Uttar Pradesh houses nearly a quarter of a billion lives in its fold. It’s fair to say that India’s destiny is in its palm. If its citizens are moving up by way of skill and education, unafraid of dark forces within, served by the system with water, power, infra, health etc—you know what I mean—India is good.
The first half of my life I spent in its capital Lucknow. I remember my elder brother would hold a long bamboo stick and stir up the overhead cables when light went out in only our home in the neighbourhood; that we were mortally afraid if ruffians dog-whistled my sister returning from her evening classes; that we dared not approach a police station which housed men as intimidating as the one who had roughed up my father in the morning.
And this was the Capital. Its hinterlands only carried legends for us city-breds. Its Azamgarh, Hardoi, Muradabad, Chambals, Bundelkhands were bad-lands. Kanpur, the supposedly Manchester of India, sent a stench up your nose long after you had returned from summer holidays at your granny’s. You were born, grew young, became old and ended up on funeral pyre in lives repeated every next generation. If you fell mortally ill, like my father did of cancer, hospitals didn’t have beds to ease the passage to life after. Chemotherapy would stop midway because load-shedding came and went on whim.
We just went by our lives. The system was for rich, powerful and corrupt. It fed on our fears. It served them if the citizens were poor and uneducated; it mattered little if its bright went out like I did, or broken ones ended up driving taxis or opening paan shops in Colaba or Greater Kailash.
First Congress, and then Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, as party in helm, were guilty of such a sorry pass. Real Estate was front for politicians and mafia’s ill-gotten money which legitimate businesses parted with, lest they or their family came to harm.
Now all of them are in the fray for assembly polls this month. Huge cut-outs, blaring loudspeakers with glory numbers and physical rallies beckon. Newspapers and TV stations would be paid for interviews and hit-jobs as they have always been. This is their moment for harvest. Akhilesh Yadav and his Samajwadi Party are the great hope of this stinking eco-system, never mind the party just had 47 seats in 2017 and it actually fared worse in 2019 general polls, what if they were part of Lok Sabha constituencies.
Our newspapers are making much of Akhilesh’ equation with Muslims; and that Jats, in the form of his ally Rashtriya Lok Dal could land a sucker-punch on hugely popular Yogi Adityanath of BJP. We read much about how Muslims could influence the outcome in 163 assembly seats; how Jats could drill a hole in 70 seats in Western Uttar Pradesh.
All this while, you hardly read a word on how such a massive population could come relatively unscathed by Covid-19; how rapes and murders are nowhere near the once documented numbers under BSP and SP’s regime; how investment is pouring in in Yogi’s Uttar Pradesh and how on most indexes of Good Governance—agriculture, HRD, health, infra, social welfare, commerce—today’s UP is envy of rest of India.
But our newspapers would blank it. As they would the hundreds of riots under Akhilesh Yadav’s regime—one of India’s worst in Muzaffarnagar in 2013 which didn’t interrupt the ongoing glitz in family’s bastion in Saifai—; the “perfume king” scandal which you would never hear again; the indictment by CAG of “irregularities worth Rs 97,000 crore,” etc, etc.
Muzaffarnagar Riots were not Gujarat so its been wiped out from our collective memory. We don’t remember that the Supreme Court had held the Akhilesh Yadav government prima facie guilty of negligence; and that a sting operation by Headlines Today had revealed strongman Azam Khan ordered police to release and not take action against Muslims. Though vaguely we might recall camps for thousands of displaced persons, most of us have forgotten that over a thousand army troops needed be pressed to stop the flow of blood on streets.
It was in June 2012, within three months of Akhilesh Yadav being at helm, that Samajwadi Party strutted in assembly about the improved law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh. It put the figures of 45 days (March 1 – April 45) in front of the legislators: Only 699 murders, 263 rapes and 249 robberies in the state! This they considered as a badge of honour compared to previous regime of Mayawati’s BSP.
Yet, you won’t listen or read UP’s staggering turnaround on this score in Yogi Adityanath’s regime. We have no less than the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) telling us that rapes have fallen by half the previous numbers. Murders have gone down. The conviction rate is striking. The Mukhtar Ansaris and Azam Khans are cooling their heels in prison. And investments? Well, nearly two trillion rupees have been wagered on Uttar Pradesh’s future in the last three years and a half.
It’s not a new spectacle that politicians and press look after each other’s back. They share the spoils of loot. Anyone who doesn’t vote for BJP is a fair game to be fooled and misled. If Uttar Pradesh goes back to its wretched past; the nation remains mired, they couldn’t care less.
In coming weeks we would know if this bears fruit for this wretched lot. Or this is the game they have lost forever.
