It’s faraway, backward Mirzapur which might foretell the future of the outmoded Congress party and that of current caste political parties in Uttar Pradesh. Of significance are the two candidates whose pedigreed backgrounds are uncannily similar, but ends abruptly when it comes to their respective political legacy. The Congress candidate, 41-year-old Lalitesh Pati Tripathi, is the classic inheritor of his elite, privileged background. His great-grandfather is old party warhorse, Kamalapati Tripathi, who was the state chief minister and a cabinet minister in Indira Gandhi’s government. His grandfather, Lokpati Tripathi, made a few aborted starts in state politics but faded out; his father Rajeshpati was party MLC and also election manager in the state.

Lalitesh went to the acclaimed Woodstock School in Landour, Mussoorie, run by American educationists (his mother Lakshmi is American too). He later went to Canada to finish his graduation and dabbled in computer software before taking up politics as a full-time family vocation.

Similarly, Anupriya Patel, the 38-year-old legatee of the Apna Dal (Sonelal) had the model upbringing of a powerful, influential family. After schooling in Varanasi, Anupriya graduated from Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi, where all the young ladies went for their grooming and education. She got her masters in business administration and even taught at Amity University. Anupriya then moved into the party after her father’s death in an accident in 2009, and established herself as the rightful inheritor of the Dal.

It is here that the similarities between Lalitesh and Anupriya end.

Lalitesh Tripathi inherited a party that is at death’s door today in Uttar Pradesh. The Congress had its glory days till the end of the 1980s but was finally trumped in 1989, when it got a shock defeat at the hands of the emerging caste political groups that was electrifying the Hindi heartland. The party has not recovered since, except for a few small victories in pockets of the state coming its way.

For Patel, she inherited a legacy that was a vibrant force of the caste movement that was sweeping the wide swathe of the heartland, that challenged the brahminical hold of the Congress party and its satraps. Her father, Dr Sonelal Patel, was part of the social justice movement that was whipping up the backward and Dalit castes for political power in Uttar Pradesh in the 1970s and ‘80s. In fact, he became a lieutenant of the late fiery Dalit leader Kanshi Ram, and helped set up the Bahujan Samaj Party. However, both leaders fell out over the direction of the party, and Sonelal set up the Apna Dal in 1995 to carry the Kurmis, a powerful caste that had roots in the state. He died in a road accident in 2009.

Unlike Tripathi, it was not a smooth ascension for Patel to take over the party. Her mother, Krishna, saw herself as the rightful legatee and an unseemly battle arose where the mother took the daughter to court. But it was Anupriya who broke away and was successful in shrewdly taking the party to its position today.

In 2012, both Tripathi and Patel won their Assembly seats from Manihar in Mirzapur and Rohaniya from Varanasi respectively. The Apna Dal went to even greater heights, when Patel shrewdly forged a fruitful alliance with the BJP in 2014, winning both the parliamentary constituencies it contested, Mirzapur and Pratapgarh. In 2017, it won nine Assembly seats, and won an MLA a Cabinet berth in the Adityanath government. Patel too later became a union minister of state for health and family welfare.

Sitting in his vast Congress party election office, an abandoned blanket factory that shut a decade ago (one can’t miss the irony), Tripathi is expansive when he says: “We’ve tried to rise above the idea of caste and religious politics and have focused purely on development politics, of providing jobs, education and welfare schemes like Rahul Gandhi’s NYAY which will be a game changer, to give people a safety net at the time of transition from scarcity to sufficiency. Welfare and wealth creation go hand in hand.”

Tripathi says the days of the old-style working of the Congress are over. The so-called “high command” culture is being disbanded rapidly where every aspirant party worker had to do “chakkar of Lucknow and Delhi” for positions and rewards. “We have to now focus on local issues, problems and concerns that directly impact the people. The days of helicopter netas are over, when you spent a weekend in your constituency and spent the rest of time in Delhi or elsewhere. If you have to revive the party, we have to be right here where the work is, and pursue it without a break.”

On the other hand, Patel has her legacy on a platter, and has used her caste weapon with speed and alacrity. The powerful Kurmi vote bank is still formidable and Patel has used it as a bargaining chip to assert her influence in the state, especially in eastern UP. She has astutely refused to merge her party with the BJP and has withstood every slight from the BJP leadership by getting her rightful due for the party.

It cannot be a more contrasting picture between Tripathi and Patel, but the former says the future is not about caste consolidation but expansion of welfare projects and building blocks of development. “The danger of caste leaders is that they can take their people for granted,” he says. He does not need to be reminded of how the Congress squandered its goodwill among many caste groups. “Today, one of the major attacks against Anupriya Patel is that she has barely visited Mirzapur. Where are the development projects promised by her? Our campaign has been to focus on the unfulfilled promises of both Patel and Prime Minister Modi.  It does not need much convincing for the people here.”

Congress strategists, however, admit that as of now, if the party has to be within striking distance of any success, it has to accept the caste model as of today. The party is already in alliance with the breakaway but significant smaller caste groups that scripted the BJP’s spectacular victory in 2017 in the last state Assembly polls —from Patel’s mother’s faction of the Dal, the Binds, Kushwahas and Rajbhars, who have all abandoned the BJP for being treated badly. And with the Brahmins along with the party (Tripathi is a Brahmin), the Congress hopes to coast to success.

It’s caste arithmetic yet again that Ram Charitra Nishad, the SP-BSP alliance candidate, is banking on. Nishad joined the SP recently; he was formerly with the BJP and was the sitting MP from next-door Machlishahr constituency. District BSP president Rajesh Gautam is confident of the alliance romping home, listing the number of times (about seven) the SP and BSP won the seat individually in the past, and says the caste arithmetic is in their favour. The Dalits, Yadavs, Muslims and Nishads constitute almost six lakh votes, and Patel won the last election with 4.5 lakh votes.

But the undercurrent of despondency and despair among underprivileged caste groups is so sharp this time around that it has swept aside any talk of a Modi or Yogi wave. The name of the game in the region is caste loyalty and allegiance, which does not ensure just a food ticket, but benefits like education, jobs, and even personal security.

Akilesh Gaur is a law student of KBDC College in Mirzapur, and also a student leader now working with the BSP. He looks forward to getting the benefits of his association with the party. “I come from terrible poverty. My father is a landless labourer, I am the eldest of five children. Even today, we have barely any food at home. But working with Behenji’s party as a volunteer will ensure me some access to government benefits when we come to power. Local leaders now remember me when I go to meet them,” he adds with fervent gratitude.

It’s a similar story of caste benefits that define a voter’s loyalty in the reserved constituency of Bansgaon. Bizarrely, the Congress has been booted out as its candidate Kush Saurabh Rao’s nomination has been cancelled. The constituency has the lowest number of candidates with just four, and it’s a straight fight between the BJP and the alliance’s BSP. However, despite being a reserved seat, the BSP has never won here. The BJP’s candidate is two-time MP Kamlesh Paswan, a dynast. His mother, Subavati Paswan won in 1996 on an SP ticket after her husband was gunned down at a public meeting.

Sitting in his shop that sells steel cupboards, Dayashankar Pandey, a retired Army havaldar, discusses the benedictions received from the Modi government over the last five years with his brother Rajesh and 28-year-old Pradeep Maurya. Pandey is happy with Modi’s nationalist punch in the elections. “I am glad he taught Pakistan a lesson, it was time someone retaliated at them,” he says, adding that he did not receive any benefits from the Modi government as he gets a pension from the Army. His brother says that as a schoolteacher, he is not eligible as he’s above the income level for government benefits.

As for Maurya, he’s a farmer who has leased a small field on rent, and is in the shop looking for a cupboard to give his sister’s in-laws at the time of her wedding. He laments that he has not received a single government subsidy so far. “Neither Modiji’s ₹2,000 for farmers, gas, house, toilet or medical insurance,” he says cynically. “I’m not expecting it either.” But he’s anxious as to how he’s going to marry off his sister soon. Maurya alludes to the fact that he’s not relevant in the Modi government’s caste arithmetic.

The Pandeys agree this time it will be a win for the SP-BSP alliance. “The fight is close and tight,” says Dayashankar, “but Mulayam Singh’s estranged brother Shivpal Yadav’s candidate can dent the alliance,” he adds hopefully. Pandey looks forward to his village leader, who is close to the BJP candidate, to eventually give his son a job.

In Gorakhpur, however, the 14-member Giri household is being left out of Modi’s beneficiary schemes of free housing and gas for belonging to the wrong caste in Adityanath’s hometown. They are Brahmins. Mahendra Giri is a cook who freelances with various tent houses and local caterers. Now that he is attached to the Hindu Vahini office, Adityanath’s private army, in Sewai Bazar, he has finally got some benefits. “My house has mud walls and we have a thatched roof, but no house as yet. However, we have received 14 Ayushman cards and got four toilets.”

Shiv Sagar, a Vahini worker, beams saying it was Adityanath who stopped the Maoist menace that operates along the Indo-Nepal border. He says exultantly, “Modiji and Yogiji have ensured our borders are safe. We can sleep well, the lotus will bloom again.”  

The group at the Hindu Vahini could not be more diverse. There’s also Sanjay Sahni, a post-graduate in medieval history who has been jobless since 2006. He shrugs at the fact that the Yogi government has failed to fill the thousands of vacant posts for schoolteachers, nor the thousands  of vacancies in the police force. He seems to live off the influence of the Hindu Vahini in the town.

It seems Adityanath’s dominant Thakur caste power and influence has not just irked the upper caste Brahmins but has terrified the backward castes and Dalits too, with their high-handedness and swagger. It has brought the castes back to their leaders, as benefits and protection can come from only caste loyalties and affinity. The bets are on if Adityanath can wrest his own constituency, Gorakhpur, again.