From a distance, it looked like a Samajwadi Party poster. A closer examination revealed it to be a billboard instead, advertising the arrival of a new fetish of the Akhilesh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh: the bike track.
You can see them near the governor’s bungalow in Lucknow, in Agra, at many places in Ghaziabad and even in Bareilly. There are plans to have bicycle tracks in almost all major cities of the state. Ghaziabad alone will soon have a 100-kilometre-long track at an estimated cost of Rs 22 crore.
“Yeh sarkar ka naya natak hai. Ise bane mahino hogaye lekin aaj tak maine ismein kisi ko bhi cycle chalate nahin dekha hai (This is the government’s new gimmick. The track was built months ago but I am yet to see anyone using it),” said Atyendra Maurya, a resident of Bareilly, leaning on his motorbike while chatting up with a friend.
New Fetish
A new fetish it indeed is given the way the government has built the tracks across cities without giving any thought whether they will be used at all or not. It all reportedly began with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s tour of the Netherlands and Germany sometime in 2015.
He is said to have learned how to make bicycle a viable mode of transportation in cities there. From then on there was no looking back. In many places, hawkers have taken over the tracks to sell their wares. In Agra, for instance, stretches of the bike track have become resting places for cattle. Near the governor’s residence in Lucknow, the track is used only to switch to the main road.
There is something about the cycle track that does not give you a very comfortable feeling. Every now and then you have to move to the main road. That is the reason why people prefer not to use it at all.A Lucknow-based journalist
Akhilesh’s Mamata Effect
Akhilesh’s pursuit of the cycle track is similar to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s obsession with the blue-and-white colour coat of paint for government buildings. From pavements to hospitals, from school buildings to government vehicles, her government has painted everything blue-and-white.
Surrogate Advertising
She may be attempting to erase everything red (the Marxists’ colour). But what Akhilesh is trying is nothing short of what is known as surrogate advertising. After all, bicycle is the Samajwadi Party’s election symbol. Even his predecessor, Bahujan Samajwadi Party’s Mayawati, had embarked on a similar exercise getting several figures of an elephant, her party’s symbol, in parks across UP when she was the chief minister.
Patronage Politics
Akhilesh seems to have copied Mamata in terms of extending the dole culture. Last year, his government launched the Samajwadi Pension Yojana (SPY), covering 45 lakh people. This year, the coverage has been extended to cover 55 lakh people.
According to provisions of the Rs 3,327-crore pension scheme, Rs 500 is directly credited every month to the bank accounts of senior women members of each of the identified families.
This is in addition to other running pension schemes like monthly pension for elderly people, for widows and the physically challenged. In his budget speech earlier this year, Akhilesh declared that 11.8 million people would be able to avail the benefits of multiple pension schemes with the expansion of the SPY.
Will Schemes Fetch Returns?
This is one of many schemes the UP government has launched recently or has expanded coverage. The SP government recently launched direct benefit transfer (DBT) for subsidies given to farmers to procure quality seeds. It enhanced the insurance amount for farmers in case of accidental deaths. It also launched a Rs 400-crore scheme to give assistance to poor families categorised as SCs, STs, minorities and others for the marriage of daughters.
Besides, there is a Rs 840-crore scheme for awarding scholarships to Muslim students. The government has set an ambitious target of giving Rs 93,212 crore as crop loan to farmers this financial year.
Will Akhilesh’s Mamata act pay him rich dividends in the forthcoming assembly elections? Given the way UP has voted in the last four elections, both Lok Sabha and assembly, he will have to do much more to win the hearts and minds of people.
(The writer is Consulting Editor, Business Standard, and contributes regularly toThe Quint on politics and contemporary issues.)
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