We don't know if the SP-Congress alliance will work, but their rustic campaign song is better than the original!
May you live in interesting times. This old Chinese curse seems to apply to UP CM Akhilesh Yadav who has been in the thick of the action in the last couples of months. First, he fought an epic intra-family war to wrest control of the Samajwadi Party from his father Mulayam Singh Yadav and his ‘evil uncle’ Shivpal Yadav. It wasn’t an easy task, considering Netaji’s appeal amongst the party members.
But Akhilesh, aided by his uncle Ramgopal Yadav, managed to emerge victorious and the Election Commission’s decision to give the ‘Cycle’ to the Akhilesh faction gave him legitimacy. But this wasn’t the end of his battles and he also managed to stitch up an alliance with the Congress who played hardball till the last minute. But if things were tough for SP, they are monumentally downcast for Congress.
A party which was at the forefront of India’s freedom struggle is now struggling to remain relevant. To keep their politically aspirations alive, the Congress had been forced to become junior partners for the third time in two years after Bengal (with the Left) and RJD-JD(U) in Bihar.
It’s even more embarrassing when you consider that Congress had dragged Sheila Dikshit back from a peaceful existence and made her the CM face only to leave her high and dry. And Rahul Gandhi spent more than two months on the much-hyped Khat Pe Charcha, where the cots were more in demand than Rahul Gandhi’s speeches. Not to mention the fact that Congress had a slogan attacking SP called '27 saal UP behaal' but were forced to conceal with paint after the alliance
But all that’s in the past and in politics, when a new alliance is conjured up, one must pretend that the past in immaterial. For the last couple of days, Rahul and Akhilesh have been twinning in kurtas and matching jackets, but the emergence of the alliance presents a quirky campaign problem.
Earlier, the Samajwadi Party was riding high on a cover of a song from the movie Sultan - 'Baby Ko Bass Pasand Hai', which waxed lyrical about the young CM. But since the SP decided to fight the elections with Congress, the party altered the lyrics and came up with a delightfully rustic number with the same tune as the earlier one.
Titled 'Cycle ko haat pasand hai, UP ko saath pasand hai' the song praises the new partnership, claiming that the 'hand' would steady the 'cycle' and kowtows its secular credentials claiming the alliance will be hailed by Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. The song also praises Sonia Gandhi and Mulayam Singh Yadav for trusting the next generation, which is a tad exaggerated given Netaji's reluctance, but we guess he has poetic licence!
Check out the piece of art below:
For the uninitiated, the SP has a great history of catch tunes and here's an earlier one on Mulayam Singh Yadav titled 'Mann se Mulayam, par Irada loha hai' which is heavily inspired by Billy Joel's We didn't start the fire.
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 "Akhilesh-Rahul")
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