The Hathras incident has made the Yogi Adityanath government look like it’s not in control of things. Since coming to power in 2017, this government has resorted to fake encounters as a way of instilling the fear of god in criminals. This, it hoped, would improve law and order in Uttar Pradesh. But Hathras and countless other crime incidents have shown that the policy has failed. The fear of being killed in an encounter didn’t prevent a Vikas Dubey from firing at and killing policemen.
Be it farmers or students, unemployment or industry, the Adityanath government doesn’t have much beyond empty PR rhetoric to show. What it can brag about are all central schemes. This sense of panic that the government is increasingly becoming unpopular is reflected in the knee-jerk legal action against critics, dissenters and journalists. Just put them in jail and silence their voices, as if UP’s 20 crore people can’t see the reality around them.
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Three monkeys fighting with each other
Yet the high-handedness also comes from the confidence that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is bound to win the 2022 assembly election and, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s blessings, Yogi Adityanath may continue to be chief minister for another five years.
This confidence is based on sound logic. The BJP won 312 of 403 seats in the 2017 election. The anti-Modi vote was divided into two groups: a Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance on the one hand, and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on the other. In 2022, the anti-Modi vote is likely to be divided into three, because the SP, the Congress and the BSP are all expected to contest separately. We are not even going into the smaller parties yet.
The BJP is standing like a rock on one side, while the anti-BJP vote looks set to be divided into three groups. This is a lost cause. Yogi could lose such an election only if there is mass public anger against him or the BJP, which is not the case, at least not for now. Yogi may be getting unpopular but Modi, according to surveys and polls, remains popular as ever. Even if there was mass public anger against Yogi, we would see a hung assembly and an unstable coalition government, à la the 1990s. Such a scenario is most unlikely.
It is for this reason that the Yogi government goes hammer and tongs at the Congress, often having its workers beaten up and its leaders arrested, including state president Ajay Kumar Lallu. The Yogi government makes sure it acts as a hindrance, especially against Priyanka Gandhi so that she doesn’t get limelight and media space. The only silver lining in the Hathras incident for CM Adityanath is that the Congress stole the show while Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav was in London. If this is how things continue, a proper four-cornered contest will ensure Yogi returns with over 300 seats once again.
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Yogi versus who?
The only way Adityanath could still lose, theoretically, is if one of the three opposition candidates — Mayawati, Akhilesh or Priyanka — puts up a presidential-style campaign. Of course, these leaders will be the faces of their party’s campaigns. That is not a presidential campaign. A presidential campaign in a parliamentary democracy is when the leader becomes the main issue. Just as Modi is the main issue in Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP will, of course, contest in Modi’s name, not least because Yogi Adityanath is a bit of a liability, increasingly. It therefore becomes all the more important for the three opposition parties to make the 2020 election about Yogi. The main issue before voters should not be Ram Mandir or Modi’s freebies, China or Pakistan — but whether they want Yogi or Mayawati/Akhilesh/Priyanka as chief minister.
Another reason why the opposition parties need a high-pitched presidential campaign is to eclipse the other two parties.
Only if the BSP makes the election into a ‘Mayawati versus Yogi’ contest will the voters forget about the SP and the Congress. If the Congress party could convince voters from Bulandshahr to Ballia that this election is ‘Yogi versus Priyanka’, voters may have the clarity that they don’t need to waste their votes on the SP or the BSP. Similarly, if voters across UP uniformly see this election as a referendum to choose between Yogi Adityanath and Akhilesh Yadav as their chief minister, Yogi could lose.
The theoretical way Mayawati, Priyanka or Akhilesh could defeat Yogi does not work in practice because none of the three is even trying.
Yogi is not seen as chief minister material in UP. With a presidential style campaign, any one of the three opposition leaders could capture the imagination of UP’s voters as the leader they need.
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The under-utilised Brand Mayawati
Law and order is a mess. If the BSP was smart, it would go around UP talking to people of all castes and communities, reminding them of Mayawati’s image as a leader who knew how to control law and order. BSP leaders and workers would remind voters of her development achievements too, which she has never publicised. They would stop being apologetic about the grand Ambedkarite monuments they built, pointing out that even Modi spent nearly Rs 3,000 crore building a statue in his home state Gujarat. They would make concrete development promises, showing Mayawati as the experienced leader who knows how to deliver.
Instead, Mayawati is harking back to her old formula of wooing Brahmins. The swing voters in UP, the non-Yadav OBCs, are said to be upset with the upper caste domination in the Yogi administration. Should Mayawati then be wooing OBCs or Brahmins? In any case, she should be focusing more on exploiting the under-used Brand Mayawati than wasting time with the same old caste politics. If she had gone to the 20-year-old Dalit victim’s village in Hathras, that alone would have brought her back in the game. Instead, she only worries about saving her Jatav vote base, playing defensive when she needs to play offensive.
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Lallu is not a Gandhi
The Congress party has created confusion before voters about who its face in UP is. Is it Priyanka Gandhi Vadra or Ajay Kumar Lallu?
Lallu is a grassroots leader but with due respect, he is not a Gandhi, Yadav or Mayawati. He does not have state-wide stature that could make people imagine him as a potential chief minister. No matter how many times Yogi Adityanath puts him in jail, he is not the face Congress can defeat Yogi with. The only such face is Priyanka Gandhi, who should have moved to Lucknow by now and made it apparent that she seeks to be Uttar Pradesh chief minister. But you see, the Gandhis are born to be PM, not CM. This is a non-starter. The Congress party will essentially continue its role as the voter-spoiler to help Yogi return as CM. Priyanka and Yogi will continue to write sincere-sounding letters to each other.
Also read: How Akhilesh Yadav could change the SP’s Yadav-party image
Where is Akhilesh Yadav?
It is not just Hathras that Akhilesh Yadav has been absent from. Since the 2019 Lok Sabha election, he has done virtually no campaigning. He seems to think he doesn’t need to reach out to the people of UP. He only needs to wave his hand at a few rallies before the election, and if the people of UP have the good sense to vote for him, it would be their good fortune.
Go anywhere in UP and ask people about 2022, and they will say Akhilesh Yadav is the main challenger. Yet, he himself doesn’t seem to be keen to exploit the opportunity. His cycle yatras keep getting postponed again and again. He doesn’t think he needs to go and persuade voters about why he would be a better chief minister than Yogi Adityanath in 2022. For reasons best known to him, he isn’t exploding or strengthening his fast-eroding brand.
The BJP, Yogi and Modi and the party units are all busy in non-stop campaigning. Not even Covid stopped their campaigning. You would think the opposition would learn something from the BJP about the need for reaching out to the public, and doing so throughout the year, every year, every month, every week, every day. All they do is sit at home, sometimes travel abroad, twiddle their thumbs and rue that the media is against them.
The author is contributing editor to ThePrint. Views are personal.