Kill The Messenger

When Akhilesh Yadav emerged as the hero of the Samajwadi Party’s election victory in Uttar Pradesh 27 months ago, he was hailed as India’s youngest chief minister. Riding on his shoulders were the hopes of 20 crore people. But in the system of governance—or lack of it—scripted by his father, Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, there has so far been little the son could do to prove his capabilities or bring about the changes he intended to.

In the Lok Sabha polls, the party was drubbed. And the law and order crisis in the state—the latest being a gangrape and hanging of another woman in Bah­raich, a shocking mirror of last fortni­ght’s incident in Badaun—has drawn huge criticism of Akhilesh’s governm­ent and his party. But the response to such criticism, in the media and otherwise, has been a streak of intolerance. Copies of Outlook with a cover story describing  him as ‘India’s worst chief minister’ were systematically seized as soon as they reached Lucknow and the party’s henchmen set them ablaze right in front of the state assembly. A bookseller known for his proximity to the CM is believed to have purchased all copies from the chief news agent for Lucknow. Party goons made a bonfire of them. Thanks to another news agency, which had ordered some copies, some readers managed to get the issue. After the incident, the demand for copies of Outlook went up. A news agent said, “Some 2,000 extra copies were sold as even clerks and peons at the secretariat were curious to know what had been written about ‘India’s worst CM’.”

Obviously, Akhilesh chooses to rem­ain in denial mode—refusing to believe and accept the ground realities. This is how he and his father coped with the task of rev­iewing the party’s rout in the Lok Sabha polls. When it came to fixing responsibility for the debacle, the action orde­red by Mulayam clearly spoke of blood being thicker than water. While stripping every office-bearer of his post in all units and committees of the party, the father allowed the son to continue  holding dual charge of the state government as well as the party organisation. The father-son duo also sacked 36 of 62 handpicked partymen for whom very special positions with added  ex-officio status of minister of state had been created. Ironically, most of them had had no role whatsoever to play in the election campaign.

That there were several reasons beh­ind Akhilesh’s frustration was no sec­ret—foremost among them being the influence of an overbearing father who cannot resist the temptation of backseat driving, and the multiple chachas and other relatives, for whom the chief minister still remained just another bhatija. His inability to prove himself a doer made things worse for Akhilesh.

As if to prove his critics wrong, Akhilesh convened a meeting of senior IAS and IPS officers from across the state on June 10. The chief minister made it a point to tell them to pull up their socks, failing which they would have to face the music. But sure enough, reprimanding government officials in a 30-minute monologue is very different from handling the onslaught of a father who is also the party boss.

No wonder, therefore, when Mulayam chose to direct his chagrin at the Lok Sabha election results publicly at his son at a party meeting in Lucknow last month, Akhilesh was nonplussed. “We had won 36 Lok Sabha seats, to which three more were added in the byelections,” the father boasted, a tad proudly, only to add, while gesturing towards his son, “and today he has given us just five seats.” Surely, the father’s remark was as annoying for Akhilesh as the Outlook story. But helpless in the face of an authoritarian father, all he could do was to get up and leave in a huff.