It is ironic that Mr Rahul Gandhi is attempting to become a micro-Mandal messiah trying to win the political battle his father lost in Uttar Pradesh to Mandal politics two decades back. The Uttar Pradesh election has now been reduced to an exercise in micro-Mandal targeting to slice and dice the OBC vote bank. The logic of micro-mandalisation has now been taken to its logical extreme just as it has been in Bihar by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with even the Muslim vote-bank staring at a three-way fragmentation if not more. It is not without reason that the original micro-Mandal messiah, Mr Nitish Kumar, has decided to plunge in to this campaign in Uttar Pradesh against this upstart micro-Mandal messiah in Mr Gandhi.
We are less than four weeks away from the Uttar Pradesh election but are no wiser on which way the State’s voter will likely swing. The confusion now is so deep that one can safely find an opinion poll for every possible end game scenario in Uttar Pradesh. The micro-Mandalisation of the OBC vote has been elevated to such a sophisticated science that it won’t be long before ‘social engineering’ is listed alongside ‘astrology’ to offer more science choices to college students. To appreciate the precision of this micro-Mandal engineering one only has to look at the various news stories that appeared over the past week. On the one hand you had the Indian Express listing precisely the number of votes and seats the Congress hopes to target by stitching together a coalition between the Kurmi vote and the Muslim vote. On the other you had Mail Today baring the precise number of seats being targeted by the BJP including some by name to gain a slice of the OBC vote while hoping to have a lock on the upper caste vote. Mercifully favourable opinion polls have also appeared in the media to support either scenario.
Ignoring these favourably engineered opinion polls for a moment, conventional political wisdom suggests that the battle in Uttar Pradesh is one primarily between the BSP and the SP. Conventional political wisdom also suggests that the BJP and the Congress are merely fighting for third and fourth place. Why then would the entry of a tainted Babu Singh Kushwaha into the BJP become such a hot button issue? After all by extending the logic of conventional political wisdom a tainted Mr Kushwaha should push the BJP from third place to the fourth place. The Congress, going by conventional political wisdom, should have everything to gain from this BJP ‘self-goal’. Why then, pray, has it been firing all guns against the BJP for the last four days?
But then political logic in Uttar Pradesh is anything but conventional. Nothing exemplifies the micro-Mandalisation of the political debate in Uttar Pradesh better than the manner in which all sides have obsessed over the entry of Mr Kushwaha, expelled from the BSP, into the BJP. Ashok Malik, writing in The Pioneer, explains why a Kushwaha who has never contested a real election is such a seemingly prized catch for the BJP. Mr Kushwaha, having run a patronage network for his community, distributed jobs and other public goods, we are told, is in a position to transfer a very specific slice of the OBC vote within a very specific region of Uttar Pradesh.
So we have this bizarre battle for the OBC vote where even Sam Pitroda’s OBC caste is now public knowledge and whenever Mr Gandhi sees Muslims at a rally, he suffers this uncontrollable urge to hail them by their OBC caste.
Lost and forgotten in this battle for a micro-share of micro-spoils is of course the Uttar Pradesh voter who can put to rest any hope of this election producing an outcome that fundamentally alters politics in Uttar Pradesh. How can any party that comes to power riding on the logic of precision targeting sub-castes legitimately claim a mandate to govern all of Uttar Pradesh?
The continuation of cynical realpolitik as the dominant political paradigm in Uttar Pradesh is a sign of the absence of an overarching idea, theme or personality that can appeal to all of Uttar Pradesh, speak for all Uttar Pradesh or legitimately claim to represent all of Uttar Pradesh.
There is a risk here for campaign strategists the pursuit of realpolitik is an end in itself. Electoral tactics rooted in micro-targeting and less than ethical opportunism that facilitates such micro-targeting run the risk of getting blindsided from macro-trends with mass appeal sweeping them by the wayside. One cannot deny the success of micro-Mandal targeting in Bihar but it was not in isolation for the idea of Mr Nitish Kumar reflected a pan-Bihari desire for a clean and meaningful Government.
In response to the UPA’s move to splinter the OBC quota further with a Muslim sub-quota, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi recently made a very powerful remark — “I am an OBC too but I have never used my caste to gain power”.
How many leaders in India today can credibly make such a claim to a culture of politics that transcends caste to speak for all citizens of a state or the entire country? Not even Mr Nitish Kumar.
It is anybody’s guess at this time if all this micro-Mandalisation and micro-targeting will turn conventional political on its head to reverse the pecking order in Uttar Pradesh. Astute observers like Mr Malik continue to put much currency on a possible SP revival under its new scion Akhilesh Yadav. It is a reflection on how low the bar of expectations has been set in Uttar Pradesh that an iPad-sporting Akhilesh Yadav is seen as the great new hope.
Is Uttar Pradesh condemned forever to suffer politics of fragmentation in the absence of a transformational big idea? The political division of Uttar Pradesh will perhaps be a ‘surgical act of mercy’ for its citizens. Maybe that is the big idea this election is missing.
