All is not well with Yogi Adityanath’s Uttar Pradesh as is borne out by the defeat of the much-fancied BJP in crucial by-elections and now the threat by the fast-growing Patanjali Ayurved to pull out and re-locate to another state. While the threat to shift location has been defused for now, the censure of the way the government is functioning in Lucknow cannot just be brushed aside. At stake is the Rs 6,000 crore mega food processing project which has the potential to bring huge returns to the State at a time when investment has become scarce. The Patanjali managing director, Acharya Balakrishna, minced no words when he charged the UP government with non-cooperation and that was no ordinary statement coming from a conglomerate that has been on the right side of the UP government since it was founded by Swami Ramdev, the Yoga exponent.
For a person who was handpicked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to navigate the country’s most populous state through the crucial 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Yogi Adityanath has been somewhat of a disappointment. The State is too important in the BJP’s scheme of things and one wonders whether the party would be set thinking on whether he is the right choice. Patanjai has indeed become a major success story in the 12 years that it has been in existence. It has given the multinational Hindustan Unilever Limited a run for its money and has become an inspiration to indigenous Indian startups. Its cry for setting things right can hardly be brushed aside.
