Kanpur is India’s rust belt. It stands sadly at the heart of North India as a monument to deindustrialisation. From miles out of town, factories with rusted, fallen-in roofs begin to line the highway. An endless row of parked trucks line NH-2. The city itself is loud with the thump of diesel generators; the houses of the rich are discreetly tucked away behind the chaos that used to be pavements. In the centre of town, the chimneys of the vast Elgin Mills and the majestic Lal Imli Mills seem to follow you around, silently reminding you of missed opportunities.
Once, this industrial city had trade unions, a thriving middle and professional class, and a Communist member of Parliament. Today, new investment is hard to come by – though it still makes pots of money from the leather trade. Indeed, the only signs of economic dynamism that are readily apparent are on the road to Lucknow, which is dotted by stockyards and leather-goods factories. Concrete mixers and bricklayers are gathered round a sign saying “Kanpur Leather Cluster”, and a picture of an incongruously happy buffalo.
And, the Left is now as dead in Kanpur as the mills; its representative in the Lok Sabha has been, for three terms, Coal Minister Shriprakash Jaiswal. He has turned Kanpur into what has been as close to a safe seat for the Congress in the past as is possible in UP outside the Nehru-Gandhi belt. It is to this seat, however, that the Bharatiya Janata Party has shifted former HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi. Joshi has few links with Kanpur; he is reportedly not pleased at being forced to vacate his seat of Varanasi for Narendra Modi. Nor are people on the street exactly overjoyed at having an outsider foisted on them at this late stage, national leader or not. More than one wishes the BJP had trusted instead its local MLA. The BJP’s problem is that Jaiswal is an old-fashioned local politician. If a prominent citizen dies, a message goes to the family. He turns up at every big wedding; he spends every weekend in Kanpur, with a big, well-attended durbar on Saturday mornings. Joshi is, of course, famous for being austerely unapproachable. Jaiswal has also mastered the complex caste calculations involved, using Marwari, Punjabi and Brahmin caste associations to dent the BJP’s chances with its upper-caste base. At the BJP base in Naveen Market, the calculations are being made, too. There are Muslim candidates to split Jaiswal’s vote this time, they say. The party’s outreach activities have been successful, they add – they’ve claim they’ve signed up 63,000 voters. But the lack of enthusiasm for Joshi is marked downstairs, in the crowded colonnades of the market. One man, a tailor named Ramakant, laughs and says they need a change – but what change would Joshi bring? More than one person says, wistfully, that they expected great things from the Aam Aadmi Party, and from Arvind Kejriwal. But here, in what was once the stronghold of the UP left, the AAP has stayed resolutely upper-class, nominating a well-known eye surgeon and philanthropist – and, not coincidentally, a Muslim.
“Besides,” adds Rajesh Yadav, who is buying himself a leather jacket, “have you seen Varanasi? If Kanpur is a mess, then Varanasi is worse.” Yadav himself intends to vote for Jaiswal. The Samajwadi Party, the party of UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav – and, supposedly, of Yadavs across the state – is not even in the hunt in Kanpur, he says.
Rajesh Yadav had pointed to Kanpur’s tragedy. The city’s a political battleground for the national parties. In fact, it’s representative of the sort of town where a national electorate, rather than one that responds to state-level factors, is supposed to develop, That’s why, if there’s one seat that the AAP could actually have targeted in UP, it’s Kanpur, with its history of union-led activism, and its relatively diverse ethnic mix. This election, so various hopeful pundits and Modi fans insist, will be fought on national issues in far more places than has been the case henceforth. But, in Kanpur, it’s still local issues that predominate. Even the Hindi Modi advertisements in Kanpur push different, more local problems – law and order, not prices or scams, for examples.
Yet, the city’s tendency to ignore the two state parties is also partly responsible for its plight. Bystanders near the Bahujan Samaj Party’s Kanpur office were openly dismissive of the party’s prospects. Another resident said, simply, “Mayawati hates Kanpur” – since it, supposedly, is full of Brahmins and has never even sent a BSP MLA to Lucknow. The city has worse power cuts than most others in UP; its roads are worse; bridges over the Ganga struggle to deal with the traffic. Private wealth survives – the city that pays the most taxes in UP, and where BMWs are a common sight. But, unlike previous elections, politicians from Delhi haven’t even tried to promise that the mills – now all run by the government – will start operating at full capacity again. Kanpur has voted for the Centre time and time again, and paid a high price for it. If this is the fate of cities that think nationally, why would a national electorate ever develop?
Once, this industrial city had trade unions, a thriving middle and professional class, and a Communist member of Parliament. Today, new investment is hard to come by – though it still makes pots of money from the leather trade. Indeed, the only signs of economic dynamism that are readily apparent are on the road to Lucknow, which is dotted by stockyards and leather-goods factories. Concrete mixers and bricklayers are gathered round a sign saying “Kanpur Leather Cluster”, and a picture of an incongruously happy buffalo.
And, the Left is now as dead in Kanpur as the mills; its representative in the Lok Sabha has been, for three terms, Coal Minister Shriprakash Jaiswal. He has turned Kanpur into what has been as close to a safe seat for the Congress in the past as is possible in UP outside the Nehru-Gandhi belt. It is to this seat, however, that the Bharatiya Janata Party has shifted former HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi. Joshi has few links with Kanpur; he is reportedly not pleased at being forced to vacate his seat of Varanasi for Narendra Modi. Nor are people on the street exactly overjoyed at having an outsider foisted on them at this late stage, national leader or not. More than one wishes the BJP had trusted instead its local MLA. The BJP’s problem is that Jaiswal is an old-fashioned local politician. If a prominent citizen dies, a message goes to the family. He turns up at every big wedding; he spends every weekend in Kanpur, with a big, well-attended durbar on Saturday mornings. Joshi is, of course, famous for being austerely unapproachable. Jaiswal has also mastered the complex caste calculations involved, using Marwari, Punjabi and Brahmin caste associations to dent the BJP’s chances with its upper-caste base. At the BJP base in Naveen Market, the calculations are being made, too. There are Muslim candidates to split Jaiswal’s vote this time, they say. The party’s outreach activities have been successful, they add – they’ve claim they’ve signed up 63,000 voters. But the lack of enthusiasm for Joshi is marked downstairs, in the crowded colonnades of the market. One man, a tailor named Ramakant, laughs and says they need a change – but what change would Joshi bring? More than one person says, wistfully, that they expected great things from the Aam Aadmi Party, and from Arvind Kejriwal. But here, in what was once the stronghold of the UP left, the AAP has stayed resolutely upper-class, nominating a well-known eye surgeon and philanthropist – and, not coincidentally, a Muslim.
“Besides,” adds Rajesh Yadav, who is buying himself a leather jacket, “have you seen Varanasi? If Kanpur is a mess, then Varanasi is worse.” Yadav himself intends to vote for Jaiswal. The Samajwadi Party, the party of UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav – and, supposedly, of Yadavs across the state – is not even in the hunt in Kanpur, he says.
Rajesh Yadav had pointed to Kanpur’s tragedy. The city’s a political battleground for the national parties. In fact, it’s representative of the sort of town where a national electorate, rather than one that responds to state-level factors, is supposed to develop, That’s why, if there’s one seat that the AAP could actually have targeted in UP, it’s Kanpur, with its history of union-led activism, and its relatively diverse ethnic mix. This election, so various hopeful pundits and Modi fans insist, will be fought on national issues in far more places than has been the case henceforth. But, in Kanpur, it’s still local issues that predominate. Even the Hindi Modi advertisements in Kanpur push different, more local problems – law and order, not prices or scams, for examples.
Yet, the city’s tendency to ignore the two state parties is also partly responsible for its plight. Bystanders near the Bahujan Samaj Party’s Kanpur office were openly dismissive of the party’s prospects. Another resident said, simply, “Mayawati hates Kanpur” – since it, supposedly, is full of Brahmins and has never even sent a BSP MLA to Lucknow. The city has worse power cuts than most others in UP; its roads are worse; bridges over the Ganga struggle to deal with the traffic. Private wealth survives – the city that pays the most taxes in UP, and where BMWs are a common sight. But, unlike previous elections, politicians from Delhi haven’t even tried to promise that the mills – now all run by the government – will start operating at full capacity again. Kanpur has voted for the Centre time and time again, and paid a high price for it. If this is the fate of cities that think nationally, why would a national electorate ever develop?