Can Yogi Adityanath Manage India's Toughest State?

Yogi Adityanath presides over a troubled state, which has become more volatile under his watch. Can he turn it around before 2019?
 

- Raj Chengappa, Anshuman Tiwari and Ashish Misra

In Vedic Sanskrit, yoga means to unite and a yogi is a practitioner of such an endeavour. In spiritual terms, the effort is to merge with the divine and become the One. For Yogi Adityanath, though, after he assumed temporal power, the challenge has assumed astronomical proportions. Had Uttar Pradesh been a country, with its 204-million-strong population, it would have been the fifth most populous state in the world. Bringing unity to a state known for its extreme diversity and deep divides—whether of religion, caste, class or region—would be a challenge even for the gods.

In conversation, Yogi Adityanath gives the impression that the mantle of Chief minister of India’s most populous state was bestowed on him by a divine hand. At his official residence in the heart of Lucknow, the CM’s chosen seat is clearly marked by a saffron cover draped on the sofa. Swathed in his trademark saffron sackcloth, he seems to enjoy wielding the power the post brings him and oozes confidence despite the serious setbacks he has faced in recent times. In the first flush of his reign, he even ordered some government buildings and buses to be repainted in saffron to herald the return of a BJP government in Uttar Pradesh after a gap of 15 years.