Bring on the elephants: Mayawati is coming to town

Noida: Morning has finally dawned on the Rs 600-0dd crore ‘Rashtriya Dalit Prerna Sthal and the Green Garden’ in Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Budh Nagar district. The arrival of Chief Minister Mayawati in Noida to inaugurate the iconic park has everyone in a tizzy. The gardeners too have been working overtime to make sure the footpaths look sufficiently verdant should the guest of honour glance outside her car window during the five-minute drive from the helipad to the park.

When behenji steps on to the granite-floor of the 33-hectare park, she will be welcomed by 20 life-size elephants—ten on each side—carved in red sand stone with their trunks raised in salute. In 2009, installing the statues of elephants (the BSP party symbol) at memorial parks had sparked a controversy. The party countered the allegation by stating that elephants were a popular symbol of Indian culture.

Not one to be cowed down, Mayawati’s latest park project has elephant statues galore. Two life-size statues are said to be inside the central dome. And more at the water fountains and other parts of the park.

“No entry inside the park,” says the guards in blue stationed at the gate, when asked on Thursday afternoon. “Orders from the DM (District Magistrate) and the SSP (Superintendent of Police) not to allow any more media inside,” he says. With the pearly gates closed, Mayawati’s dream park had to be marveled from a distance.

The fleet of cars parked outside the park and the sea of khakhi testify to the frenzy in administrative and police quarters in the final 24 hours before the high profile visit.

“You wouldn’t have seen anything like it. It is so grand,” said Suresh, a labourer from Rajasthan who has been working on the site for three years. Bathed in the dust of the red stone slabs he has been tasked with cutting, Suresh, 25, has been working 19-hour shifts in preparation for the D-day. “We come at 8 am and return home at 3 in the night. This is how it has been for the last one month,” he says. He earns Rs 300 for a 12 hour shift and lives in a slum not far from the park located in Noida’s Film City.

Rows and rows of three-seater sofas have been arranged around the central dome of the park. “Lights are being put up inside the dome. All the work is done,” Suresh tells us, sympathetic to our plight of not being allowed inside. “Under the central dome, there are bronze statues, about 12-foot each, of Mayawati, Kanshi Ram and Ambedkar. And then there are 12 more statues.”

Mayawati’s penchant for building memorials, such as this one, is well-known and has attracted controversy among other things for the money spent on building them.

Noida’s park was embroiled in a Supreme Court case for flouting environment norms and only as late as December 2010 was permission granted to resume construction. The condition being that only 25 percent of the area would be concrete and the remaining 75 green cover.

Today, of course, all that is forgotten. The massive red sand stone memorial park is dressed up to look its festive best. The neighbourhood is decorated with hundreds of blue party flags and the streets are full of giant posters featuring Mayawati and other Dalit leaders.

Let the polls begin.