congress is in a position to defeat the BJP. As Marxists who proceed not from pious wishes but from concrete realities, we cannot ignore this reality. This, however, does not mean that an understanding with the Congress on the question of defeating the BJP, would be anything like the third alternative that we visualise. For, a third alternative means an alternative of policies; it means pursuance of pro-people policies in place of pro-landlord, pro-bourgeois and pro-imperialist policies. By and large, this cannot be expected from the Congress.

Thus an understanding with the Congress boils down to the issue of defending national unity and communal harmony from the onslaughts of communal forces. This is all the more necessary today for various reasons.

First, the BJP is trying all possible means to win the November assembly polls and may go in for snap Lok Sabha polls if it wins these polls. This has to be thwarted. Secondly, it is clear from the desertion of Paswan and Ajit Singh, from the internal bickerings which the Samata, Mamata and even the BJP are facing, and from many other things, the NDA is really in a serious crisis. Hence a severe blow needs to be dealt to it, so that it may come crashing down. Thirdly, Togadia’s arrest in Rajasthan has exposed what paper tigers the seemingly horrible Sangh Parivar luminaries are. But it is the Left and democratic forces that will have to bring pressure on Congress state governments for such determined steps. Lastly, as for UP which is immediately on agenda, these forces have to see that democratic norms are restored in the state and that the communal threat is rebuffed with all possible might, more so because the BJP’s idea is to again exploit the Ayodhya dispute in order to communalise the situation and thereby gain votes, and the RSS has already activated all its outfits for the purpose. One is not sure about how the BJP’s allies would react to such fratricidal moves, whether they would continue in this anti-national and anti-democratic alliance called the NDA, but such a situation has clearly defined the role the Left, secular and democratic forces have to play. Any failing in this regard can only be disastrous for the country, and more so for these forces.