: The meeting between Mayawati and Mulayam Singh, on the innocuous question of constituting the state Human Rights Commission — where Mulayam Singh drove to the chief minister’s house — has far-reaching implications, many more than what the two will ever acknowledge publicly.
The two met at the instance of the UP chief minister, and sat cordially, presumably munching snacks served routinely at such meetings — and discussed human rights. It is interesting to speculate on what exactly a “meeting” of this nature, the first since 1995, might mean to Uttar Pradesh, and consequently national politics.
India’s most populous state, sending 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha even after the departure of Uttarakhand, had always boasted of deciding who will run India. UP has contributed the largest number of prime ministers — five, and with a record number of years in office — and a belief, especially before P.V. Narasimha Rao broke the mould decisively (we did have Morarji Desai and Charan Singh briefly), that if you were a powerful politician from the Doab, you had the best chance of running India. The belief continued in the coalition era too, with UP being the state where the BJP got most of its seats during the NDA heyday, and the Samajwadi Party (SP) retaining a hold during the United Front years too as a powerful party.
Somehow, over the past five years, despite the excellent performance of the SP in 2004 — both in securing seats for itself and in restricting the BJP — the SP and then UP have somehow been marginal to the Centre’s politics. That may be because the SP did not exactly cosy up to the UPA, and Mayawati’s relationship with the Congress too see-sawed, with neither party being central to the UPA’s survival. Now, despite the SP’s perceived proximity to the Congress, there is a sense within the party, especially in Mulayam Singh’s remarkably shrewd mind, that with polls due in under a year it is best to appear politically flexible, that is, appear unpredictable as a key to securing an important role for his party. While his party general secretary is seen to be busy repairing a once-bitter relationship with the Congress, the party chief is trying to take the edge off his and Mayawati’s politics. Once partners in securing a spectacular coalition of the OBCs, Dalits and Muslims in the state (in 1993), the two split equally dramatically...
Seema Chishti
