Poll results: Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav a tough nut to crack

Most Mulayam Singh Yadav press conferences end with newshounds gathering around a “Netaji expert” to clarify words, phrases or even sentences they missed. Often, they discover critical comments they could not catch when Yadav spoke. Indeed, the joke in political circles is that people laugh at Mulayam’s jokes out of politeness, for few actually follow them.

And yet, the Yadav chieftain with a frequently incomprehensible lisp has successfully communicated with 20 crore people over four decades. Now, at 72, after five years in the wilderness, the great survivor is back in Lucknow for his fourth stint as CM, riding on the back of the best showing ever by the Samajwadi Party. It was a scenario few could have foreseen in 2007, when the SP was voted out by an electorate fed up of its “goonda raj”. But it never pays to underestimate the dimunitive former wrestler from Saifai, whose twin weapons are persistence and pragmatism.

A disciple of Charan Singh, Mulayam hijacked the “kisan neta” title from a burgeoning pack in the sweepstakes for the jat leader’s legacy. A few years later, when V P Singh unfurled the Mandal Commission, Mulayam deftly employed it to alter the landscape of the Hindi heartland. And as the BJP appeared on the horizon with its Ayodhya campaign, he cobbled together a M-Y (Muslim-Yadav ) constituency formidable enough to see him emerge as a potential third front candidate for PM. That didn’t materialize (many believe Lalu Prasad played a critical role in stymieing his fellow Yadav), though he did serve as Union defence minister.

In 2004, he would have hoped to play a critical role at the Centre, but was snubbed by the UPA, though the SP eventually played a key role in saving the Manmohan government in a trust vote in 2008 over the US nuclear deal. Even as he has weathered a love-hate relationship with the Congress, the bulwark of post-Babri “secularism” has been pragmatic enough to keep lines open with the saffron camp. During AB Vajpayee’s tenure as PM, the joke went that though Mulayam could not join the NDA, he did not miss much outside. His pragmatism shone through in September 2003 when, after Mayawati gave up power by snapping ties with BJP, he persuaded “Atalji” to let him form the government. BJP’s insistence on retaining its assembly speaker did not come in the way!