India, March 29 -- The year is 2017. The Samajwadi Party has just lost the assembly elections to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Akhilesh Yadav is still working to establish himself within the party. On June 19, he hosts a grand iftar party at the SP's office located on Vikaramditya Marg. But the attention of the attendees is neither on the phalanx of political leaders on attendance nor on the food. Instead, the meet was marked by the absence of party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, who chose to attend a rival iftar party hosted by Shivpal Yadav. In the bruising Yadav family feud, the iftar manoeuvre was a decisive signal.

It wasn't just the Yadavs. Till about a decade ago, the power corridors in Lucknow would be buzzing this time of...