11 May, 2007

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The Bahujan Samaj Party’s 50-year-old supremo, Mayawati made history on May 11 by doing the impossible: she won an absolute majority for her party in Uttar Pradesh, obviating the need for any government partners. And how did she do that? She actually forged an inclusive social coalition across the caste spectrum-- in addition to her core constituency of Dalits, a substantial section of the upper castes, led by the Brahmins, as well as the most backward castes, both of which had once flocked to the BJP in the 1990s, lent their support to Mayawati. Joining them were a chunk of Muslim voters, eating into the Samajwadi Party base.

And what was the core issue that bound UP’s voters together? The abysmal law and order situation under chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, something that hit both the urban rich and the rural poor, the Bania and theDalit, the Brahmin and the MBC. For the Muslims, the additional factor was the desire to keep the BJP out-- and the BSP was in the lead in more than half the constituencies.

In the process, the BSP has turned the old Congress constituency -- the Brahmin, Muslim,Dalit combine -- on its head. Only, in Mayawati’s brave new world, instead of the Brahmins being in the driver’s seat, it is theDalit: indeed, she has done what her mentor and creator of the BSP, Kanshiram, had dreamt of -- she has turned the pyramid upside down. And so, for the first time after 1991, when the BJP won an absolute majority in Uttar Pradesh, the state has voted for single party rule and stability, ending 14 years of messy coalition governments.

For Mayawati, who had put her election gameplan into place almost two years ago, it has been a long journey: And even though she had told this correspondent a little over a month back that she was confident of winning a majority, she did not emerge from her official home on Lucknow’s Mall Avenue till it was a virtual certainty that she was home and dry: It was then that she emerged-- not in the beige salwar kameez that she had addressed election meetings in, but in her favourite celebratory pink silk outfit to address her first post-victory press conference and introduce to the world -- like an impresario -- three of her closest colleagues: Satish Mishra, the executor of her Brahmin project, Nasimuddin Siddiqui, whom she credited with having pulled in a sizeable section of the Muslims,and the low key Babulal Kushwaha (an MBC), a key aide in Lucknow.

Her first address was a measured one: she made clear that it was a victory for the BSP’s anti-manuwadi ideology-- a system that had kept her people at the bottom of the pile. But simultaneously, she sent out a clear message-- that she intended to run a fair and equitable administration in which people from all sections of society would be given their share. As for what she would do with Mulayam Singh Yadav (whom she had promised through the elections to throw into jail, along with his bad angel, Amar Singh), she said with contempt: " What can I do to him? He’s already a dead man."

Indeed, it’s remarkable that though she lacks the conventional charisma and verbal skills of the traditional mass leader, she is a great communicator: Through this election, as this correspondent traveled through the state, meeting BSP workers, it was evident that she had got every single message right: CoreDalit workers explained to me that they were content with the BSP leader having given 139 wealthy uppercastes-- of whom 86 were Brahmins -- because it would help the party come to power and improve their lives in thevillages. The Brahmins, on their part, had clearly overcome their allergy for her and had allowed themselves to be wooed through the many Brahmin mahasammelans she had held in the state for the last two years and saw her as their ticket to defeating theirbête noire and helping them return to power. Even the Muslims, who had been annoyed by her remark about some members of the community being hardliners (kattarpanthis), had forgiven her after she had explained that her remark was provoked by Yakub Quereshi who had offered an award for the death of the Danish cartoonist who had caricatured the Prophet Mohammad. As for the MBCs, the fact that one of her closest advisers in Lucknow is the almost invisible Baburam Kushwaha had not gone unnoticed-- as it was pointed out to me repeatedly.

Now, as Mayawati prepares to be sworn in for the fourth time in 11 years -- though for the first time on her own strength-- for the losers, it’s time for introspection. The SP leadership appeared distraught -- three of its ministers, including Mohammad Azam Khan went on an unprecedented file destroying spree, terrified at the thought of their secrets being discovered, and Amar Singh retired to his bed as doctors streamed into his residence in Delhi. And chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav-- even though he conceded defeat -- lashed out at the Election Commission for "defeating" him, a virtual admission that in the past, he had been used to rigging the polls. But in the end, the SP even though it lost about 50 seats did not appear to have lost much by way of its vote percentage.

It was the BJP which was really the big loser: it lost both seats and vote percentage points, sliding even further down the scale. For the party, neither the anti-Muslim CDs worked, nor its Kalyan Singh-Rajnath Singh (backward-forward)combine. Indeed, the social engineering that has worked so well for the BSP has boomeranged in the case of the BJP. For one, the BJP is a tried--and failed--party: those upper castes who had joined the party in the wake of the Ramjanmabhoomi campaign in the early 1990s told this correspondent that they had lost faith in the party’s ability to keep its promises. Along with this was annoyance among the Brahmins, who had begun to be alienated from the party in 2004, at the projection of a Rajput-- Rajnath Singh -- as party president and an OBC -- Kalyan Singh -- as chief ministerial candidate. The third reason for the BJP’s failure was that even though it, too, had made the restoration of law and order a key campaign issue, it did not carry that much conviction as the party, like the SP, had backed Raja Bhaiyya, the notorious don from Kunda: neither the SP nor the BJP put up a candidate from this seat, and he has rewon the seat with over 60 per cent of the vote! Finally, the tussle between the BJP leadership and its MP from Gorakhpur, Adityanath, with the latter wanting to field his own candidates, made the party look internally divided. In UP, the BJP -- which had been on a winning streak elsewhere (Punjab, Uttarakhand and the NDMC polls in Delhi) looked like a loser.

And finally, the Congress: despite making its princeling, Rahul Gandhi, its chief campaigner, it has lost three seats compared to its 2002 tally. Congress leaders were quick to point out that the party had not expected much by way of performance, but the fact is the party had hoped to touch 40, a figure that would have made it relevant once again in the state. That hasn’t happened. Now, whether this will force some introspection in the party remains to be seen: Will the Congress acknowledge that the social landscape of U.P has changed irrevocably? That charisma and pedigree alone will not help unless there’s a strategy and an organization on the ground? That while it tries to get its act together, the elephant which made a surprise showing in the NDMC polls, won eight assembly seats in Uttarakhand, may now plod its way into neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan ? That would spell an even greater disaster for the Congress.