In his autumn years, Mulayam Singh Yadav faces an acute political dilemma

As the Yadav clan spars, the SP founder is left an embittered man in his twilight years

When a leading English daily approached Mulayam Singh Yadav to pen his musings, the Samajwadi Party (SP) founder, who knows little outside of politics, confided to an associate that all he’s seen in his autumn years were family feuds and estrangement and it wasn’t worth recording his experiences. The associate suggested that the 79-year-old patriarch could reflect on his life and times “philosophically”, to which Yadav’s answer was philosophy was beyond his ken. Yadav is contesting again from his fief but retaining Mainpuri does not weigh him down as much as resolving an acute political dilemma in Firozabad. His predicament