Four Years of Akhilesh Yadav: Success, Catastrophe Or Somewhere In Between?

To mark the completion of his four years in office on 15 March this year, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav launched a publicity blitz in the newspapers and on the television channels claiming that his government had transformed the state.

So what are these advertisements, which hide more than they reveal, celebrating?

Why The U.P government Is Patting Its Own Back

For one, they talk of the development and improved infrastructure like the Lucknow Metro, the IT City—which is coming up in Lucknow with the help of HCL—, a cricket stadium of international standards, and improved state highways.

The Lucknow Metro is Akhilesh’s flagship project and he wants to see it operational before the year ends. The IT City is aimed at providing jobs and preventing flight of local computer engineering graduates to Bangalore and Pune. The Lucknow-Agra Expressway, which goes via Kannauj, the parliamentary constituency of UP CM’s wife Dimple Yadav, is another signature project. The government is gung-ho about this one also because there hasn’t been even a murmur of protest from the farmers whose land was acquired.

Beautification of the Gomati river front and the Janeshwar Mishra Park which, at 376 acres is bigger than London’s iconic Hyde Park, are the other two signature accomplishments of this government. Then there’s the laptop distribution scheme in which 15 lakh laptops were distributed to intermediate students.

The way UP has been sold as a destination for making films has been lapped up by Bollywood. The government is not hiding its exhilaration as film directors and actors queue up to take advantage of the state’s film policy. A film city in Lucknow is to be launched, too. Apart from this, people like Ratan Tata and Melinda Gates have met the Chief Minister, and commended him for his “good work.”

Recently, Akilesh even launched a Samajwadi brand of perfumes. Unfortunately though, they may not be able to remove the bad odour left behind by the first three years of his rule.

Since government advertisements are not meant to critically examine its functioning, the hundreds of crore spent on these advertisements raised the question whether these would make the people forget the darker side of this government.

What The Ads Don’t Tell You

Despite these advertisements, Akhilesh Yadav will surely be remembered for his failure to handle communally volatile situations, especially the riots in Muzaffarnagar in which 62 persons were killed. With 247 incidents of communal violence in 2013, UP beat other states on that count. In 2012 too, there were 118 cases of communal violence recorded in the state.

However, while victims of the Muzaffarnagar riots shivered through the winter in the open, Akhilesh, like Nero, remained engrossed in the annual cultural extravaganza in his native village, the Saifai Mahotsav. No government advertisement has so far depicted that insensitive aspect of this government.

Lynching of Akhlaq Ahmed by a mob in Dadri was even more shocking as it demonstrated the government’s failure at protecting innocent citizens from the religious fundamentalists.

Law and Order: Always A Victim In An SP Government

If the communal situation was virtually beyond the government’s control, law and order remained grim too. Who wouldn’t recall the brutal rape and the murder of two teenaged cousins in Badaun, allegedly committed by persons close to a Samajwadi Party MP? Will these advertisements take away the memory of the way a Shahjehanpur journalist, Jagendra Singh was burnt to death allegedly at the behest of a SP minister, or of the ghastly rape and murder of a woman in Lucknow’s Mohanlalganj area?

These cases showed how the state police could make light of the heinous crimes in order to shield the government from the brickbats as also the politically well-connected perpetrators.

The advertisements or anything else on behalf of the UP government hardly helped change the perception that each time Samajwadi Party comes to power, the state’s crime graph zooms. That’s par for the course, as they say.

The government’s blatant support for the mining mafia also finds no mention in these advertisements.

A young IAS officer, Durga Shakti Nagpal, was suspended for taking on the sand mafia in Greater Noida. In the state capital, an IG rank IPS officer, Amitabh Thakur, supposed that he was threatened by none other than the SP President Mulayam Singh Yadav himself because his wife had filed a complaint against the Mining Minister Gayatri Prasad Prajapati. The minister enjoys Mulayam’s complete trust. Thakur has been under suspension since October 2015.

In Defence of the Corrupt

Not just the mining mafia, Akhilesh stoutly defended the corrupt too. But, the publicity material is silent on this ignoble aspect of his government.

Here are a few cases to illustrate the point:

The UP Public Service Commission Chairman Anil Kumar Yadav had to be removed after a deluge of complaints about his nepotism and corrupt practices that ruined the future of hundreds of youth. It was only after the Allahabad High Court put its foot down that the reluctant government appointed another chairman.

Noida’s engineer-in-chief Yadav Singh showcased the UP government’s shamelessness in protecting the corrupt. Yadav Singh is accused of amassing hundreds of crores while discharging his duties in Noida. In 2014, the government first suspended him and then in February 2015 ordered a one-man judicial inquiry as it is easier to manage.

A petition was filed in the Allahabad High Court demanding a CBI inquiry against Yadav Singh. The government opposed it but the court went ahead and ordered that the charges against Yadav Singh must be investigated by the Central agency. The government moved to the Supreme Court which upheld the High Court’s order. One presumes that the SC’s rebuff must have left Akhilesh red-faced.

Ironically, while the government was brazenly backing the corrupt and the criminals, Mulayam was warning the “corrupt ministers” of stern action. It was a threat that wasn’t really meant to be carried out. It was a cardboard sword that he was wielding.

How Many Chief Ministers Exactly?

From 2012 to 2015, UP was said to be ruled by four chief ministers, leaving Akhilesh very little elbow room. That probably is the reason why he is now frantically trying to recover his lost ground.

Hemmed in by his father, mentor and party’s National President Mulayam Singh Yadav, his uncles, the PWD Minister Shivpal Yadav and the Rajya Sabha member Ramgopal Yadav, besides Azam Khan, the powerful urban development Minister, Akhilesh was no more than a quarter Chief Minister in his first three years.

The popular view in the corridors of power was that out of the four chief ministers, Akhilesh was the most inconsequential. He could do little as most of the decisions were taken by the big three. He could not even appoint bureaucrats of his choice.

The first time he was shown his place was in August 2012, only five months after he was sworn-in. Mulayam had then admonished Akhilesh for not paying attention to what he had been saying and warned his ministers to “perform or perish.”

While Mulayam’s public scolding showed who the boss was, Akhilesh could only manage to say, “Netaji is the leader of the party and can express his displeasure if he is not satisfied with the performance of the government.”

Mulayam continued to criticise his son every six months or so for not exercising control over his bureaucrats and ministers who, the senior leader thought, were shirking responsibility and indulging in corrupt practices.

On all these occasions Akhilesh was left embarrassed but he laughed away the reprimands saying that a father has every right to pull up his son.

It was apparently under pressure from one or all of the three elders that Akhilesh went back on his poll promise of prosecuting three Bahujan Samaj Party ministers, Messrs Naseemuddin Siddiqui, Rangnath Mishra and Babu Singh Kushwaha for amassing wealth disproportionate to their known sources of income. After he had ordered the vigilance department to register FIRs against the three in July 2013, their cases were hushed up. Even the State Lokayukta could do only little in the matter.

After Anil Yadav, Prajapati and Yadav Singh’s case, this was another example of how this government encouraged corruption. With crime and corruption dominating the scene, governance was the casualty during the first three years of Akhilesh’s rule.

Clueless In Bundelkhand

Another area where this government completely failed in discharging its duty was Bundelkhand, which is now reeling under severe drought. The government maintained an indifferent attitude towards the people of the region until a few months back when it realized that neglecting a starving populace could mean a dent in its image.

In 2015, when an unseasonal rain and hailstorm between February and April damaged vast stretches of winter crops in the state, Bundelkhand region was also affected. Unable to bear their loss, several poor villagers died of cardiac arrest and many committed suicide. Most of these farmers were marginalized and had bank loans to repay. The government refused to acknowledge the crop loss to be the cause of their heart attacks.

What did the government do to help them recover from the natural calamity?

It distributed cheques of amounts as low as Rs 23, that too at the end of the year. The system in Uttar Pradesh being thoroughly corrupt from the top politicians to the lowest revenue official, the lekhpal, the abysmally low amount paid as relief was not surprising.

A couple of days before his departure for Australia and London in April 2016, the Chief Minister visited Bundelkhand and announced special drought relief packages for two and a half lakh Antyodaya families in the region every month.

The Chief Minister had earlier gone to Bundelkhand in January 2016 posing as a Good Samaritan.

It is not that the situation in Bundelkhand deteriorated overnight. This is the third drought and the Samajwadi Party government in the first three years of its tenure was busy bickering with the Centre for not releasing funds for the region.

Why the publicity gimmick now?

The answer is obvious. Elections are around the corner and a purported intelligence department survey has shown that the government would be losing badly to both BSP and BJP. Therefore, a no-nonsense, upright officer has been appointed as the director-general of police. Goons in the party are in hibernation and the party satraps are making the right noises.

Defeat in these elections could mean a long banishment from power and that thought is making the government desperate as it tries to create a make believe world for the gullible voters.