View: Keeping the Samajwadi flock together

Mulayam Singh Yadav is facing the worst political crisis of his career. The Samajwadi Party (SP) is teetering on the verge of destruction. Uttar Pradesh (UP) is poised to bid it goodbye. It is not just the SP's dismal performance in Ferozabad, Bharthana and Etawah, its pocket boroughs, in bypolls last November. The crisis is internal and organisational. The challenge is not to the Yadav appeal or backward caste consolidation and abstract stuff like that. It is Mulayam Singh Yadav's personal stewardship of the party that is being questioned.

He's lost his trusted lieutenant, Amar Singh. Much as he would like to retain Singh, he cannot ignore the upsurge of rebellion in his party and family. So, Amar Singh with his contacts, financial clout, capacity for ad-libbing and in-your-face brazenness, is... gone, baby, gone.

He may have severed political links with Kalyan Singh, former BJP chief minister and alleged architect of the Babri Masjid demolition, but the Muslims are not returning to the SP. As much as 60 per cent of Muslim votes in UP had gone to the SP in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, this fell to 46 per cent in the 2007 assembly polls and 30 per cent in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.There is just too much dissimulation in SP ( Kalyan Singh is not our candidate, he's just being supported by us ... etc) and the Muslims are fed up. Plus, they have other alternatives now.

And now, the Yadavs are talking too. Earlier, when SP was on a winning streak, no one used to mention subcastes. Now there are murmurs, even in Mulayam's home town Saifai, that there are too many from the Mulayam clan in the party's leadership. So, the chief of the party is doing what he hasn't had to do in two decades: Going house to house in Etawah, telling Yadavs from other subcastes, don't go, I'll fix it.

Mulayam has no one to blame but himself. If he'd laid down the law earlier, he could have controlled anti-social elements like his younger brother Shivpal Singh Yadav and nephew Dharmendra Yadav who have expanded their influence purely on the strength of muscle. This duo is the stuff of folklore, the famed chacha-bhatija (uncle-nephew) team, partners in every indescribable deed in UP from 2003 when Yadav formed the government in the state. The police recruitment scam is just the tip of the iceberg.

Mulayam's family comprises three other brothers. The elder, Ramgopal, is probably the most educated in the family: He was a teacher and managed the family-run post-graduate college in Saifai. He's also an MP in the Rajya Sabha. His other elder brother is retired and lives at home. He was in the Army, and Mulayam is fond of boasting that his brother retired as a hawaldar in the Indian Army but had he stayed on, he might have become a General. Dharmendra is his son.

The youngest is the aforementioned Shivpal, who is touring Etawah addressing public meetings that the exit of Amar Singh is the best thing that could have happened to SP.

While they might agree with him, Yadavs are clear that Shivpal is probably not the best asset the SP should showcase. In 2007, when the SP lost the assembly election and the Bahujan Samaj Party got the numbers to form the government without crutches, Shivpal's range of coercive talents found limited utility. The SP decided to be an opposition party. Mulayam tried to respond by steering the party politically, through demonstrations, dharnas and rallies. Shivpal tried to do it, eyewitnesses say, through a combination of thinly-veiled appeals to caste feeling at public meetings and strong arm tactics. This didn't work and the Bareilly-Kanpur belt, which was the mainstay of the SP, was lost.

In 2004, when Mulayam vacated his Lok Sabha seat Mainpuri, Dharmendra was fielded in his place. It was a disastrous choice — strong arm tactics again in a constituency that has the largest number of arms licences in the country. Sensing this, in 2009, Dharmendra was moved to Badayun at Shivpal's insistence, while Mulayam retained Mainpuri. This incensed Saleem Sherwani so much that he quit the party.

Samajwadi Party has always represented caste, even in its earlier socialist incarnations when it was home to some brilliant politicians, including Ram Manohar Lohia. But, it has become a family outfit only in the last decade or so. Yadavs sense that family is going to reign, so, after Monday when a meeting between Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh (for whom they nurture no special affection) is likely in Lucknow, they will begin to consider other options.

Mulayam Singh Yadav will then have to exert every nerve and sinew to keep the flock together.