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UTTAR
PRADESH Relic as Ruler In falling back on an obscure RSS nominee the BJP may have saved the state Government but has made itself vulnerable to desertions and political eclipse. By Farzand Ahmed and Subhash Mishra Wanted. An administrative manager for insolvent concern. Will take charge of substantial estate (2,94,411 sq km) and 150 million residents. This is a challenging assignment, calling for agility and quick and unconventional decision-making. Large sections of the residents are opposed to the present management and are being egged on by aggressive leaders. Part of the administrative staff itself is intensely factionalised, disgruntled and has links with criminal elements. Candidate has two years to turn around the concern.
If the BJP leadership were a head-hunting agency, it would soon be out of a career. In choosing Ram Prakash Gupta, 76, for the post of Uttar Pradesh's chief minister it has selected an individual who, in theory, is absolutely unequal to the monumental task at hand. Assembly elections are due in October 2001. The state is bankrupt. The ruling BJP is bitterly divided; Gupta's predecessor, Kalyan Singh, is sulking like nobody's business. The Opposition, particularly Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party (SP) and Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), smells opportunity. The polity is severely criminalised. Thirty ministers double as alleged gangsters. The state Home Department itself has documented how mafia groups have complete control over sections of the economy. There is, for instance, a "stone (quarrying) mafia", a "land mafia" and so on. The man who has got the job has been plucked out of nowhere. Gupta was deputy chief minister to Charan Singh in the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal ministry of 1967 -- the first non-Congress regime in the state. Ten years later he became industry minister under Ram Naresh Yadav of the Janata Party. Since then he has been in near-retirement, save for contesting the 1993 assembly election, and till the other day was happily ensconced in the sinecure of deputy chairman, State Planning Board. By all accounts Gupta is a "good man". A former RSS pracharak, he was a student of Rajendra Singh -- or Rajju Bhaiyya, the current RSS chief -- and a contemporary of Union HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi at Allahabad University. He was also a pillar, if that be the word, of the Jan Sangh, the BJP's predecessor, when that party was a fringe force in the Uttar Pradesh of the '60s. Like many other Sanghis of that era, Gupta lives a spartan life, is unblemished by corruption, cherishes the moral high ground and hates compromise. In short, he has no clue about realpolitik. To describe Gupta's assumption of office as an accident of history would be an understatement. As it happened, all the other contenders cancelled out each other.
So the choice fell on poor old Gupta, part of the Baniya (trader) community that comprises 2 per cent of Uttar Pradesh. In contrast, OBCs make up 27 per cent, Dalits 25 per cent and Brahmins 9 per cent. Of the 175 BJP MLAs, a mere 11 are Baniyas. In contrast, there are 38 OBCs, 34 Dalits, 29 Thakurs and 25 Brahmins. As the figures indicate, in the age of caste consolidation Gupta is bereft of supporters. If a mixed metaphor be permitted, in the casteist jungle that is Uttar Pradesh politics, the BJP has replaced a scapegoat with a lamb.
If the backdrop to Gupta's appointment is terribly complex, the future -- for a man who has so far been spoken of "only in the past tense", to quote a carping party colleague -- is even more of a minefield. Not surprisingly, the new chief minister's first challenge will be to face up to his predecessor and his legacy. Kalyan, chief minister since September 1997, was no paragon of virtue. He saddled the state with a jumbo 89-strong ministry, placed his favourite bureaucrats in key positions -- in the week before he resigned, he transferred 150 senior civil servants -- and oversaw the descent of Uttar Pradesh into a fiscal abyss. So bad is the situation that thousands of state employees and teachers are not being paid their salaries on time and there is a constant danger of default. Kalyan raj came to be associated with a small but dubious coterie -- including Rajbir Singh, the former chief minister's son -- and did little credit to the BJP's claim of clean governance. His relationship with Kusum Rai, a Lucknow corporator, also raised eyebrows and imparted on her the status of an "extra-constitutional authority". Defiant to the last, on the very eve of demitting office Kalyan reappointed Rai chairperson of the State Women's Commission. This final act was part of a proto-rebellion against the BJP's central leadership. Kalyan, fiercely arrogant at the best of times, has said enough in recent days to suggest that he holds Vajpayee responsible for both the debacle in Uttar Pradesh and his removal. The Kalraj-Lalji-Rajnath axis, in his opinion, has the blessings of the prime minister. On his part, Kalyan is considered a protege of Home Minister L.K. Advani and a star of the "new", post-Ram movement BJP. On November 8, when Kalyan and his three detractors were summoned to Delhi by the prime minister, the man just didn't go. Instead, sensing the game was up, Kalyan left for Ayodhya on a "pilgrimage" to the temple of Ram lalla. While Gupta's destiny was being finetuned in Delhi, Kalyan was playing hardliner to the hilt in Ayodhya.
Touching upon a subject Vajpayee would best ignore and to the rapturous applause of an assortment of sadhus, Kalyan said, "Agar Atal Bihari Vajpayee mein himmat hai to Ayodhya aakar mandir banwaye (If Vajpayee has the courage let him build a temple in Ayodhya)." He ridiculed those who "had time to travel to Lahore in a bus ... but not to come to Ayodhya" and pointed out that, despite having sought a mandate for Vajpayee, the BJP could not cross its 1998 tally of 182 in the recent Lok Sabha polls. The upshot is: Kalyan is in revolt. The man who gave the BJP a definite OBC character in Uttar Pradesh is now painting himself as a victim of an upper-caste conspiracy. Should the mood persist till the state elections, the BJP will find itself without the services of its key campaigner. For the immediate, despite the efforts of party leaders to mollycoddle him -- "Of course the majority of the MLAs are with him. No doubt about it" (Venkaiah Naidu); "Kalyan can't be singled out. The state organisation is also responsible" (K.N. Govindacharya) -- Kalyan is going to needle Gupta no end. Then there are the allies -- Loktantrik Congress 20 MLAs, Jantantrik BSP 19, Janata Dal (Pandey) 3, Samata 2, Independents 8 -- each a more ruthless bargainer than the next and almost everybody bribed with a ministry. To manage as wild a bunch as Raja Raghuraj Pratap Singh (Independent), Amarmani Tripathy and Hari Shankar Tiwari (both Loktantrik) or Markandey Chand (Janatantrik BSP) took the best of Kalyan's political acumen. While Gupta is optimistic (see interview), hardly anyone else is.
The judicious if alternate use of the carrot and stick, the division of the enemy -- as evident in the Kalyan-induced BSP split in 1997 -- these are the contemporary rules of Uttar Pradesh's political game. These are rules Kalyan Singh, warts and all, wrote and re-wrote. These are rules Mulayam and Mayawati, commanding respectively 26 and 14 MPs from the state, are well-versed in. These are rules Gupta has never heard of. The BJP's emerging nightmare is going to the next election under Gupta's leadership. Some partymen are openly hoping that the Gupta regime will be shortlived and that President's rule -- administered by Governor Suraj Bhan, an old BJP hand -- will be imposed as a damage- control mechanism. For the moment, it's dinosaur raj.
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