Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is close to completing six months in office. He assumed office at a time when the state was doing terribly on the law-and-order front, which in fact was one of the main reasons people voted out the Akhilesh Yadav government.
The new chief minister faced high expectations, aroused by the BJP in its sankalp part – poll manifesto. No less than Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself gave sweeping assurances in respect of loan waivers, purchase of farmers’ produce at higher prices and several other populist measures.
Yogi faced two other challenges. One, he faced comparison with his predecessors Akhilesh Yadav (2012-17) and Mayawati (2007-12) on law and order, development and governance. Two, his own party MLAs, many of them first-time legislators, and their intention to use their new-found position for personal gain, just like politics has always been in the state. Yogi is battling against all these challenges.
But there’s more. The last BJP government in UP, headed by Rajnath Singh, ended in March 2002. CM Yogi assumed office in March 2017. In the 15 intervening years, the state was run either by Samajwadi Party or Bahujan Samaj Party governments, with distinct caste orientations. Consequently, the entire bureaucracy and official machinery, including police, stands divided on caste lines.
Additionally, those ruling dispensations squeezed the bureaucracy to the hilt to make money, converting the state’s administrative machinery into one of the most corrupt in the country. That casteist and corrupt administrative machinery is uncomfortable with Yogi, who wants to emulate Modi, at the helm.
Modi had administrative experience, having run Gujarat for 12 years before becoming prime minister, and he could replicate or improve on his Gujarat model at the national level. Yogi has no administrative experience.
Unsurprisingly, his bureaucracy is leading him up the garden path, not only creating hindrances to the honest implementation of government policies but also luring his ministers and MLAs into corruption in respect of appointments, transfers and postings, etc. A general perception is spreading that middlemen are finding novel methods to “get the work done” through Yogi’s ministers and MLAs, by hook or crook.
People at the grassroots level therefore have mixed feelings about the Yogi government. While they feel that the law-and-order is better than before and say that they don’t mind tougher measures provided their lives im-prove. But many do not approve of the farm loan waiver decision.
It is creating a tendency among villagers to divide up land into small holdings amongst their children and encourage the latter to take bank loans, on the assumption that they would never have to pay them back, since the loans would be waived off anyway, regardless of which party is in power.
They are even more unhappy at the Yogi government’s decision to sharply hike electricity and water charges in rural areas as that adversely impacts villagers, although there is also a section of opinion that says that this shock would be acceptable if the villagers get good hospital facilities, with the availability of good doctors and medicines, functioning schools and a few other social security measures.
Weak administration
Yogi may be trying hard to emulate Modi, but he has yet to create an administrative machinery akin to the PMO or a surveillance mechanism that could match Modi’s in keeping a tab on ministers and top bureaucrats. The chief minister is getting personally involved in resolving many problems and issues.
What he has to understand, however, is that a state as large as Uttar Pradesh — if it were a separate country, it would be the fifth largest in the world —desperately needs a sound administrative and surveillance mechanism that could oversee the multifarious operations of development and welfare.
Contrary to his hardliner image, Yogi has by and large conducted himself well and fitted into the ‘inclusive framework’ in consonance with PM Modi’s style. The pressures on Yogi are very many, the greatest being the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, in which replicating the 2014 performance would be an uphill task. That may, ultimately, redefine his relations with Modi and the BJP.
Yogi knows this too well. So, to keep the momentum of his government, he must innovative a bit, perhaps bring in outside talent to run a few crucial departments if he feels limited by his own party’s human capital. The BJP may be willing to give him a free hand on this, rather than to accept any excuse for setbacks to the party in 2019.
Six months is too short a period for an objective assessment of any government’s performance. However, the politics of today is harsh. Yogi should keep in mind that his mandate is not only to govern UP well, but also to keep the BJP’s 2019 Lok Sabha tally in Uttar Pradesh close to its 2014 figure.
(The author is Director, Centre for the Study of Society and Politics, Kanpur)