Mayawati is the most significant political trend of the decade. Her political success has made other political parties bound to take her as a serious challenge for years to come. The latest
revelation is that in Gujarat and Himachal, Mayawati had snatched both the Congress party’s dalit votes and that of the BJP’s upper castes. Her style of party management is more personalized and arbitrary than that of Mulayam, Thackeray, Mamata and Jayalalitha. Much of her troubles flow from the ill-advised moves from colleagues and due to her own proclivity to scams and fraud.
In UP, her flagship state, things are turning sour with Mulayam Singh Yadav making deep dents in her image. Farmer’s protests against her express highways. Her election defeat in Ballia has been an indicator of her losing hold. For her rivals, what is more crucial will be the kind of strains her latest caste concoction is undergoing. This happens at two levels. Soon after the Ballia debacle, Mayawati squarely blamed the Brahmin allies for the letdown and announced the disbanding of Brahmin and Vaishya bhaichara samitis. In some cases, she angrily replaced the upper castes by Muslim leaders. Apparently, it is easier to win polls by pooling the votes of the dalits and upper castes. But it does not necessarily mean social or caste engineering in its real sense.
Recent spurt in attacks on dalits including assaults, rape and murder further prove this point. In many cases, she is being misinformed by the officials that the dalit victims were all habitual criminals. Dalit elders, perhaps for the first time, lament that their condition is worse under the bahujan rule than even under Mulayam. The growing discontent is more discernible among the BSFs middle level Dalit workers, which is Mayawati’s core strength. Every time she makes a point in favour of strengthening BSP’s alliance with the upper castes, it leads to suspicion among the dalits. Her case for reservation for upper castes is being misinterpreted, albeit wrongly, as harming the chances of the dalits. She had even failed to hold on to the bases built by Kanshasi Ram in regions like Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. She is emerging as a big force outside UP, it has been due to her skillful use of the new bhaichara formula to build a springboard. She readily gives the BSP franchise to the dropouts and rejects in the name of dalit Brahmin alliance. Her apparent shift of emphasis from dalit base to the ragtag of sarvajan (as against bahujan) shows the limits of India’s caste sis from dalit base to the ragtag of sarvajan (as against bahujan) shows the limits of India’s caste politics. Mayawati can surely get franchisees in most Lok Sabha constituencies.
Mayavati is bold and brash, and without any ideological baggage and obsessions of political nicety. She is ever ready for political experiments. She treats the polity as it is, and asks the upper caste groups to negotiate with her for sharing of power.