Akhilesh Yadav's Evolution After 2017 Loss And Political Maturity for Caste

NEW DELHI: From ‘Kaam Bolta Hai’ (work speaks) slogan in 2017 to the apparent realisation in 2018 that “caste vote dilati hai (caste wins votes)” Akhilesh Yadav seems to have come a long way. The Samajwadi Party chief has learnt the lesson the hard way, according to people close to him, a lesson that his father and party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav had been seeking to teach him – that development works such as expressways and Metro may be an image booster but caste arithmetic trumps all other electoral factors in Uttar Pradesh.

A day after the SP, with the support of the Bahujan Samaj Party, stunned the ruling BJP by winning seats vacated by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya. SP functionaries close to the former chief minister told ET that the party did not give up its development pitch in the recent bypolls but buttressed it with a formidable caste coalition.


“People probably did not understand when we spoke of expressways and metro last year, but they understood the saanp-chahundar (snake-mongoose) lament of the BJP. In politics, development work shapes how you are perceived, but chunav caste hi jeetati hai (only caste wins polls),” said SP spokesman Sunil Singh Yadav, a close aide of the party chief.

“Caste is a political reality. This is the same thing that Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) has been saying. Whoever speaks against caste, cannot win elections,” he said, pointing out how Adityanath had sat through a rally in Phulpur when his senior minister Nand Gopal Nandi compared BSP chief Mayawati to demoness Shurpanakha of the Ramayana, enraging the BSP’s Dalit supporters.

This does not mean, however, that the SP would give up on its development pitch, the party spokesman said, especially since the Adityanath government was facing the challenge of doing better than its predecessor on this score.

SP’s national vice president Kiranmoy Nanda said it was a “big achievement of Akhilesh to unite backward, Yadavs and Muslims” with the BSP’s support. Another close aide of SP chief, and a member of UP legislative council, Udaiveer Singh said, “Why should we ignore social calculations?” He said “actual caste politics” was done by the BJP in 2017 when it projected many people of various castes as probable CM faces but finally went for an upper-caste leadership. “We are only answering now by speaking up for social justice for caste sections who are weaker and have been left out as the BJP gave no political participation to backward castes,” he said, adding that it was a BJP “conspiracy” to term SP-BSP understanding as “caste politics” at the cost of development agenda.

Former MLA Abhishek Mishra, another key aide of the former CM, said “besides consolidation of caste forces”, the bypoll wins also signified the unhappiness of voters with the BJP. “Voters were not convinced by our development talk in 2017 because of the polarisation and congregation on caste lines done by BJP,” he said.

A senior SP leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed to Akhilesh Yadav’s recent public statements where he lamented that while he cited development works in his 2017 campaign, people did not vote for him. “Akhilesh will definitely do development – once he becomes the CM again. Right now, it is about a fight with BJP by forming a formidable caste equation on the other side. Mulayam Singh Yadav has impressed upon Akhilesh the same and Akhilesh has shown the maturity,” he said.

The senior SP leader said that Mulayam Singh Yadav had rightly warned his son against an alliance with the Congress in 2017. “Upper-caste votes of Congress do not shift to SP when we fight in coalition but those voters end up voting for BJP. If SP and Congress fight separately, Congress votes cut into BJP’s vote base,” he said, explaining why Akhilesh Yadav did not pursue an alliance with the Congress in the recent bypolls.

Abhishek Mishra, however, said that a decision on an alliance for the 2019 general election would be “taken at the level of Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav”. The latter said on Thursday that he had good relations with Gandhi.

Udaiveer Singh said the party’s refurbished strategy also entailed not reacting to statements and resultant attempts by the BJP to polarise voters on grounds of religion. “BJP has created antagonism against the Muslims and will attempt to polarise Hindus again in 2019 in UP. Unlike earlier, in these bypolls we did not fall into that trap. Hence, BJP miserably failed at Hindu consolidation in these bypolls,” he said.

However, SP leaders said, the biggest test for the party’s strategy lies ahead in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls.