8 PMs, yet UP missed the growth story

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It may be tempting to dismiss this as a pointer good enough only to be noticed by mere trivia buffs, but the 2009 General Elections are likely to be the first instance of Uttar Pradesh not fielding a single serving or former Prime Minister from its sprawling constituencies. Staggering as it may sound, but in every single poll since 1952, the dusty plains of the state have had one such candidate, in the process giving the nation eight Prime Ministers. And perhaps it's in this seemingly minor fact lies the tragedy of India's largest and most politically influential state.

From Jawaharlal Nehru, a man who laid the foundation of India's public sector and administrative backbone, to Indira Gandhi, the only woman and one of the most powerful Prime Ministers ever; and from our most charismatic and youngest Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to the statesman-like Atal Behari Vajpayee, Uttar Pradesh's influence in politics has been unmatched.

In between unique leaders like the principled Lal Bahadur Shastri, the first mass farmers' leader Chaudhary Charan Singh and the man who took on India's youth mascot Rajiv Gandhi - V P Singh - not forgetting the so-called perennial Young Turk Chandrashekhar, UP should have been a state whose political clout made it a pampered, favoured state, one which led the nation on every socio-economic index. Yet, it remains one of those which are consistently dragging the national average down on virtually every single measure.

With Atal Behari Vajpayee unlikely to contest polls because of his ill-health and Chandrashekhar and VP Singh having passed away, 2009 is set to create history of another kind for UP. The state provided a template for each of these leaders, who were able to script their unique political success stories, ones which altered their personal and party's fortunes and created strong party cadres and state-level leaders. The geographical expanse added to the clout, with 85 MPs going to the Lok Sabha from it, before its division.

But what provided a political goldmine for parties also became an administrative nightmare for any sort of effective governance. It was a state where a DGP or IGP could theoretically take 10 hours to reach a location if he travelled by road and would have had to remember names of over 82 district police chiefs and district magistrates. It was a state where litigants needed to catch overnight trains to reach their nearest appellate courts and any sort of a direct contact with a senior bureaucrat would mean an equally long journey to Lucknow. Quite simply, its size was ungovernable.

In the 1980s, the hill region of the state comprising districts like Pithoragarh, Chamoli were so remote, any sort of governance hardly reached those locations. UP government officers considered them as punishment postings and this neglect led to the vociferous demand for a separate hill state. The government created a Hill Development Corporation and stuffed it with funds in a bid to quell the clamour. With huge funds at its disposal, it merely became a preferred posting for the corrupt. Finally, Uttaranchal was born. And the new state's changing façade since its existence is a quiet and ongoing evidence of why states need to be of governable sizes.

Drunk with the clout of their political relevance which the state provided, the national parties rarely spoke or bothered about development. Caste and religion remained the tried and tested mantra of electoral success. Even these two emotive issues got hijacked by newly emerging state parties, with an unhappy electorate desperately seeking an alternate. While the national parties got marginalised, an altered caste and religious equation stayed as the mainstay of the new forces. Ironically, development or the lack of it neither played a role in the demise of the national parties in UP nor in the emergence of the regional ones.

With no single dominant national party and a remote chance of a wave election, there is an increasing amount of evidence Lok Sabha results are the aggregation of state level political performance. Issues of state-level governance are now beginning to play a vital part in the political fortunes of parties at the centre. In a majority of the state elections held between the last Lok Sabha polls in 2004 and the one due in a couple of months in 2009, chief ministers with a focus on development issues have been returned to power. Personal integrity has played an equal part as well...BC Khanduri in Uttaranchal, Sheila Dikshit in Delhi, Buddhadev Bhattarcharya in West Bengal, Narendra Modi in Gujarat, Raman Singh in Chattisgarh, Shivraj Singh Chauhan in Madhya Pradesh, Omar Abdullah in Jammu and Kashmir, Achutanandan in Kerala, Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan, Naveen Patnaik in Orissa and Yeddyurappa in Karnataka - all have sound personal integrity.

It is plausible the electorate may go the same way in these states even for the National polls. And Nitish Kumar is proving it in Bihar, a state whose indices and odds are similar to UP.

On that count, Uttar Pradesh remains an exception. It may have produced path-breaking regional political heavyweights, it may have been a state which gave eight Prime Ministers to India, yet it is still to find a leader who fits this description completely.

Mayawati perhaps made the first attempt two years ago, however pseudo it maybe, by pitching herself as a tough administrator who delivered on law and order, coming on the back of a regime which was known for its abysmal crime record. But then, her image of being a person whose personal integrity isn't above reproach and leading a party whose functioning seems to revel in the worship of Mammon, hasn't helped. There still isn't enough realisation the electorate is quickly changing and rewarding visible demonstration of delivery on issues like development. And more importantly, the electorate is willing to forgive the many follies of a leader if he appears to be delivering on these core fronts. Riding a crest in the state elections, BSP could have been effectively re-projected itself not just a party of Bahujan Samaj but as party of Bijli, Sadak and Paani. Mayawati had over a year-and-a-half to do so.

As India heads for its next elections, it will be tragic if Uttar Pradesh remains a state whose electorate rewards political formations for its proficiency at caste or religious arithmetic. Having elected serving and former Prime Ministers each time since Independence, the lessons should have been learnt by now. It would be an opportunity lost yet again, if the button on the electronic voting machine is not pushed for development.