Mulayam Singh Yadav

The new Janata Party will be a challenge for Modi in Bihar

Vivek Kaul

The year was 1977. The emergency had just ended. The opposition leaders who had been imprisoned during the course of the emergency had just released. They were holding a massive rally at the Ram Lila maidan.
It was a rainy day in Delhi and well past 9.30pm by the time Atal Bihari Vajpayee rose to speak. He was the star speaker for the evening and the people who had turned up at the rally had stayed back just to hear him.
To the shouts of “Indira Gandhi murdabad, Atal Bihari zindabad,” Vajpayee started his speech with a couplet:
“Baad muddat ke mile hain deewane,
Kehne sunne ko bahut hain afsane,
Khuli hawa mein zara saans to le lein,
kab tak rahegi aazadi kaun jaane.”
(It has been an age since we whom they call mad have had the courage to meet,
There are tales to tell and tales to hear,
But first let us breathe deeply of the free air,
For we know not how long our freedom will last). (Source: Tavleen Singh’s Durbar)

In the time to come all the major opposition parties came together and formed the Janata Party. This was the only way they could take on Indira Gandhi by ensuring that their votes did not split. The party won 295 seats in the Lok Sabha elections that followed and thus came to power. The largest number of 93 MPs were of the Jana Sangha (now the Bhartiya Janata Party) origin. Forty four MPs came from the Congress (O) party. Seventy one MPs came from Charan Singh’s Bhartiya Lok Dal. Jagjivan Ram’s Congress for Democracy brought in 28 MPs.
A large number of the Lok Sabha seats that the party won was limited to North India, given that the southern part of the country hadn’t really felt the ill-effects of the emergency implemented by Indira Gandhi as much as the north India had. Given this, Indira Gandhi’s Congress still managed to win 154 seats though they were wiped out in Uttar Pradesh with both Indira and her son Sanjay losing elections.
If one leaves out the Jana Sangha from this, the other parties were what we would call socialists, in the Indian sense of the term.
Nearly four decades later some of these socialists who were a part of the Janata Party have decided to come together again. This time to take on Narendra Modi. The parties which are merging together are Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal(United) Indian National Lok Dal of Om Prakash Chauthala, Janata Dal(Secular) of HD Deve Gowda and Kamal Morarka’s Samajwadi Janata Party.
Mulayam Singh Yadav has been announced as the head of the party in Parliament, though its name and symbol haven’t been decided as yet. The Times of India reports that the party is likely to be called Samajwadi Janata Dal with the cycle as its symbol (which is the current symbol of the Samajwadi party).
So how strong a challenge is this new party going to be to Narendra Modi? Will it be as strong as the Janata Party was to Indira Gandhi? The first thing we need to understand is that the party has been formed when the next Lok Sabha election is still four years away.
After the merger, the party will have 15 members in the Lok Sabha, which is minuscule to the 295 members that the Janata Party had. In the Rajya Sabha the party will have 30 members. In that sense, the party will provide very little challenge to Narendra Modi.
Further, the support of all the parties which are coming together is heavily localized. Samajwadi Party is strong in Uttar Pradesh. The Indian National Lok Dal is strong in Haryana and Dev Gowda’s Janata Dal(Secular) is strong in parts of Karanatka. Hence, to that extent no consolidation of votes can be expected against Narendra Modi.
The only exception to this is Bihar. In Bihar, both Lalu’s Rashtriya Janata Dal(RJD) and Nitish’s Janata Dal (United)(JD(U)) are on a strong wicket. Data from the election commission shows that the combine of Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party(LJP) got 35.8% of the votes polled during the Lok Sabha elections last year.
The RJD and the Congress Party which fought the elections together got 20.1% and 8.4% of the votes respectively. The Janata Dal(United) which fought the elections separately got 15.8% of the votes. Hence, the vote percentage of JD(U) + RJD matches that of the BJP + LJP. Further, RJD+JD(U)+Congress got more votes than BJP + LJP. Nevertheless, since RJD+ Congress and JD(U) were not in alliance, these votes did not translate into Lok Sabha seats.
Things changed in the by-elections to 10 assembly seats that happened in August 2014. In these elections the JD(U) came together with the RJD+Congress and took on BJP+LJP. The data from the election commission shows that the RJD+Congress+JD(U) got 45.6% of the total votes polled. The BJP+LJP got 37.9% of the votes polled. Given that, this time JD(U) was not fighting the elections separately, the votes polled translated into assembly seats as well, unlike the Lok Sabha polls. The RJD+ Congress+ JD(U) got six out of the ten assembly seats.
Hence, in Bihar, given the way the caste combinations work, the new Janata Party can be a potent force to take on Modi. The trouble is that Lalu and Nitish, despite the claims that they make in public these days, do not get along with each other.
Nitish became the Chief Minister of Bihar in 2005, more than three decades after he entered politics in the early 1970s. And for the first half of his political career, he propped up Lalu Prasad Yadav even though he knew that Lalu wasn’t fit to govern. Journalist Sankarshan Thakur puts this question to Nitish in his book Single Man: “Why did you promote Laloo Yadav so actively in your early years?” he asked.
And surprisingly, Nitish gave an honest answer. As Thakur writes “’But where was there ever even the question of promoting Laloo Yadav?’ he mumbled…’We always knew what quality of man he was, utterly unfit to govern, totally lacking vision or focus.”
So why then did Nitish decide to support him? “There wasn’t any other choice at that time,’ Nitish countered…’We came from a certain kind of politics. Backward communities had to be given prime space and Laloo belonged to the most powerful section of Backwards, politically and numerically.”
And this logic still continues to remain valid. The next assembly elections in Bihar are scheduled for later this year is in November 2015. And the chief minister’s post will be a bone of contention between Lalu and Nitish. It remains to be seen whether the new party will be able to survive this.
In other states the new party may be able to cause some damage to Modi only if it comes together with the Congress. To conclude, the biggest challenge for the party will be to survive till the next Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

The article originally appeared on Firstpost on April 16, 2015 

Babalog prophecy: Why Akhilesh won’t ever transcend Mulayam


Vivek Kaul

Scandinavian crime writers have been fairly popular over the last few years. The likes of Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson have taken the world by storm. The latest Scandinavian sensation is Jo Nesbo, who has been writing a series of novels featuring a very “disturbed” Oslo police detective, Inspector Harry Hole.
Hole has a drinking problem. He has done drugs at various points of time. And the love of his life has left him and disappeared after she gets embroiled in one of the cases that Hole is investigating. On top of this Hole shares a rather philosophical relationship with his father who is dying of cancer. Nesbo writes the following paragraph in the context of the relationship that Hole shares with his father in a novel titled The Leopard:
There were those who asserted that sons always became, to some degree or other, disguised variants of their fathers, that the experience of breaking out was never more than an illusion; you returned; the gravity of blood was not only stronger than your willpower, it was your willpower.

Nowhere is this truer than in the context of the Indian political scenario, when the sons and daughters take over the mantel of their politician parents. India is full of political scions who have taken over, or are taking over, or will take over from where their parents left or are likely to leave.
Let me try and make a random list of politicians who fulfill this criterion, starting from Jammu Kashmir in the north and working my way down south to Tamil Nadu.
Omar Abdullah, the current chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir is the son of Dr Farooq Abdullah and grandson of Sheikh Abdullah, both career politicians.
Himachal Pradesh is ruled by Prem Kumar Dhumal whose son Anurag Thakur is a member of the Lok Sabha from Hamirpur and also a joint-secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India(BCCI).
The chief minister of Punjab is Prakash Singh Badal. His son Sukhbir Singh Badal is the deputy chief minister and the president of the Shiromani Akali Dal.
Sheila Dikshit is the chief minister of Delhi. Her son Sandeep Dikshiit is the member of Lok Sabha from the East Delhi constituency.
Orissa or Odisha as it is now known as is ruled by Naveen Patnaik son of the late Biju Patnaik.
Andhra Pradesh has scions of NT Rama Rao battling for political space. Jaganmohan Reddy the son of the late Y Rajshekar Reddy is giving the ruling Congress party a tough time.
Tamil Nadu has the Karunanidhi, his sons, his nephews, his grandsons, and so on, all hoping to stay relevant in a space which is getting a little too crowded for Karunanidhis.
Karnatka has BS Yeddyurappa the enfant terrible of the BJP. His son B. Y. Raghavendra is a member of the Lok Sabha from Shimoga. The state also has the Deve Gowda clan.
Maharasthra has too many political clans for me to start listing them here (that probably needs a separate piece in itself). But the latest political scion to join the bandwagon is Aditya Thackeray, son of Uddhav Thackeray and the grandson of Bal Thackeray.
This is a random list and is not complete in anyway. But it list remains incomplete without Akhilesh Yadav, the son of Mulayam Singh Yadav, and the current chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.
The phenomenon of political scions is not limited only to the states.
Patrick French in his book India: A Portrait carried out a very interesting piece of analysis on the Indian members of Parliament. Every Indian MP under the age of 30 was a hereditary MP i.e. his or her family member had made a career out of politics. More than two-thirds of the MPs under the age of 40 are hereditary.
Twenty seven MPs were what French calls “hyper-hereditary” i.e. they had several family members who made a career out of politics. The Congress party leads the race here. All the MPs that the party has under the age of 35 are hereditary. 88% of the Congress MPs under the age of 40 are hereditary. Regional parties have a greater proportion of hereditary MPs, in comparison to the national parties.
So what does this tell us? It tells us that the Indian voter loves to elect political scions into positions of power. It tells us why Motilal Nehru’s great great grandson is leading the race to become the next Prime Minister of India. It tells us why Akhilesh Yadav, the son of Mulayam Singh Yadav, was elected the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.
But that’s just one part of it. It also tells us that politicians like businessmen want their sons and daughters to take over from them. A businessman after having built a good business which throws up a lot of money wants his progeny to manage it. The same seems to be the case with the politicians. Having built a good business model over the years they want their sons and daughters to run it.
This leads to a situation widely prevalent in the Hindi film industry where it’s difficult for an outsider to make it big as a hero. Most of the current crop of heroes are descendants of people who have had something to do with the Hindi film industry. These “heroes” are jocularly referred to as “baba log”.
But it is difficult to separate cause from effect. The Indian voter likes electing political scions and that is why we see more and more baba log entering politics. But at the same time since baba log have cornered most of the space in Indian politics, who else does the voter vote for?
It is a chicken an egg question.
Nevertheless, expecting baba log to change things that their parents or uncles or aunts or grandfathers weren’t able to do, is expecting a little too much from them. The case in point is Akhilesh Yadav. He ran the “umeed ki cycle” campaign during the elections in Uttar Paresh. The campaign was produced by former Hindi film director Arjun Sablok, who directed flops like Neal n Nikki and Na Tum Jaano Na Hum.
The voter was taken for a ride thinking that all that had been wrong during the rule of Mayawati, and also during the rule of Mulayam Singh Yadav, would change in the days to come. That was not to be.
The question that one needs to ask here is why political scions enter politics. That should provide us an answer to why it’s best not to expect any sort of change from baba logs. A political scion enters politics to carry on the family tradition of being in politics. He also understands that at some level he will not have to struggle to make it on his own. Things will be handed out to him on a platter. In short he is taking the easy way out, in most cases. And anyone who takes the easy way out to make himself relevant in this world has his own interests on the top of the agenda and not of the voters who elected him in the first place. The top interest of a political scion is furthering the cause of the family and the people who support the family.
Hence Akhilesh Yadav is in the process of becoming what his father was and probably still is. To end, let me quote Jo Nesbo again:
There were those who asserted that sons always became, to some degree or other, disguised variants of their fathers, that the experience of breaking out was never more than an illusion; you returned; the gravity of blood was not only stronger than your willpower, it was your willpower
The bigger sucker saved Buffett. But Mallya may not have any such luck
(The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on July 5,2012. http://www.firstpost.com/politics/babalog-prophecy-why-akhilesh-wont-ever-transcend-mulayam-368232.htmll)
(Vivek Kaul is a writer and can be reached at [email protected])

Sonia Gandhi and the art of mystery branding


Vivek Kaul

Who is Sonia Gandhi?
Do we the citizens of this country really know her?
What are her views on various things?
What does she think about the current state of the Indian economy?
What does she think of the government which she runs on “remote control”, like Balasaheb Thackeray once did?
When she went abroad recently for medical treatment, what is it that she is suffering from? Does it bother her that her only son Rahul is in his forties now and is still unmarried?
Does she find time to be with her two grandsons?
Are her Hindi speeches written in Roman script?
Pardon me for being rhetorical, but I am just trying to make a broader point. The citizens of India don’t have answers for any of the questions asked above. They need not have answers for every question. But they definitely need to know her views on the Indian economy, the government she runs on remote control and the medical illness that plagues her.
The other questions are personal and answering them would just satisfy some curiosity and nothing else.
The fundamental question that arises here is why is there so much mystery surrounding Sonia Gandhi? Nobody currently influences the economics and politics of India more than she does. But when was the last time you read an interview with her and heard her interacting with the media?
The answer behind all her mystery might very well lie in the art of branding a product. As brand guru Martin Lindstrom writes in Buyology – Truth and Lies About Why We Buy “Mystery is a fascinating component as many brands leverage this in order to make us pay more for a brand.”
And so many big brands make mystery their selling point.
“Ye PSPO nahi jaanta,” went the catch line of an advertisement of Orient Fans. Towards the end of the advertisement it was revealed that PSPO stands for “Peak Speed Performance Output.” Now what does that mean?
Or take the case of “ZPTO yukt naya clinic All Clear.” What does ZPTO stand for?
Or take the case of Tata Xenon XT, the new car from Tata Motors. What does XT stand for?
Or Johnson’s natural baby oil with aloe vera? What is aloe vera?
Or products like Ariel Oxyblue and Opti-ThickTM Harpic?
All these abbreviations and terms stand for something. PSPO is a technology that uses lesser electricity to deliver more air, over a larger area. ZPTO is a microbiocide, which is supposed to kill microbes which cause dandruff. But dandruff can happen for a lot of other reasons as well.
The XT in Xenon XT stands for Cross Terrain. Aloe Vera is a plant with supposed medicinal qualities and has been often cited as being used in herbal medicines. It is even mentioned in the New Testament ((John 19:39–40))
Do most consumers understand what do these terms mean? The answer in most cases would be no. But do these terms matter to consumers when they make a buying a decision? Yes, they do. The mystery associated with such terms, makes the product more appealing to consumers. “Take the Sony Trintron TV for example. What is Trintron? No idea. It’s some technical mystery, which claims that the TV is better – it sounds technical and fancy and seduces us to believe this is something very special. This is mystery in action,” says Lindstrom
The case with Sonia Gandhi is very similar. The “mystery” associated with her along with her foreign origin makes her very appealing to the Indian voter.
And she goes out of her way to maintain the mystery. The recent “circus” in the run up to the Presidential election is a good case in point. Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, went to meet her to discuss who would be the Presidential candidate of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Banerjee came out and told the waiting press that the finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, and the vice president Hamid Ansari, were the two candidates on Sonia’s mind. No one officially knew till then what was Sonia Gandhi’s take on the issue. The cat was suddenly out of the bag.
Banerjee then went to meet Mulayam Singh Yadav and put out three candidates of her own, the former President, APJ Abdul Kalam, the current Prime Minister, and suspended CPI(M) member and former speaker of the Lok Sabha, Somnath Chatterjee.
But pretty soon Yadav had backed out of the so called deal he had struck with Mamata. It is said that Sonia Gandhi had secret meetings with Mulayam Singh Yadav, and soon he was ready to support the UPA’s candidate for the President.
There are couple of interesting points that come out here. One is of course that you don’t play games with the President of the Congress party, who comes from the Nehru-Gandhi family. But more importantly it was a lesson to everyone about what happens when you talk to the press about what Sonia Gandhi is thinking on a particularly important issue. The “mystery” is important to her being and it must be maintained.
Maintaining the mystery behind a good brand goes a long way in maintain their selling point. Lindstrom provides a very good example of a shampoo launch to explain what happens when the mystery associated with a brand goes.
“When Unilever was getting to launch a shampoo in Asia, a mischievous employee with time on his hands wrote on the label, just for the hell of it, Contains the X9 Factor. This last minute addition went undetected by Unilever, and soon millions and millions of bottles of the shampoo were shipped to stores with those four words inscribed on the label. It would have cost too much to recall all the shampoo, so Unilever simply let it be. Six months later, when the shampoo had sold out, the company reprinted the label, this time leaving out the reference to the nonexistent “X9 Factor.””
The company was in for a surprise. “None of the customers had any idea of what the X9 Factor was, but were indignant that Unilever had dared to get rid of it. In fact, many people claimed that their shampoo wasn’t working anymore, and that their hair had lost its luster, all because the company had dropped the elusive X9 Factor,” writes Lindstrom.
With the mystery gone consumers thought that the brand wasn’t simply good enough as its earlier version. Sonia Gandhi seems to be working on the same principle in keeping her mystery going and keeping her publicity to the minimum.
She is rarely seen speaking unless it’s an election meeting, where her speeches are largely prepared in advance, unlike Atal Behari Vajpayee who spoke impromptu on a lot of occasions. I don’t remember ever reading and interview of hers. Even the few biographies written on her are largely about the days when she first came to India and was put up at the house of Teji and Harivansh Rai Bachchan. Her initial struggle to adjust to Indians ways. Her strong relationship with her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi. Her reluctance at Rajiv Gandhi entering politics, after the death of his brother Sanjay. And so on. None of them get into the political side of Sonia Gandhi.
And so the mystery continues. That’s what great brands are all about. If that means that Indian democracy is run out of a ‘backroom’ with a ‘remote-control’, then so be it.
(The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on June 21,2012. http://www.firstpost.com/politics/sonia-gandhi-and-the-art-of-mystery-branding-352184.html)
(Vivek Kaul is a writer and can be reached at [email protected])