Rahul, Mayawati Aur UP Ka Tamasha

Mayawati has to win UP elections next year. The post of CM gives her power to manipulate the UP polity to her advantage in 2014. She needs her 35 plus MPs for her political survival and staying out of jail. I am sure she does not want to suffer like Jagan Reddy. The UPA already has her tied neatly to the Taj Corridor scam. Of course the way she has run UP, scams are not going to be hard to unearth to implicate her. That is why she is going to do whatever it takes to win next year. No trick is too cheap. No low is too low to achieve. She is a master manipulator of caste politics. Just like Lalloo Yadav was in his heydays. She has wrestled the Dalit-Muslim-Brahmin votebank from the Congress. While she was busy building parks in her honor, some of her flock went astray. She has now started to work on bringing them home. Her latest cheap trick is to promise reservation for the upper caste poor. Wow! The slice of the pie for qualified people continues to get smaller and smaller. How the hell is one going to qualify for being upper caste poor? What is upper caste? Of course the logistics are unimportant because all this is an election ploy, never to be implemented. She just has to make it believable enough for the ignorant voter to fall for it. Similar tricks and social engineering has already begun in her camp.

On the Congress side, Rahul Gandhi has failed miserably whichever state election he has managed. So miserable has been his performance that even Digviajy Singh has denied being his mentor. Inside reports have indicated that the senior Congressmen find him “un-coachable”. For him to have any fair claim over the throne, he has to have Congress do well in UP next year. The cost of failure would be an abject loss of credibility amongst the non-family-loyal Congress personnel, the number of whom seems to be growing. Of course, he hopes that the victory in UP will lead to a Congress comeback in 2014. They need the lion’s share of the 80 plus MPs from UP. They have already bungled up their chances in Andhra. Haryana is no longer a sure bet. NCP is flexing their muscle in Maharashtra. Skeletons after skeletons keep stumbling out of the Congress closet in Rajasthan. You see, UP is extremely important for Rahul’s survival as a viable Congress leader. Just like Mayawati, the Congress are also not going to stop from using all and every means to win UP next year.

The BJP need to win in UP because the loss of Hindi heartland has essentially relegated them to the opposition benches forever. To win they have sought the help of Uma Bharati who was brought back from a “van-vaas”. She is suppose to attract the Lodh community votes. Apparently those votes are like the Lingayat community votes in Karnataka. Of course, the BJP who are known to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory are still haunted by the specter of Advani who is refusing to go away. I am sure they will find some way of losing in UP again.

Of course sensing the advantageous position they are in, the UP Muslims have started to clamor for reservation for Muslim Dalits. Isn’t a term like Muslim dalit a contradiction in terms? Are not all Muslims same? By branding some of their flock as dalit, are they not going against tenets of their Prophet? Of course, even the hypocrisy of Indian Muslim leadership fails to explain it all.

We on this blog have always felt that the large number of MP’s from UP make it a prize big enough for political parties to find more corrupt and sleazier ways to win it. As we can see it, the tamasha in UP has already begun. We need to take care lest we shake our heads in disgust so much that we get whiplashes.

Of course we can always pray to Bholenath that the UP voters have their Bihar moment next year. After all, our Bihari brothers and sisters threw out lalloo. I am sure the UP voters can do the same for the future of their children. Their's is already ruined.