A sorry farce in UP

The soap opera that the governing of Uttar Pradesh by the Yadav clan has become beats any Punch and Judy show hollow. It has been nonstop entertainment for the last four and a half years that Akhilesh Yadav has been chief minister, with his father, uncles, step-brother and presumed uncles pulling strings in cross-cutting directions to the chagrin of the young CM, who doubtless means well, has a modernising impulse sitting inside him, but appears completely helpless.

The entertainment has come at the cost of UP’s people as the state has become a synonym for malgovernance. The taxpayer, whose contributions fill the state’s coffers so that development may occur, and those who ought to be recipients of development, have both been cheated in a massive way. The reinduction on Monday of three ministers the CM had sacked over the past year, including Gayatri Prasad Prajapati (against whom a corruption case in the mining department appeared palpable), who was dismissed from the Cabinet only a few weeks ago, is only the latest in the unedifying drama that has been unfolding — sometimes as a farce but at all times as a tragedy for the country’s most populous state.

If UP, and neighbouring Hindi-speaking Bihar, can’t loosen the grip of poverty despite the advantages that nature has bestowed on them (including the fertile land of the Gangetic plain), India will remain ineluctably poor. The Uttar Pradesh elections are due soon. People must exercise their voting choices with wisdom so that a good administration doesn’t continue to elude them.