Aditi Phadnis: Man in the driving seat

PLAIN POLITICS

VP Singh's 'moral force' claims may be dubious but he could still call the shots in UP.

You can take the man out of politics but you can't take politics out of the man. Next month, ailing former Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh is going to launch a nationwide agitation against SEZs and press his Jan Morcha (turned into a political party in 2005) to make the state end corporate landlordism because it is not the government's business to acquire farmland on behalf of corporates.

He will rope in like-minded civil society groups, NGOs and other political parties. Ramvilas Paswan's Lok Janashakti Party has already joined this alliance and so has the CPI. Jan Morcha is going to set up candidates in the assembly elections in UP "" as many as it can with limited resources "" and make its electoral debut. This time, Singh is not talking about merging Jan Morcha with some other party to aim for prime ministership. He is saying "" as he had in 1987 "" that Jan Morcha is a movement and that the electoral advantage it might come to enjoy will be incidental.

For the moment, Jan Morcha appears to have a limited plank: justice to farmers. In Haryana, his colleague Raj Babbar addressed a public meeting opposing the sale of land to the Mukesh Ambani group. In Pune, where 3,500 acres of land from one village were being sold to Infosys and protesting farmers were fired upon, VP Singh threatened to set up a jhuggi in the village, going to Mumbai only for dialysis, to oppose the project. The acquisition was cancelled by Sharad Pawar and Vilasrao Deshmukh. In Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, he was arrested for agitating against a power plant to be set up by the Anil Ambani group. In Singur and Nandigram, West Bengal, Singh made his presence felt similarly. His campaign? Why should the state government facilitate the corporates in getting land? Shouldn't the farmers be the ones to decide whether or not the land they tilled should be sold? And at what price? Singh has sought a National Security Council for the rehabilitation of displaced farmers and tribals. He wants the Land Acquisition Act to be amended and the magisterial powers conferred on banks for recovering farmers' loans withdrawn. At a recent public meeting, he declared that if the Jan Morcha alliance came to power in Uttar Pradesh, entrepreneurs and investors would not be allowed to acquire farmland and the cooperative bank's loans to the farmers would be waived. There would be reservations for Muslim OBCs, subsidised foodgrains for Dalits, and quick settlement of pension for ex-armymen.

Forget for one moment, Singh's history of political manoeuvring, his compulsive need in the past for an ideological fig leaf to camouflage exercises in personal imagebuilding, blatant politicking and attempts at populist socialism. The surrender of dacoits in UP when he was chief minister, raids on corporates when he was finance minister, the sellout to Devi Lal on the issue of prime ministership and later, backtracking through the implementation of the Mandal Commission report, accepting the BJP's help to form a government but calling them communal when the government fell...you could be forgiven for asking how he can now aspire to be a moral force in Indian politics, and how deep his commitment to the dispossessed really is.

But this is a new VP Singh, the man who knows he can strike to wound, not to kill. He is fashioning his strategy accordingly. Take UP. In actor-politician, Raj Babbar, who has been appointed president of Jan Morcha, Singh has a most able lieutenant. He has been a socialist leader since he was a young man, was one of Mulayam Singh Yadav's close friends till the entry of Amar Singh on the scene, has proven abilities to work hard and has sewn up some areas in the Agra-Aligarh region of UP where he has a big following.

VP Singh has managed to tie up the support of players who are marginal in power politics, but who have strong pockets of electoral support. Jan Morcha has an alliance with the Bharatiya Kisan Union of Mahendra Singh Tikait, still a force in western UP. Om Prakash Rajbhar's Bharatiya Samaj Party might be unknown to the people of Delhi. In eastern UP or Poorvanchal, it has some presence, especially among the Dalits. It is a constituent of the Morcha. The CPI might be able to manage three or four seats but will seriously damage the Samajwadi Party in eight to ten others. True, discredited BSP leader Sakshi Maharaj is also part of the Jan Morcha. What VP Singh does about him will be worth watching.

The Jan Morcha has formed a solid front against Mulayam Singh who met VP Singh in April last year to resolve differences but made no headway. Since then, the properties of Ajeya Singh, VP Singh's son, have been attacked, indicating there is no love lost between the two leaders. Yadav is, no doubt, the unchallenged master of poll management in UP. But the Jan Morcha is fast emerging as a moral force in UP, a set of people which compels you, before you press the button against the bicycle (the election symbol of the Samajwadi Party), to think about what you're going to do.

When Yadav formed his government with just four seats, Kalyan Singh managed to get a cabinet minister and a minister of state appointed in the UP government. If the Jan Morcha can take away even 8,000-10,000 votes of a Samajwadi Party candidate in any constituency, this could spell the gap between victory and defeat in an assembly election. And if it is just a movement as VP Singh claims, well, then it would have achieved a moral victory. VP Singh is a man to watch in UP.