Why Mayawati is set for a comeback in UP

Muzzafarnagar burns, the media is abuzz with talk about the BJP dividend. The reality is that the short and bloody reign of Akhilesh and Mulayam Singh Yadav has all but ensured the return of Mayawati. I base my understanding purely on travelling through the state, going to random villages and towns and talking to people. I don’t blame you if you don’t buy this. But to understand what happens in UP next, we must first recognise the truth of what has gone before. Having together defeated the Ram Mandir as the defining principle of post-Congress Uttar Pradesh, the SP and the BSP — products of the Mandal Commission — divided the politics of Uttar Pradesh between them. Mayawati became the leader of the Dalits and Mulayam the leader of the Yadavs. This has been good for Dalits and Yadavs, but the upper castes lost the control over power that they exerted through the Congress and the BJP. The oscillating fortunes of Mayawati can be explained in great part by the choices made by the upper castes in recent elections. [caption id=“attachment_1097965” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Is the Dalit leader set for a comeback? PTI[/caption] Rise of Mayawati In the 2007 state election, however, Mayawati went a step further and openly wooed the Brahmin vote, thus turning upside down the image and the logic of her party. Mayawati not only gave Brahmins a lot of tickets but also a place in the party leadership. The electorate was already very unhappy with the Yadav goonda Raj and saw how Mayawati was sending signals of shedding BSP’s image as a Dalit-only party. They flocked to her in numbers never seen before. People who were die-hard Mayawati bashers became overnight supporters. The BSP thus came to power with a majority, giving Uttar Pradesh the first stable government in 17 years. But success can go to a leader’s head, and he can begin to lose touch with reality. Maywati thought she had become unbeatable, and did not have to worry about losing power in her state. Now, having secured UP, she could now put UP behind her, and concentrate on the war for Delhi. Her prime ministerial ambitions clouded her judgement so badly that she even held a rally in Kohima - the capital of Nagaland. Flying in her special planes from one state to another, Mayawati left UP to the bureaucrats and technocrats. This was not necessarily a bad thing, and to give the babus their due they did try their best. But the problem is that while BSP Brahmins ruled the roost, the Dalit voter was neglected. While Dalit party workers struggled to gain an audience with Mayawati, she asked the police to restrict filing cases under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act to rape and murder. The results were predictable. A large chunk of the Dalit electorate, as many as 25 percent according to some estimates, did not turn up to vote in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. Meanwhile, the upper caste voter who was fine with electing Mayawati as chief minister, was less enthusiastic about the prospect of a Dalit woman as Prime Minister. Where she expected 40 seats, she got 20. It was a marked decline from her 2007 performance. And to think her party contested 500 seats across India! Mulayam up, Mayawati down Mayawati realised that if she did not reverse some of her policies, her Dalit vote-bank could desert her — more so now that Rahul Gandhi was busy sleeping in Dalit homes. She cut to size her Brahmin aide Satish Chandra Mishra, whose constant presence around Mayawati was seen by the Dalit voter as a sign of Mayawati having become a tool of the Brahmins. She got large numbers of cases registered under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act and even got some Dalits land that was theirs on paper but was occupied by upper castes. Travelling through UP in 2012, I heard the complaints everywhere: Mayawati is only for Dalits, these Dalits register false cases under the SC/ST Act; we can’t even call them by their caste names these days; they get all the jobs and the scholarships. The floating non-Dalit non-Yadav voters, especially the upper caste voters, made up their mind: Mulayam was in. They knew Yadav Raj spelled disaster for law and order, but voting for a chastened pro-Dalit Mayawati would be worse. It would embolden her pro-Dalit agenda; there could be land reforms and a crackdown on upper caste violence against Dalits; the upper caste sarpanches would have problems gobbling up the NREGA wages for landless Dalits. Meanwhile, the narrative in the Delhi and even the Lucknow media was totally at odds with the reality on the ground. “Another Dalit woman raped in Mayawati rule” read the headlines, but never told you how she’d reversed gear after the 2009 elections. The Congress kept harping on Dalit atrocities, as did the SP. Yet now that SP is in power the media has suddenly stopped worrying about violence against Dalits in Uttar Pradesh. The shallow Delhi studios and the bullshit fictional surveys harped on factors that mattered little on the ground: Rahul’s charisma versus Akhilesh’s youth ‘factor’, the personality contests, and so on. The upper caste choice: Gooda Raj vs Dalit upliftment The caste anger against Mayawati is not articulated in the language of caste, which the upper caste voter knows is politically incorrect. If you want to see the indirect ways in which caste anger comes out against Mayawati, Google for Mayawati+crude. Oh, also corrupt. You hear so much whining about corruption when Mayawati is the chief minister you would think all other politicians are honest. The whining about Mayawati’s corruption is actually not about the fact that corruption is taking place but that it is incredibly centralised: Maywati knew all, got a cut in all, and if anyone tried to fool her, he was history. So when they voted for the Yadav in order to defeat the Dalit, the voters did not foresee that the Yadav party would get such a thumping majority and what nightmare it would unleash on the state. Every Yadav today thinks he is the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Between father and son, uncle one and uncle two, nobody knows who is in-charge. In Yadav Raj, there is such a leadership crisis, people don’t know who to bribe and if their work will get done after paying the bribe. So bad is the law and order in UP that Mulayam Singh Yadav’s own astrologer has been shot dead, and two policemen started fighting with each other and opened fire at an Akhilesh rally. The Uttar Pradesh voter today is desperate to bring back Mayawati to power. She did not fan Hindu-Muslim violence for political gain even when she had her back against the wall. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the electorate will likely send a clear signal in this direction by giving the BSP more seats than any other party in UP, Modi or no Modi. But the voters will have to suffer the Yadav goonda Raj till the spring of 2017. Until then, the UP voter should reflect on his own Dalitphobia and if it’s such a bad thing that a Mayawati regime gives UP’s Dalits a modestly better life. The reward for that — keeping the Yadav goonda Raj at bay—  should exceed the caste pain of seeing Dalits rise.