Which way the cookie crumbles?

It is worthwhile to remind ourselves that politics is not a game and that elections are not a form of entertainment. But there are times when the temptation may be too good for our better judgment. The trifurcation of the big prize state of Uttar Pradesh is one such compelling prospect. If the idea comes to fruition, as it probably will at some point in the future, much of the political future of India will depend on how the map of the state is redrawn. As such, which way the cookie crumbles will have to be settled by the mother of all political battles.

It must be remembered that this idea has been mooted purely on the pretext of providing “better governance” and not to cater to any significant regional identities. Though one cannot discount them completely, ideas such as that of a Bhojpuri speaking Purvanchal or that of Bundelkhand (the latter is even more ambitious, since it involves large parts of Madhya Pradesh as well, which makes the prospect all the more remote) have very limited appeal. The demographic boundaries being ill-defined, every party will want to demarcate the new states so as to split the bastions of its “main enemy” (yet another ambiguity!) into as many parts as possible.

Though the Congress has all but vanished from Uttar Pradesh and the BJP is struggling to retain/regain a foothold in the state, it must be remembered that the power to partition the state ultimately lies with the Central Government and therefore it is likely that one of these two parties will have the final word on this issue. It is almost certain that some smaller states will be formed after the Lok Sabha elections in 2009 and the BSP expects to have a lot of leverage in the next government that comes to power in New Delhi. No wonder then that Mayawati wants the sluggish bureaucracy to start work on the States Reorganization Commission right away.

Even so, it is not immediately clear how the BSP stands to gain from any trifurcation scenario. At the moment, the party’s support is based on a broad social coalition and not on pocketboroughs. In fact, if Uttar Pradesh were a country, Mayawati would probably be its only true “national” leader. Two possible reasons can be offered for the BSP supremo’s support towards the idea of the division of the state. For one, as I have noted before, by maintaining a powerful presence in three states instead of one, she can enlarge her national profile “for free”. Secondly, the BSP might regard the division of Uttar Pradesh as inevitable and so it would much rather have it worked out on its terms rather than on those of others. By being the first to take a firm public stand on the issue, the BSP gets a chance to define the three regions in a concrete manner. In course of time, it is quite likely that her definitions will become “natural” boundaries. This would, for instance, explain Maya’s insistence on including areas such as Ambedkar Nagar and Sultanpur in the Eastern region . In a new Purvanchal state, Laloo Yadav would enter the equation in areas bordering Bihar, which would undercut Mulayam’s Muslim support and most certainly split the Yadav vote. The BJP, which is powerful in and around Gorakhpur, Varanasi and Allahabad would gain from this. This area could well become bipolar between the BJP and the BSP.

Most of the confusion is about how the remaining two regions should be defined. The most recognizable of these regions is Bundelkhand. Should the demarcation happen under a BJP government at the Centre, it is almost certain that the new state will have large swathes of territory from Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP has a formidable organization. What Maya ideally wants is to have Bundelkhand carved out exclusively from Uttar Pradesh and therefore built around her stronghold of Akbarpur district. However, in that case, the new state would be too small to qualify as a “third” of the whole of UP. The trick here would be to include “just enough” of the neighbouring Muslim dominated Doab region to strike a dagger through the Samajwadi Party’s heart, a delight both the Congress and Maya would share in eagerly. If the deals are struck under a Congress led government, the Congress would want to throw in Raebareilly and Amethi into this region (instead of in Purvanchal), just so they can keep their hopes alive. The result would be a state tailor made in Mayawati’s favour; the Congress and SP would still have little bundles of hope (and they could sew up an alliance; in politics it is important to love and hate at the same time) and the BJP would have nothing.

In the remainder of the state, the BJP would have a considerable chance of recovery. This part would then comprise the Ruhelkhand region including Lucknow as well as Awadh, the original epicentre of the Ayodhya movement. The party has a firm grasp over Meerut and would look to improvise in Gautam Nagar (Noida) and Ghaziabad regions, which border the capital. The Samajwadi Party, though damaged by the loss of some of the Doab, will have a free run in the Muslim areas near the Nepal border as well as in the extreme west. They will have to seek the cooperation of Ajit Singh though, who will most certainly ask for more than his due. In fact, he might revive his pet idea of Harit Pradesh, which at that point, will have become almost ridiculous.

It is difficult to say, as yet, whether the creation of these smaller states will help to end the many ambiguities in the picture that emerges from Uttar Pradesh in election after election. For the moment, the people of the state have earned themselves a break from political uncertainty at the state level, but UP, which sends 83 MP's to the Lok Sabha will have to decide on who rules India as well. In many ways, a Brahmin-Dalit alliance has the potential to reduce the bitter caste rivalries in society, which can only be good in the long run. UP is also the playground for national politics and number one on the terrorists' hit list (since Gujarat is off bounds for them). One thing we can be sure of is that the spectacular show in Uttar Pradesh will evolve through several more sensational twists before it comes to rest.