Farmers Movement Archive

Ajit Singh: An IITian who was the face of Jat politics in UP

The best and the worst about Ajit Singh, veteran politician and scion of late Charan Singh, was that he was happy in his skin. He did not crave, or value, approvals or validation. It was a quality that made him his own man, a politician who managed to keep his hold for long over the "jatland" of west UP even as he was chided as a “political chameleon”. Singh (82),who passed away owing to Covid complications in the capital on Thursday, practically retired from politics after losing two consecutive elections in 2014 and 2019 in his erstwhile patch. At one time a constant in national and UP politics, Singh was a bundle of contradictions – an IIT computer engineer of 1960s who plunged into the rough and tumble of politics, a suave Jat who presided over a rugged region and its aggressive and empowered populace, a gentleman who just could not resist being “practical”. For a man who was a Lok Sabha MP from 1989 to 2014 with just one defeat in 1998 polls, and who held elite central ministries like Commerce and Industry, Agriculture, Food Processing and Civil Aviation under prime ministers as ideologically diverse as V P Singh, Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, the CV is a testimony to political suppleness as well as a grassroots legacy. But the long career spanning is also largely a story of a legacy lost. A supporter in Baghpat once described him as “the man who shrank his mighty father Charan Singh’s legacy from six states to six districts”. Fissures in his loyal base had begun to surface over time, with fast changing age profile, aspirations and national political churn. The advent of Narendra Modi, his hard Hindutva and native appeal cleaved Singh’s longstanding Jat-Muslim combine, planting BJP in the region and sweeping aside Rashtriya Lok Dal. The post-2014 barren phase put to complete shade the farmer-OBCs politics that struck roots six decades ago. Now, Singh’s son Jayant, who has been leading the protests against the controversial farm laws over last months, faces a daunting challenge of reviving that faded appeal in an altered context. Some of the impermnance in Singh’s politics owed to the phase he was blooded in, with Lok Dal and its tendency to split. With time, he rubbed shoulders and crossed swords with satraps of the day, from Mulayam Singh Yadav to Devi Lal to R K Hegde to Deve Gowda to V P Singh. He stayed in parties, or formed them, like Lok Dal (A), JP, BKKP, RLD. Singh was a survivor, one who could on occasion acknowledge the cynicism of political choices, even as he knew that a shriveled base was good enough to make him important for any aspiring government -- until Modi ended that with a single party majority. But the slip was visible, as he gradually reduced to being a Jat leader. To stay relevant, he continued dabble in new projects to mobilise his base – like Harit Pradesh, farmers’s unity, Jat reservation. Singh goofed up in the wake of Muzaffarpur riots in 2013. With the Jats and Muslims clashing, some confidants urged him to visit the scarred region like the patron guardian. For some reason, Singh procrastinated, leaving the field open for the rising Modi campaign led by Amit Shah who was then party incharge of UP. The much delayed efforts to repair the alliance were perfunctory and, expectedly, fruitless. He never recovered from it. He lost in 2014 and 2019 polls. For some, it was to Singh’s credit that he voted against the Narasimha Rao government after the Babri mosque demolition. He, though, joined the government later. In the chequered career, a constant was with his bitter rivalry with Mulayam Singh Yadav. A rising star in the increasingly “Mandalising” political firmament of late 1980s, Yadav saw himself as Charan Singh’s political legatee but son Ajit Singh threw his hat in the ring but could never match the SP chief. Over the years, Yadav, in fits and starts, courted Singh and they managed a civil interaction that confounded observers. The heir apparents Akhilesh Yadav and Jayant Chaudhary revived the partnership by allying along with BSP, for 2019 LS polls, but to little gain.

The Times of India

2021-05-07

India