The Monk Who Transformed: Uttar Pradesh (How Yogi Adityanath Changed 'UP' Waala Bhaiya' Abuse To A Badge Of Honour)

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Yogi Adityanath has been a Leader the like of whom Yo India has never seen. An active religious leader, the Head of the Gorakhnath Mutt following the ancient Nath traditions, a 5-time MP, his election as the Chief Minister of UP was unexpected and heralded a great transformation of India's most populous State. With a 22-crore population, making up 17% of India's population, UP would be the world's 6th largest 'country' by population if it were a real country. UP is extremely important for India's growth and development. It determines Indian politics with 80 seats in the 542 seat Indian Parliament and has been the focus of every political party which seeks to rule India.

When Yogi Adityanath took over as CM, Lutyens Delhi- the name by which the power structure and supporters of the ancient regime are known- exploded in anger and derision. They questioned his capability to be CM, abused him roundly, and predicted the total failure of his regime. They accused him of being communal, a person of no consequence or experience in governance and openly hated the fact that he was a Religious Leader. They forget that he was a 5-time MP, a person of great accomplishment as an MP going by his track record in Parliament, had toured most districts of UP and knew the living conditions of the people of UP more than any of his critics, a man of the masses with the common touch, who has spent much time solving their challenges and had successfully managed more than 40 educational, medical and social institutions with over 80,000 students. The same Lutyens Delhi had earlier hailed a member of the ancient regime who was chosen as PM of India with the major qualification of being the progeny of a previous PM, living a privileged life in Lutyens Delhi with scant knowledge of the life of ordinary Indians. The contrast in their approach speaks much about their elitist, oligarchical outlook.

In this book author Shantanu Gupta, the biographer of Yogi Adityanath, writes about the transformation of UP under the new CM in the last 4.5 years. Indeed, the track record of achievement is impressive and profound and the author gives an enormous quantum of verifiable data to back his writing. UP will soon go to the polls and citizens will decide whom they will entrust the next government but the facts remains that this is a new aspirational UP which hopefully will fulfill the promise made by our Founding Fathers when they gave us our Constitution in 1950.

With a population above 22 Crore, Uttar Pradesh is W the most populous state of India, contributing almost 17% to the national population. Only five more countries in the world can match UP's population. Over years, me and lakhs of UP residents, across the country, were teased as UP-Wallah bhaya, a term for UPites, who have come from an un-developed, uneducated, corrupt, lawless & BIMARU Uttar Pradesh. Though UP gave many prime ministers to the country, unfortunately its own governance remained in the hands of, nepotistic, dynastic and casteist regional satraps in last three decades, barring a few years. First Mulayam Singh Yadav & Mayawati and later Akhilesh Yadav institutionalized three things in UP's politics - Goonda Raj, Widespread Corruption & High degree of nepotism. Bahubali mafias, who should be behind the bars were sitting inside the state assembly, elected on Samajwadi party & Bahujan Samajwadi party tickets. Height of nepotism was such that at one point in time more than two dozen people from Mulayam Singh Yadav's larger family were holding positions in government, Parliament, state assembly or at district or block levels. Corruption became part of the basic grammar of UP. All development indices of UP remained abysmally low during those years, apart from the crime numbers, which always soared. Only industry, which was getting benefitted from Uttar Pradesh in those years, was Bollywood - which drew inspiration for many of its criminal thriller sequences from UP, where Mulayam Singh Yadav had in-famously defended heinous rapists, saying- "Ladke Hain, Galti Ho Jati Hai" (Boys, do commit some small mistakes sometimes).

Then came the 2017 UP assembly elections. In 2014 elections, people of UP have shown a huge confidence in Modi lead BJP. By 2017, the governance wave of Prime Minister Narendra Modi lead BJP was established beyond doubt. By now, people of UP have already tried Samajwadi Party (SP) & Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) multiple times Mulayam Singh Yadav - - three times, Bahan Mayawati four times and Akhilesh Yadav one time in last three decades. UP was the first big elections after the demonetization drive of PM Modi. When results came in March 2017, the nation watched how people of UP punished SP and BSP brutely for their years of mis-rule, blatant corruption and nepotism. BJP stormed to power with unprecedented 300+ seats.

**Contents and Sample Pages**