Mayawati has plunged Uttar Pradesh into another period of political
instability. India’s most populous state, that would be the world’s
sixth most populous if it were to be an independent country, deserves
better from its politicians. Caste and communal politics is wreaking
havoc and the gap between UP and other states in the south and the west
is increasing. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a semblance of an administration
in the state. Leaders like Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna and Narain Dutt Tiwari
did provide political leadership and spent most of their time on development
issues. This was particularly true of NDT, now chief minister of Uttaranchal,
as he is popularly known. In the 1990s, Kalyan Singh provided some very
brief glimpses of his administrative ability, especially when he tackled
the strike by over 90,000 employees of the state electricity board.
But on the whole, since 1990 UP has suffered immensely. It cannot blame
the centre for its misery. Its own political leaders and its own political
culture is responsible for UP’s continuing poverty and backwardness.

That UP(along with that miserably governed state Bihar) is at the heart
of Indian civilization cannot be forgotten. That UP, also along with
Bihar, was in the forefront of our Freedom Movement is also a clearly
established fact. That UP has enormous potential in numerous areas like
agriculture and agro-industry, dairying, forestry, textiles, tourism
and handicrafts and artisan-based industries has been acknowledged and
recognized for quite some time. That UP has seen impressive performance
in agriculture in the past three decades is borne out by evidence. This
is true not just of western UP which was in the forefront of the Green
Revolution along with Punjab and Haryana but also of eastern UP. Eastern
UP was lagging behind but in the 1980s and 1990s, the gap between it
and the more prosperous western region in agricultural output has diminished
significantly. In the past few years, thanks to a massive World Bank
loan, the state has had to start reforms in key areas like power.

UP has had achievements. But it cannot live in the past. It also has
constraints-it is land-locked, for instance. But these constraints are
not crippling and do not matter in modern times. Time is passing it
by. The rest of the country is getting impatient and frustrated. How
long, people in the rest of the country are asking, should India put
up with UP and Bihar? How long should the rest of India pay for mal-governance
in these two states? How long should the prosperous states subsidise
poverty and inefficiency in these two states? A delegation of chief
ministers led by the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh met the Prime
Minister three years ago to protest against the recommendations of the
Eleventh Finance Commission which had provided for increased transfers
of money from the centre to states like UP. These chief ministers were
complaining that India’s system of fiscal federalism, the system of
transferring money from the centre to the states, penalizes efficiency
and performance and rewards states like UP that get the bulk of the
resources simply because of the size of their population-which they
do nothing to control unlike the states of the south, for example.

The social revolution that UP has seen, of which Mayawati now and Mulayam
earlier, have been powerful symbols and manifestations was inevitable.
It is even desirable. South and west India went through this revolution
much earlier and in a more peaceful manner. Conditions in UP, however,
are radically different. Upper castes form a substantial proportion
of the population, unlike in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, for example.
Unlike in peninsular India, UP is going through the social revolution
in an atmosphere of competitive politics and representative democracy.
UP has also not had a long tradition of social reforms. Unlike in the
south and the west where social justice meant education, social justice
in the north has meant largely the capture of political power as an
end in itself. The spread of Islam in the south and the west was less
through the sword and more through the Sufis and trade. This has meant
a wholly different Hindu-Muslim equation in southern states as compared
to UP.

But the social revolution that UP is going through should not be romanticized
blindly, however necessary it may be. Social revolution is one thing,
anarchy and chaos is another. What UP (and Bihar) is witnessing is a
collapse of all authority, a complete breakdown of all systems of governance,
a total mockery of all norms, rules and conventions. Politics in other
states is still about development and social change. Political parties
come into power and go out of power, as in Tamil Nadir or Karalla for
example, but the basic economic and social thrust remains. Politics
is divisive but not destructive. But not so in UP. In the south and
in the west, there is development in politics. But in UP there is nothing
but politics in development. For this, the BJP and other caste-based
parties that have occupied the seat of power in the 1990s bear a heavy
responsibility. The Congress too has made mistakes-it could not accommodate
Charan Singh for example in the 1970s and paid a very heavy price for
this. But at least the agenda of the Congress has been positive and
development-oriented, at least its vision has been one of social harmony
in which all sections of society have a voice and prosper. This cannot
be said of the non-Congress parties in UP who have mobilized people
on the basis of bigotry and hate.