The Big Story: False binaries

For now it seems as if the Samajwadi Party fight will continue to simmer. Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has not been able to convince his son, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, to patch up with Shivpal Yadav – Mulayam Singh Yadav's brother, and a key organising power centre within the SP. But on Tuesday, Mulayam Singh Yadav addressed a press conference, with Shivpal Yadav by his side, insisting that the party and the Yadav family are united and that it would be up to his son to reinstate Shivpal Yadav to the state Cabinet. Akhilesh Yadav was not present at the briefing.

The fight between Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav over control of the SP has been out in the open for some time now, and there have been times over the past month and a half when it has seemed as if father and son might actually split up and go separate ways. To take charge of this narrative, those in Akhilesh's camp in particularly have sought to portray this as a battle between the more development-focused, forward-thinking son and a father who is mired in the same identity politics that brought his party to power in UP.

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The involvement of Amar Singh on Mulayam Singh Yadav's side and the attempt to bring the Quami Ekta Dal, a party that is run by several politicians with many criminal charges, into the SP fold are usually trotted out as examples of the craven politics that netaji – as Mulayam Singh Yadav is known – still prefers. Akhilesh Yadav made a big show of preventing the merger earlier this year.

In contrast, and even on the ground, Akhilesh Yadav is seen as a cleaner, fresher face whose interest is primarily in development, as opposed to the politics-as-patronage that the SP has been known to practice in UP. Effectively, many have tried to make it seem as if Akhilesh vs Mulayam = development vs identity politics.

This is a false binary. Akhilesh Yadav is still a leader in the Samajwadi Party, and if his camp were to come to power, it would still be built on the same power structures that netaji cobbled together over decades. Moreover, Akhilesh Yadav is a massive beneficiary of the SP's identity politics and he has rarely spoken out against them, preferring instead to let his camp shape the narrative.

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Akhilesh might get rid of the old guard, just as the Congress Party under scion Rahul Gandhi has attempted (in vain) to remove the dead weight, without altering the party's essential structures. But there is no certainty that, given the reins of the party unencumbered, he would reshape the SP – which has proven itself to be a party that has pandered to local thugs, enabled violence, overseen communal riots and is spectacularly misogynistic into a more forward-thinking political entity.

The Big Scroll

Political Pickings

  1. Former Governor of Arunachal Pradesh JP Rajkhowa claims Kalikho Pul, a former chief minister who was found hanging in his home on August 9, left behind "secret notes" that could cause "tremors in Indian politics." 
  2. Ratan Tata attempted to convince the Chief Executive Officers of the various Tata Sons companies that it would be business as usual, despite the sudden ouster of chairman Cyrus Mistry. 
  3. Information & Broadcasting Minister Venkaiah Naidu said that the Centre does not support the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena's insistence on filmmakers paying Rs 5 crore as penance for having cast Pakistanis in their movies. 
  4. In the United Kingdom, the Guardian publishes leaked recordings that reveal then-home secretary and current Prime Minister Theresa May privately telling companies that Brexit would be awful for Britain a month before the referendum. 

Punditry

  1. No doubt the Cyrus Mistry ouster will go down as a landmark in Indian corporate history, says a leader in Mint, trying to understand what it might mean.
  2. More and more, the government is resorting to shutting down the internet for various reasons, writes Apar Gupta and Raman Jit Singh Chima in The Indian Express, adding that there are major economic and social costs to this. 
  3. Also in the Express, Gilles Verniers says that the Samajwadi Party spat is a natural eruption that might be good (in the long-term) at addressing the internal inconsistencies that had been simmering within the party.

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