A new umbrella over UP?

Is the BSP becoming a 8216;catch-all8217; party? And is the decline of the national parties complete? Here8217;s what the data says

The Bahujan Samaj Party8217;s sweep of the recent by-elections in Uttar Pradesh has led many to conclude that Mayawati is finally succeeding in completing the strategic shift from a politics of the bahujan samaj to a more encompassing politics of the sarvajan samaj. Ever since the BSP8217;s victory in the 2007 assembly elections, the reigning common sense has been that Mayawati now mobilises and gets a substantial proportion of the upper caste vote. It has also been argued that this represents the 8216;Congressisation8217; of the BSP, which is to say that the BSP is becoming yet another 8216;catch-all party8217; like the early Congress. However, this understanding of Mayawati8217;s emergence as the strongest player in UP politics is not substantiated by systematic evidence.

The Uttar Pradesh Assembly Election Study conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies indicates that the BSP still stands third among all major upper caste communities and the party continues to rely mostly on its core Dalit vote bank.

Only 17 per cent of the Brahmins in UP voted for the BSP in 2007. Even though this is 10 percentage points more than it got in 2002, the BSP is still far from making a serious claim on upper caste support. While the BJP has evidently lost ground among its upper caste supporters, the party continues to get 40 per cent of upper caste votes. The Congress is the second choice of the Brahmins, and the SP the second choice of the Rajputs. Both the BJP and Congress lost a substantial proportion of their upper castes Brahmin votes, but these votes were split between the BSP and SP.

Compared to the 2002 Assembly election, the BSP vote share increased by 7.4 per cent, and the survey indicates that these gains came from all communities. However, the BSP8217;s gains among other communities did not come at the cost of its traditional support base.

Nearly 85 per cent of the Jatavs voted for the BSP and this probably marks a record in en-bloc voting. Dalits and MBCs contributed to over 70 per cent of BSP8217;s votes, and 43 per cent of the party8217;s support comes from the Jatav community, which also happens to be the largest Dalit community in UP. The BSP8217;s continued dependence on its core support base indicates that it is still far from being an 8216;umbrella organisation8217; like the Congress of the 1960s and 8217;70s.

THE worst hit by the BSP8217;s success in UP are the Congress and BJP. As the graph shows, both parties have been reduced to marginal players in the state.

Uttar Pradesh was a Congress bastion for decades, and in the 1990s the state was a BJP stronghold. The condition of both the parties may reflect the absence of appropriate strategies and the political acumen to manage the dynamism of UP politics.

Story continues below this ad

The Congress8217;s crisis is evidently the more severe 8212; it lacks a clear definition in the post-Mandal era when every party in UP has a specific definition. The BSP is defined as a Dalit party, the SP as a Yadav-Muslim party, and the BJP is defined as a Hindutva party.

The poor performance of the national parties in UP merits attention in a state that has produced 8 of India8217;s 13 prime ministers and has the largest share of seats in Parliament. In order to form a stable government at the Centre, both parties need to perform well in UP.

The writer is a researcher at CSDS