SOROOR AHMED analyses UP election results and looks into the far reaching effects it may have on national politics.
There is only one victor. The rest are losers. Some lost after contesting while some others without being in the race. The contestants who lost are from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), cut almost to half; Mulayam, cut to size; and the Congress still stuck in the rut.
Though it was the Samajwadi Party, which has been swept out of power, the biggest loser is undoubtedly the BJP. True, it was never sure of coming to power but even the most pessimist observer never expected it to do so badly.
But among the non-contestants who lost are the psephologists and the media pundits who once again failed to measure the real strength of the downtrodden and weaker sections of the voters. However, one of them, Yogendra Yadav, arguably the best among them, had repeatedly been reminding that the election-experts often tend to under-rate the parties like the BSP whose voters essentially come from the weaker and illiterate sections of the society. He was the one who always said that the party might do better than the projected results shown by different channels.
However, apart from psephologists there is another gentleman who, though nowhere in the race, received a huge blow. And that is the Union fertilizer minister, Ram Bilas Paswan. The Bahujan Samaj Party leader, Mayawati, once again proved that as regards Dalit leadership there should be no doubt left in anyone’s mind. If the Congress wants to have any truck with her––and why not––in the next parliamentary election it may be forced to do away with Ram Bilas Paswan, who alone may now not even win his own Lok Sabha seat in Parliament. His outfit, the Lok Janshakti Party, won four seats in 2004 Lok Sabha only because it had an alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar. And in the Assembly election of that state in 2005 he let down the Congress in his home state. Paswan is now not in a position to pressurise the Congress on the Dalit leadership issue.
Mayawati’s election will not only end one and a half decade long political uncertainty in the state it will also open a new chapter in the Dalit politics of the country. She would be in power all alone as she does not need a pair of crutches from the BJP, as in the past, or Samajwadi Party, with which once it formed an alliance. Mayawati, on her own, may be quite a different lady. Apparently, she may sound more anti-Mulayam but in a long way her style of politics may seriously damage the prospect of the Hindutva brigade, which has now even lost the Upper Caste votes.
It is for the first time that Mayawati went without (now Late) Kanshi Ram, who founded the BSP more than two decades ago. Though Dalits have a sizeable population in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and many other states there is no one left having a towering personality as Mayawati has. Now she is in position to dictate.
Uttar Pradesh has 22 per cent Dalits and even a small support from the Upper Castes, Muslims and Extreme Backward Castes was enough to ensure her victory. In the last two decades Mayawati, under the guidance of Kanshi Ram, succeeded in carving out her own niche. She plays her political card very astutely and has built the party right from the top to the booth level, where the management is very essential on the day of polling. She deliberately kept her party away from the local bodies elections held a few months back. This paved the way for the victory of the BJP in several cities and towns. It was on the basis of this result that many observers started rating the ‘feel-good party’, the BJP, highly.
Born in Delhi on January 15, 1956 apparently she has no real root in Uttar Pradesh yet she managed to emerge as the undisputed leader of the Dalits in that state and can win from anywhere there. In fact her political training started in an entirely different way. She was picked by the party supreme leader, Kanshi Ram, while she was preparing for the Civil Service examination.
Unlike the Dalit leaders of Maharashtra, who tried to cash in on the personality of Ambedkar or Ram Bilas Paswan, who came to be known nationally because of the 1974 JP-movement and the subsequent 1977 anti-Indira wave, Kanshi Ram and Mayawati worked at the grassroots level among Dalits. In the beginning Ram Bilas Paswan never needed to project himself as the Dalit leader though he formed Dalit Sena later.
Though Paswan and the leaders of Republican Party of Maharashtra had the advantage of being local, in this case both Kanshi Ram and Mayawati were ‘outsiders’. The former in fact hailed from Punjab. The duo very tactfully filled the vacuum of Dalit leadership and unlike Paswan never used the Dalit card when in a dire strait.
However, there was certain advantage with Mayawati too. Unlike in Bihar, where Dalits form just 15 per cent of population, they are economically stronger in Uttar Pradesh. They owe this to the First War of Independence whose centenary coincided with BSP’s victory. In a way Dalits sided with the British in that War as they wanted to get rid of the local rajas and zamindars, who were never kind to them.
Besides, the rise of British in Uttar Pradesh led to the emergence of cantonment towns in several cities like Meerut (where actually the revolt first broke), Kanpur, Agra, Allahabad and Lucknow. The military camps in these cities gave a big boost to the boot and belt industries in most of these cities as the army personnel need them. The Ravidas (cobblers), the caste to which Mayawati belonged, one way or the other got benefited by this development.
Maharashtra, where too Dalits form a sizeable percentage, had a slightly different story. There the Dalits, especially Mahars, the caste to which Ambedkar belonged, got recruited in army in a large number. But the Dalits of the united Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and to some extent even Bengal were not so lucky.
Mayawati fully capitalised on this advantage to emerge as the leader of the Dalits. Mulayam, on the other hand, relied on Yadavs, whose percentage is even less than half of the percentage of Dalits, Thakurs or Rajputs (7-8 per cent) and Muslims, who form about 19 per cent of the population.
Uttar Pradesh has the highest Upper Caste voters in North India. According to an estimate Brahmins form ten per cent of the population––highest in the country. But the BSP, by giving ticket to 87 Brahmins tried its level best to wean them away from the BJP. The BJP tried to rope in the Kurmis by aligning with the Apna Dal and projecting the Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar. The whole move backfired.
In the era when Dalit and backward class assertion is at its peak the national parties like the BJP and the Congress stand nowhere to gain. While Congress in UP is too insignificant a force. Yet its effort to make some sorts of revival met with failure and all its hopes dashed against reality.
The UP poll result will not only change the Dalit politics, but may also have an impact on the political equations elsewhere. The BJP has certainly lost its bargaining position and its allies be it the Janata Dal (United), Akali Dal or Shiv Sena may not give much weight to it in the future.
The result incidentally came a day after President Kalam’s suggestion for a two-party system. Mayawati’s victory further goes to confirm that there is no such scope left in the country for two-party system.