Even though Left politics did not have strong roots in UP, the state had at least two outstanding ideological icons — Charan Singh and Ram Manohar Lohia. Admittedly, Charan Singh could not be fitted into the classical Left framework. But he did make an outstanding contribution in terms of highlighting and bridging the adverse terms of trade between agriculture and industry. He was one of that rare breed of organic intellectuals who advocated the interests of agriculture not only through his pen but also through the instruments of state power. Much of the economic muscle that the ‘bullock cart capitalists’ or the ‘vernacular elites’ acquired in the post-Independence period, specially in UP, was scripted by Charan Singh.

Along with this economic consolidation resulting in the formation of a new class of those who benefited from the ‘green revolution’, the social empowerment of this constituency, comprising largely of the backward castes, was charted out by Ram Manohar Lohia. While Charan Singh was concerned with the nuts and bolts of policy and governance, Lohia was a compulsive critic of the existing social order and an iconoclast. History had beckoned both of them independently but simultaneously, to complement each other in ushering in a new economic and social dynamic. They would both set the stage for a fundamental paradigm shift in the politics of UP, the largest state of the Hindi heartland.

But history repeats itself, as tragedy and as farce. In UP, the legatees of Charan Singh and Ram Manohar Lohia — Ajit Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav — have formally split. They were part of the ruling coalition in the state. The exit of Ajit Singh’s RLD is ostensibly for the cause of ‘sugarcane farmers’. In reality, it is tantamount to abandoning the sinking ship in view of Mulayam’s plummeting stock just months before the assembly election.

... contd.