Amar Singh's accusation that the defeat was the result of the party's over-confidence did not amuse Ram Gopal, who, like others before him like Raj Babbar and Azam Khan, could not have been too pleased with the prominence enjoyed by the Rajput from Kolkata. In any event, a Rajput in a party of OBCs is like a square peg in a round hole. If Amar Singh has nevertheless survived and prospered in the party, the explanation perhaps lies in a mutually beneficial arrangement where his gift of the gab and Bollywood as well as corporate connections give the organisation a status which the OBC crowd could not have given it.

The arrangement, however, was apparently mainly between him and Mulayam Singh. The others were disgruntled onlookers, envious of the portly general secretary's clout inside the party and importance outside. As long as the party was winning, they had to hold their fire. However, the kind of setbacks which it suffered in the by-elections took the lid off their dissent. Ram Gopal Yadav appeared to have led the charge against Amar Singh, perhaps with the tacit support of Mulayam Singh's son, Akhilesh.

However, Mulayam Singh evidently realised that he could not allow the spat to get out of hand. That the loss of Amar Singh would have an unsettling ripple effect was evident from Sanjay Dutt's decision to emulate Amar Singh by resigning from his party post. In course of time, other Bollywood stars like Jaya Prada and Jaya Bachchan might have also become restive.

Such internal tremors would have been disastrous at a time when the party is at something of a loose end. The by-election results have shown that its main adversary, the BSP, is reasonably well entrenched and even the Congress is showing signs of life, which made its leader, Digvijay Singh, claim after the Ferozabad victory that his party will form the next government in U.P. On the other hand, the Samajwadi Party seemingly shot itself in the foot by associating with Kalyan Singh and thereby losing the minority votes, which had undergone a three-way division between the Samajwadi Party, the BSP and the Congress.

The Samajwadi Party also made a laughing stock of itself in the urban areas before the elections by opposing computers and the teaching of English. The results have shown that the antediluvian approach did not help in securing rural votes. After all, the people in the villages may not know much about computers or English, but they are aware that unless their children acquire the knowledge of these subjects, they cannot move forward in life. Primitiveness, therefore, is no longer a paying proposition in politics in the 21st century.

The haste with which Mulayam Singh sought to mollify Amar Singh underlined his dependence on the jet-setting acolyte, who has always tried to be on the right side of the party's topmost leader irrespective of how much he riled others. Mulayam Singh may have also drawn the right lessons from the plight of his fellow Yadav, Lalu Prasad, whose position has been further weakened by the applause which Nitish Kumar is receiving because of Bihar's exceptionally high growth rate under his regime. In addition, Mamata Banerjee has threatened to expose the reality behind the Railway's high earnings when Lalu Prasad was the minister.

The OBCs, therefore, seem to have come under a cloud by squandering the advantages their short-sighted leaders like Mulayam Singh and Lalu Prasad secured by leading the Mandal revolution. They did so by concentrating solely on promoting self-respect vis-à-vis the upper castes and winning power by the manipulation of backward caste vote banks. However, their neglect of development convinced even their core groups of supporters that the right to sit in a chair in front of Brahmins and Bhumihars would not compensate for the prolonged absence of bijli-sadak-pani.

Lalu Prasad at least did not alienate the Muslims in any way. But Mulayam Singh made the cardinal mistake of an opportunistic tie-up with Kalyan Singh, whose flip-flops over his role at the time of the Babri masjid demolition have shown him up as one of the most unreliable of politicians. There was no option, therefore, for Mulayam Singh but to make up with Amar Singh. The latter, too, would have known that he was too fond of the sound of his own voice to find a place in the front ranks of any other party. However, friendly he may claim to be with Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel, they are unlikely to show him the same indulgence which Mulayam Singh has. From this standpoint, the “industrialist” from Burrabazar and the wrestler from Etawah are made for each other.(IPA Service)