Ground Reports
Hridayapath, Dispatch #14: Season Finale — Samajwad In 'Uttam Pradesh'
Banuchandar Nagarajan
Apr 29, 2024, 04:47 PM | Updated Aug 09, 2024, 12:07 PM IST
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Highway to Heaven
I have not been on the autobahn, but, I have lived in the US for six years and travelled a fair bit. With hand-on-heart, I can say that the Purvanchal Expressway is the best road I have been on. Part of the Bharat Mala Pariyojna, the 320km long expressway starts in Ghazipur and ends in Lucknow. I am sure this road will do what all great roads do — connect people who exchange ideas and goods, thus being a harbinger of prosperity to the region.
I cross into UP at Ballia and get into the expressway towards Azamgarh. The road is new and shiny. I see exits with food-courts and petrol stations. There is hardly any traffic on the day.
I rediscover "phir se ud chala" from Rockstar and wondered why the song hadn't hit me for a dozen years. Songs can be such mysteries!
Azamgarh — The Singer vs The Samajwadi
Azamgarh, naam to suna hoga! It is one of India's largest centres for jihadi recruitment and hawala operations. Dawood Ibrahim, Chhota Shakeel, Abu Salem and the recently killed Mukhtar Ansari are on the list of infamy associated with this place. It has also been a fortress of Samajwadi Party. Correlation vs. causation, anyone?
Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav have been MPs from here. Akhilesh Yadav won in 2019. He quit to contest the assembly elections in 2022. BJP's Dinesh Lal Yadav, who lost to Akhilesh in 2019, won the by-poll. (To be clear, this was the second time that the BJP won Azamgarh. In 2009, SP turncoat, Ramakant Yadav, won from the BJP ticket.) All the Assembly constituencies are held by SP.
For the upcoming elections, the BJP has re-nominated Dinesh Lal Yadav. He is one of the most famous Bhojpuri singers that goes by the name Nirahua (meaning, the good husband). He will face up against Dharmendra Yadav of the SP. Dharmendra Yadav is the cousin of Akhilesh Yadav, He has quite a few criminal cases against him.
The infrastructure is good inside the city. I meet a 20-something guy with a strange hairstyle. I asked him what sort of development has seen around. He seems taken aback as if confronting such a question for the first time in his life. "What a strange question!" he might have "thunk"!
He says that there have been a few malls that have come up. And more people have vehicles. He definitely did better than what the 20-year-old me would have done!
He is eligible to vote, but he says that he will not vote. He is least interested in who becomes the MLA or the MP. He said that even his parents have not spoken to him about the polls. He aspires to go to Delhi or Bombay sometime to make money.
Regular readers of Hridayapath dispatches will note that the apathy of first-time voters is a recurrent theme. At the time of writing this, we have seen the first two phases of elections with poor turnouts. I would guess that part of the problem is the lack of enthusiasm among young voters.
Even in a highly political constituency, and in general a heavily politicised public-space such as Azamgarh, it is disappointing to see the lack of interest. Leave the election commission, what about the workers of various political parties? What about parents and teachers imbibing responsible citizenry? We will have to wait for the statistics post-polls to confirm my apprehensions.
Next, I meet Priyanshu, who runs a retail store. He is talkative and enthusiastic. He says that urban traffic has improved thanks to widened roads. The city has devised a PPP model in maintaining urban infrastructure, including parks, roundabouts, toilets and foot-over-bridges.
He is particularly happy with the policing. Rioting and public disturbances that used to be common occurrences before have come down. Even during the recent Holi celebrations, strict measures were taken against drunken. There was a bit of unrest in the Muslim-dominated localities after the death of Mukhtar Ansari. Curfew was imposed for a few hours, but mostly peace prevailed. The strict policing is new to Azamgarh. Some people are welcoming it and some people are feeling the high-handedness. The police have used the bulldozer a few times in the city.
Priyanshu adds that when Mulayam Singh Yadav was chief minister he, made sure that Azamgarh was taken care of. The town had a 24x7 power supply even when other parts of UP were reeling under power cuts.
The constituency has around 30 per cent Yadavs, 15 per cent Muslims and a substantial number of members from the Sonar community. This time there will a tough fight between Dinesh Lal Yadav and Dharmendra Yadav.
Priyanshu says that the educated young people cutting across castes and communities have shifted to the BJP. Supporters of other parties are looked down upon as vikas virodhi. Only the old-school people are still sticking to the old caste norms.
He is voting for development and Modi. He is proud of the Purvanchal Expressway. I speak to him about Chhapra and he says with a tinge of arrogance that Bihar will take a long time to catch up with UP.
Kannauj — Smells of a good fight
Kannauj is known for its perfumes. I see quite a few online vendors. (Please check out Dispatch #13 for the 500km of story-telling from Azamgarh to Kannauj). The petrol station attender at Kannauj dismissed my question on his voting preference with a "SP, bas!" Chill, dude!
Kannauj has seen kaante ki takkars in the previous two elections. Dimple Yadav won by 20,000 votes in 2014 and lost by 12,000 votes in 2019. Subrat Pathak of the BJP, who won in 2019 has been re-nominated.
Akhilesh Yadav filed his nomination from here a few days ago. It should be a cracker of a contest. From Kannauj we go to Saifai on the smooth Agra Expressway.
Mainpuri — Socialistic leanings
We enter Saifai town. It falls under Etawah district but is under the Mainpuri Lok Sabha constituency (though there is a Mainpuri district). The city has a leaning clock tower — a gareebon ka Pisa Tower. " The centre-of-gravity should fall within the baseline," says the voice of my 12-year-old self.
Mainpuri is home to the impressively huge Uttar Pradesh University of Medical Sciences. I chatted with a bunch of college students that were murdering their 10th (or 15th) poori. They study nursing and are from various parts of India — Jammu, Ayodhya, Prayagraj etc. Since they are not from the constituency, I banter with them about college life.
Ragging was not bad, they say. It took them two years of preparations to get in. So, the average age of the group is 20. They had the usual cribbing about hostel food. But they say that electricity, computer facilities and water supply are not issues.
They complain that the classes are too hard and teachers come on time. I roll my eyes and remind them how lucky they are that teachers come to class at all. They are happy with their education and are chilled with their job prospects. Nursing degrees are among the most sought-after. A couple wanted to go abroad or to the south.
The women to men percentage and their classes 50-50. They are concerned about employment for friends who are not pursuing nursing. They all have secured scholarships and I ask them how much of it they are spending at that dhabha. The dhabha owner laughs more at the joke.
These guys are "theek hai" with the development around the country. They are not happy that everything has a communal tinge these days. Two out of the four are planning to go home and vote (for Modi, because there is no one else).
Next I stop at a pharmacy. Mohan Kumar was very clear that when Netaji was here he took care of the constituency very well. The roads were made during his time and they had a continuous power supply. The "Saifai Mahotsav" that the Yadav family conducts annually is an important calendar event. Bollywood stars descend on this rather non-descript town.
Mohan says that there has been step-motherly treatment in this place because SP is not in power now. For example, he says, a cancer Hospital that was started 10 years ago, was put on the back burner. CM Yogi did a hasty inauguration a few months ago, but it is still not in fully workable condition.
There are no Hindu-Muslim issues here, and everybody lives in amity. He has not availed of any government schemes. But he acknowledges that a few people in the rural areas have availed of the ration scheme and the PM Awas Yojana. I advised him to read up about the Mudra Loan scheme if he is looking to expand his business.
Coming to politics, he says that Dimple Yadav will win even if she doesn't campaign. Her father-in-law, Mulayam Singh Yadav won here with a margin of little less than 1 lakh votes. She will face off against the minister of tourism in the UP government, Jaiveer Singh.
Post-script — Braj needs a boost
On the final day, on the way back to Delhi, I realise we have a couple of extra hours. Instead of taking the expressway, we take a detour through Bharatpur in Rajasthan. This part of UP-Rajasthan, which includes Agra and Mathura, is called Braj Pradesh.
It looked dry, desolate and poor. I scanned the poverty numbers for Rajasthan. Dholpur, Bharatpur, Karauli, Alwar and Sawai Madhopur, which are in Braj and thereabouts, are among the top in the poverty list. It is a failure of imagination that these districts that are so close to Delhi and Jaipur portray such a sorry picture. Hope the energised double-engine sarkar addresses this anomaly.
"Phir se ud chala" is on repeat as I complete a 6500 km long trip that took me all the way to Nagaland and back. Not that it matters to the world, but I will worry less about India's development after the trip.
The deep economic and emotional insecurities have been addressed during the two Modi sarkars. The foundation for prosperity has been laid. It is up to our collective will to build the makaan of our liking!
कभी डाल-डाल, कभी पात-पात..
कभी दिन है रात, कभी दिन दिन है...
क्या सच है? क्या माया है, दाता? है दाता...
This report is part of Swarajya's 50 Ground Stories Project - an attempt to throw light on themes and topics that are often overlooked or looked down. You can support this initiative by sponsoring as little as ₹2999. Click here for more details.
Read the previous articles in this series:
Hridayapath, Dispatch 4 — 'Phirse Modi Ho, Bihar Me Bahar Ho'
Hridayapath, Dispatch 5: Too Much Negativity Peddled About Bihar — Notes From Mithila And Seemanchal
Hridayapath, Dispatch 6: North Bengal — A BJP Fortress In The Making
Hridayapath, Dispatch 8: On Politics, Progress, And Poetry From Assam
Hridayapath, Dispatch #11: Bihar Redux — Of Bengali Woes And Begusarai's Bumihars
Hridayapath, Dispatch #12: Old Ghosts Stare From Samastipur And Saran
Hridayapath, Dispatch #13: Of Sultanpur Libertarians, A Kanpur Businessman And Taylor Swift
Banuchandar is a political and public policy advisor. He posts at @Banu4Bharat.
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