Samajwadi Party national president Akhilesh Yadav cycled to Janeshwar Mishra park on Monday, in a visible attempt to bolster his tottering party’s chances in the forthcoming Vidhan Sabha polls.
Before he hopped on to his cycle to the chants of ‘Akhilesh Bhaiya zindabad, zindabad’ (Long live Akhilesh bhaiya) he addressed the media at the party office in Lucknow, touching on the birth anniversary of Janeshwar Mishra and the failure of the state government.
The first was a nod to the party’s reach out to the upper castes, the second a pitch to establish his party as the only alternative to the BJP.
“Today we remember our founder Janeshwar Mishra who stood by the socialist ideals of the party…We move on his path…we offer new hope, new direction. We want to provide relief to the people of the state”, Yadav said.
However, he cannot expect any miracles to happen in the polls as he has been nearly missing in action in the state's political scene in the past four years.
His partymen have been complaining that he is difficult to access and persistently refuses to hold any programmes at the block and district level.
Mata Prasad Pandey, former speaker in the UP assembly and senior SP leader said, “This government has been unfair with the opposition, denying us permissions to hold rallies or meetings”.
This is true only of the duration of the pandemic. Yadav, however, has been absent from the political scene much longer. It started with the shock of the BJP’s massive win in the assembly polls of 2017.
Those who were once close to him say the loss was so massive that Yadav, instead of turning the lens inwards, chose to blame everyone around him for misleading him. “He has grown distrustful of everyone who has worked hard for the party. He believes everyone is out to get him”, said one former aid.
Yadav’s chosen clout of advisers now consist of people who are more of the intellectual, number crunching, economic policy spouting kinds than those who have grassroots experience.
He faces other problems which will be impossible to resolve. For instance, his unwillingness to launch a movement for the release of Azam Khan, the party’s tallest Muslim leader. Though of late he has tried to rectify that, visiting Khan in the hospital for instance, his image as a leader of the Muslims has taken a severe beating.
Political analyst C.P. Rai, once very close to Mulayam Singh Yadav, said, “The followers of Azam Khan feel rightfully betrayed and are unlikely to vote for the SP”.
Asaduddin Owaisi’s foray into the state, if serious, will only serve to further erode the party’s Muslim support base.
Unlike his father, Akhilesh Yadav does not lead a party he has built from scratch. He is the benefactor of his father’s years of struggle. His style of functioning is vastly different. For instance, Mulayam Singh Yadav, when in Lucknow, would be found in the party office every single day—on its vast lawns during the winter months, accessible to the hundreds who visited it.
The son has a more elitist image. So, while his father made an issue of support price to sugarcane farmers, he distributed laptops. This is not a bad move, but goes on to highlight how unconvincing one of the highlights of his cycle yatra—standing by the farmer and against the three farm laws—sounds. In 2012, when he formed the government, it was his father’s grassroots appeal and his own progressive ideas which worked in the party's favour.
That he chose to publicly oust his father from the party president’s post and topped it up with dragging the family’s differences into the public has done him no favours. And his progressive ideas seem ho-hum in light of the state government’s massive focus on the youth, including support to girls education right upto the graduate level and the entrepreneurship support schemes.
The SP’s nod to farmers seems a last minute catch-up. It was not at the forefront of the farmers' protest that has been on for months.
At best, Yadav beamed some images of party workers at wheat procurement centres during one of his media interactions.
He has similarly been missing from the ground on the issue of women’s safety. Despite making the appropriate social media noises, he, for instance, did not travel to Hathras even once in the aftermath of the gang-rape case.
Yadav has some positives to his credit. For instance, he still enjoys the image of a clean politician, who stood up to block the entry of criminals like D.P. Yadav into the party. Circumstance and design have made him the party’s sole face. Among urban UP at least, there is a definite disenchantment with the manner in which the government has handled the COVID-19 crisis. Besides, the farmers of western UP are unlikely to throw in their lot with the BJP after what they perceive as the government’s complete refusal to initiate any meaningful dialogue with them.
It is to be noted that it was a similar yatra in 2011 that catapulted Yadav to the state’s top job in the elections of 2012. But Yadav’s challenge will be to sustain the momentum, to be seen as the only credible opposition to the government, and to remain at it to mop up all the disenchanted anti-BJP votes. And, most importantly to behave like a mature politician who does not give ‘the BJP vaccine” kind of statements.
Juhie Singh, an SP spokesperson, said the yatra would serve to motivate the party cadre and “be an assessment of our ground level strength” “A cycle yatra requires physical tenacity and mental commitment. It is also our symbolic winning run”, she said.
But that is mere posturing, and Yadav perhaps knows it better than anyone else that he needs to crawl before he can run.