The Thakur behind the Yadav

Backstage

Let there be no misunderstanding. The miracle is mutual. For years Singh worked with Vam Organics, a UP-based company that produced industrial alcohol in a market tightly controlled by the UP government. He got by, networking.

In 1996, he decided he'd worked for others long enough. He took two decisions. He set up his own business; and joined the Congress in the shadow of mentor and friend Madhavrao Scindia. His slogan was: self respect for the underdog.

Unfortunately, the Congress had little time for him. He tried but, despite Scindia's not inconsiderable clout, could not carve out a place for himself in the Bhind-Morena region that straddles UP and Madhya Pradesh.

So he switched to the Samajwadi Party amid sniggers in political circles: how could a partnership between a Yadav and a Thakur ever work? The alliance was like day and night, a friendship between a mongoose and a snake.

Amazingly, the sheer force of the two personalities made the alliance endure. Mulayam Singh Yadav shrewdly realised that he could provide Singh with the political legitimacy he craved. And Singh introduced a country hick to the glitterati, a socialist rough-hewn curio amid fragile crystal.

All this was done using Singh's unique talent for networking. A relationship between Himachal Futuristics and don of the Australian entertainment industry Kerry Packer was forged by Singh with his signature pomp and pageantry. No one knows where that relationship went.

Another affiliation between Amitabh Bachchan, the Sahara group and the Samajwadi Party was established. Bachchan became the Samajwadi Party's mascot without entering politics himself. The Sahara platform provided the U P underpinning. But the limits were defined clearly. Because the Samajwadi Party was in the opposition, there was no obvious quid pro quo.

This could change now. Singh is fond of saying that, for him, a friend is everything. His circle of friends widened. When hotelier Lalit Suri became a member of the Rajya Sabha, despite belonging to a different party, Singh threw a fabulous party in his honour, to jointly celebrate his birthday and his membership to the upper house. This was a gesture Suri will always remember "" and he reciprocated by attending Yadav's swearing-in ceremony more than a year later.

The Ambani family came under Singh's sway, later under Yadav's. Could Yadav have had a relationship with industrialists if Singh not been on the scene? Probably. But the finesse, the light touch, the self respect... Singh brought all that to the relationship between a former wrestler and some of the wealthiest people in India.

It is not that Yadav has not had to make compromises to make political space for Singh. Beni Prasad Verma and his ilk "" all in the socialist movement for years before Singh came on the scene "" bitterly resent his ascendancy and would do anything to trip him up.

But it isn't that easy. There is now a unique bond between the two "" leaders in their own right today "" and they have a relationship that is a faint echo of the Vajpayee-Advani relationship.

But ambition is an unpredictable thing. Singh is both ambitious and emotional and is quite capable of chucking up the whole thing at some real or imagined slight. If and when that day comes, the breach will be as tearful and painful as the split in the Telugu Desam between N T Rama Rao and Chandrababu Naidu.

The split could be over as trivial an issue as something Yadav said. It could be on as major an issue as the role Sonia Gandhi should play in the Opposition.

But till that happens, Singh is a reliable and solid presence, always a step behind Yadav, with him, for him, always.