From Ram Mandir to concrete jungle

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After a gap of almost two years, I am back in Ayodhya. Once again it's on the eve of another election. Over the last ten years, I have been travelling to Ayodhya quite regularly. Everytime I have been there, I have been struck by the sheer sameness of the place. Almost as if time has frozen here. Hindu scriptures show Ayodhya to be an "abhishapt", a "cursed" town. An eerie silence always engulfing the town. This time though there was a difference.

Suddenly, as you enter Ayodhya, you don't get struck by the sheer number of security personnel hanging around the town, but students of Saket Mahavidyala chatting about their academics. Go a little further towards Hanuman Gadhi, and we meet a group of youngsters just milling around and having tea. The conversation inevitably veers around elections. Who is up, who is down? What about Ayodhya I ask, is the mandir-masjid issue still relevant? I am greeted by a huge round of laughter. Na mandal, na kamadal, humko chahiye naukri, humko chahiye library.

In a country, where 70 per cent of the voting population is under the age of 30, the answer should have been an expected one. But this was UP, the crucible of caste and regional politics in India. Are we to believe that the basic principle of cast your vote to vote in your caste has now changed in this politically crucial state? In quest of my answers, I went back to the same people who I have been meeting on successive trips here. Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, the head of the Ram Janmabhoomi Trust, a little older, still trying to launch a battle for the construction of a Ram temple here. He wants to take another yatra out all the way to Delhi to press for his demand. I go and meet Hashim Ansari, a Muslim cleric who wants to reconstruct the mosque at the same site where the Babri Masjid was demolished on the December 6, 1992. When I ask both Nritya Gopal Das and Hashim Ansari if they were fighting a losing battle, given the low level of interest in the political fraternity and the civil society about their so-called cause, I get to hear a long lecture on how misplaced my views were.

But how could I be wrong if the mosque destroyer Kalyan Singh and Mosque protector Mulayam Singh Yadav are having breakfast, lunch and dinner together? How could I be wrong when the lady who harbours ambitions of making it to the Prime Minister's chair is busy holding press conferences in plush Delhi 5-star hotels proclaiming herself to be PM material, ridiculing the incumbent central government's economic policies? How could I be wrong if the NDA's PM-in-waiting LK Advani is lifting weights and busy blogging projecting himself to be young, even at the age of 81? So what's the issue then that could swing this state to either of the players involved?

The BSP swept to a landslide victory in the 2007 Assembly polls. Mayawati was hailed as the great leader who managed to weave a coalition consisting of forward castes and backward Dalits. Questions are being raised if that was a fluke. In words of Satish Mishra, her closest aide, "Mayawati is destined to be the Prime Minister of the country. Results will speak for themselves". By and large, there is a consensus that she is going to play a crucial role in government formation in the Capital. Her decision to align herself with the Third Front is an attempt to keep all her options open. If comrades Karat and old war horse Deve Gowda can't swing the parliamentary arithmetic in her favour, I don't think she will pause for a moment to try and negotiate a deal with either the Congress or the BJP. See how both the national parties are maintaining a conspicuous silence on their post-poll equations with the Dalit supremo.

Then there are two men who are literally facing the battle of their lives. Maulana Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lal Krishna Advani. Mulayam cannot afford another spell of being out of power, Advani won't be around to have another crack at power. Mulayam has too many cases pending against himself, Advani has Modi breathing down his neck to claim the top leader's position. The comparison doesn't end there. If Mulayam is worried about the fallout of his joining hands with Kalyan Singh, Advani is worried about his party's sheer inability to get things going in UP. From a high of 37 seats in 2004, Mulayam today is dependent on getting support from Kalyan Singh, Advani is still not sure what could be the next trump card post his high of Rath Yatra of the 90s. Both need their parties to do well here to entertain any hope of coming to power at the Centre.

Mulayam has asked his cinema-lover general secretary Amar Singh to pull out all stops. So while Mulayam distributes money during Holi to his followers in Saifai, Amar Singh has gone to film city in Goregaon to work out which celebrity can be approached for campaigning for the Samajwadi Party. His list is a long one this time, from Ajay Devgan to Preity Zinta to even Shilpa Shetty. Of course he has already netted Munnabhai and he has the back-up of the Bachchans.

But it's the style of Mayawati which raises the maximum questions.

Is it not possible for her to adopt the kind of working style that Nitish Kumar has adopted in neighbouring Bihar? Perhaps not. Go anywhere in Lucknow and you won't miss the distinctly uncomfortable sight of sandstone dust. Every park which could have been called a park, is today resembling a concrete jungle of sorts. The famous Ambedkar Park almost being converted into a prison with huge sandstone boundary walls being erected all around. As many as 70 concrete elephant structures are being built here. From Lucknow to Kanpur to Noida, Mayawati wants to show her love for sandstone by simply converting a majority of green patch to just that. Sandstone. For a state which still hasn't managed to come out of the clutches of being called a bimaru state, hundreds of crores being spent on statues and smaraks, is not good economics. But then in UP in particular, economics is always a distant second to politics. Law and order, education, healthcare be damned. The Dalit supremo wants to see more of her own statues all across the country.

So brace yourself up for some high-powered electoral battles here. From film stars to old political warhorses to maybe even sport stars, you will get a bit of everything in this elections 2009 in UP. What you will not get is any meaningful idea from any of the main players in solving any of the problems here.