By Ambikanand Sahay
As you drive down from Akshardham Temple in Delhi towards Greater Noida, greenery greets you. On your right is Mayawati’s dream park. It’s a gorgeous project.

Thanks to its magnificence and workmanship, all the structures that have come up look grand. The high-quality sandstone boundary wall and the huge dome appear as long-lasting as the Parliament House, the Rashtrapati Bhavan or the Red Fort. The engineers and the powers-that-be proudly say that the structures wouldn’t lose their sheen for a thousand years.
Five hundred kilometers away in the east is the Ambedkar Park in Lucknow. The grandeur that greets you there is to be seen to be believed. Huge marble elephants, red sandstone pathways and brilliantly maintained carpets of green grass give you a great feeling. “Am I in Lucknow”, you ask yourself. Everything is so wonderful, so orderly in this little island of tranquility.
But all that glitters is not gold, more so in politics. Emperor Shahjahan learnt it the hard way. He built the Taj Mahal in Agra. He constructed the Red Fort in Delhi. He built many other wonderful structures including the Pearl Mosque in Agra and the Jama Masjid in Delhi. But all these otherwise great pieces of art and architecture failed to leave any impression on his son, Aurangzeb. The son believed that his father’s deeds were a case of misplaced priorities. Instead of feeding the hungry and serving the sick, his father had been busy building a mausoleum in memory of his wife. Maybe, Aurangzeb thought right. Many historians too think this way.
Much water has flown down the Yamuna since the empirical days Shajahan and Aurangzeb. We are now living in a democratic world wherein the voice of the people and orders of the Supreme Court matter most. The Court has, at least for the time being, put a stay on construction activities in Mayawati’s dream park in Noida. And there are innumerable people in Uttar Pradesh who think that instead of building parks the Chief Minister should better concentrate her energies on improving law and order and serving the poor. “So many schools and hospitals could have come up with this money”, they argue.
But chief ministers, especially strong-headed ones, are not moved by adverse comments. Chandrababu Naidu, who almost single-handedly created Cyberabad, had to relinquish power unceremoniously. The general feeling in Andhra Pradesh on eve of the 2004 assembly election was that farmers were dying in the fields while IT czars were making hay in Hyderabad. This perception of the people worked wonders for the Congress, which romped home comfortably.
The current political scenario in UP is more or less similar to that of Andhra Pradesh in 2004. Great construction activities are going on in different places. The state of the parks apart, work is going on in full swing in Yamuna Expressway connecting Noida and Agra. Metro railway has already entered Noida and efforts are on to take it up to Greater Noida. The state administration is also trying its best to get clearance for the Ganga Expressway connecting Noida and Ballia on Bihar borders. Chances are that work on this project would start soon.
All this hasn’t really helped Mayawati politically. From her 2007 highpoint when the BSP won 206 of the total 402 assembly seats, Mayawati’s party could win only 20 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in 2009 parliamentary elections. The performance of the Congress was commendable, keeping in mind the fact that Sonia Gandhi’s party had won just five seats in 1996. In 2009, the strength of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party had also come down to 22 from 35 in 2004. And the BJP’s strength remained limited to 10 seats.
So, the big picture in UP is that while the Congress is steadily gaining ground, all other forces are seen to be losing. Obviously, the caste and communal arithmetic is changing with Muslims, who had deserted the Congress in the post- Babari Mosque demolition era, are beginning to pitch in for Sonia Gandhi’s party once again. And the Brahmins, who had remained loyal to the BJP in the nineteen nineties and the beginning of this century, are also joining the Congress bandwagon. Mayawati’s spectacular success in the 2007 assembly election had come about only after Brahmins briefly joined hands with dalits to dethrone Mulayam Singh Yadav.
But things have changed now. The Congress is on the revival mould in the home state of the Nehru-Gandhis. Perhaps the party’s only weakness is that there is no state level leader who can match the charisma of either Mayawati or Mulayam Singh. But Rahul Gandhi, who may emerge as the next prime minister after the next election, is working hard. And the people of UP see him as a local lad, thanks to the Allahabad roots of his forefathers.
(The contributor has served as former coordinating editor of Times of India News Service and editorial head, Sahara India and is currently director (news) with TG Angels Media in New Delhi.)