Five defining media moments of the UP election

Rahul’s grassroot strategy: Rahul Gandhi definitely succeeded on one front: getting the media obsessed. And he did that by taking on the formidable Mayawati at the peak of anti-land acquisition protests in the state. From then on, it was a sustained engagement with the poor and marginalised of Bhatta-Parsaul, the way they were under-compensated by the UP government, and ill-treated after they rose in protest against the Mayawati government. He held hands, broke bread and even stayed with the families there. He protested with farmers demanding higher compensation, even got arrested. He had a big chunk of media trailing behind him into ‘other India’, the rest of it decoding his motives. But he wasn’t doing anything remarkable, really. His oratory skills were disappointing — recall the one in the Lok Sabha — and speeches drab, repetitive and politically naive. By the time it was campaign time, the media had tired somewhat. But the one enduring memory of the 2012 UP election campaign will nonetheless be Rahul’s romance with the grassroots, winding down to his imminent fall. [caption id=“attachment_236444” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The ‘parachute politician’ used his family vacation to remind India that he too is Gandhi by association, and that alone qualifies him to enter mainstream politics. PTI”]  [/caption] 2. Salman Rushdie brouhaha: The problem with the Jaipur Literature Festival, perhaps, wasn’t that it invited Salman Rushdie, the author of the banned book, The Satanic Verses, as part of his panel. He had been part of the event before. The problem was that the event was scheduled at a time when the UP poll campaigning was heating up, and the parties were vying for a share of the Muslim vote. Despite that being at the core of Rushdie’s absence, the debate veered in a completely different direction — that of censorship of free speech. But whatever hysteria the hopefuls stirred up, has not reflected in the post poll trends, pointing to failure of traditional Muslim vote bank politics. 3: Robert Vadra’s motorcycle outing: While Priyanka Gandhi travelled across the state campaigning for brother Rahul, another Gandhi (almost) was biking around town proclaiming his political ambitions. Robert Vadra used his family vacation to remind India that he too is Gandhi by association, and that alone qualifies him to enter mainstream politics. After all, he said in a later interview, he had denied himself for Priyanka’s sake for this long. Another reminder of the declining clout of the Gandhi name, and their inability to control one of their own. 4. The vanishing elephants : You could go to the park but you couldn’t ignore the elephant in it. Over Rs 600 crores were spent on making bronze and stone elephants across the state and about a crore was spent in covering them after the Election Commission ordered it. However, Mayawati made sure it wouldn’t mean that people would forget who had built them. The statues were covered in pink cloth, a colour Behenji is reportedly known to prefer. And if the state lost money building the statues, having them covered didn’t help either. An official bemoaned the loss in parks saying the state had lost Rs 28 lakh due their closure and the statues being covered. 5. A quota among quotas: First Salman Khurshid and then Beni Prasad Verma promised to create a sub-quota for minorities in the overall 27 percent quota for other backward castes. However, neither their opponents nor the Election Commission took too kindly to the statements and both were pulled up for violations of the moral code of conduct. While Khurshid claimed he had only declared the intent of the Congress party and not policy, Prasad apologised to the Election Commission.