Dalits may spring surprise

Act II may prove even more fatal for a ruling combine, battered by the split in Dalit votes in the Lok Sabha polls. Across Maharashtra, the ...

Act II may prove even more fatal for a ruling combine, battered by the split in Dalit votes in the Lok Sabha polls. Across Maharashtra, the out-of-work Dalit youth, while still hostile to the saffron combine, has given up on the Congress and the RPI. From Mumbai8217;s Dharavi to Aurangabad8217;s Ambedkar Nagar and the ghetto of Indora in Nagpur, they feel let-down by a leadership that swore by quotas and welfare schemes; that the Chief Minister himself is a Dalit is ironical.

Having seen his leadership implode in a power struggle, the Scheduled Caste voter may be at a crossroads 8212; where the BSP waits to receive him.

8216;8216;Promises made during elections are never kept,8217;8217; say Bapu Ustad 65, a retired millworker, and Utkarsh Kate 28, an unemployed youth. Both are killing time in a dingy alley of Valmiki Nagar, in Asia8217;s biggest slum Dharavi. Bapu, a former grappler from Maharashtra8217;s wrestling centre Satara, is happy to have friends calling for a round of rummy. Utkarsh, an undergraduate with vocational training, is jobless, so are his seven friends.

8216;8216;It8217;s the same old story. They come for votes now and vanish once elected,8217;8217; Bapu smiles. 8216;8216;I8217;ve seen every election since independence. All parties have been using us to their benefit.8217;8217;

Aba Hoval 68, concentrating till then on his rummy hand, says: 8216;8216;Even Baba8217;s Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar8217;s Republican Party of India has failed us.8217;8217;

Employment tops the agenda for a class struggling to make ends meet. That the neo-rich among them have exploited reservations, without a thought for those still toiling in poverty, makes the economic disparity even more stark. But talk about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh8217;s rhetoric about a 8216;8216;voluntary8217;8217; job quota in the private sector and the youth in Dharavi shoots back. 8216;8216;We don8217;t trust the Congress. BJP-Shiv Sena are Manuwadi and RPI doesn8217;t matter at all8230;so there8217;s no harm in trying out BSP this time.8217;8217;

In Aurangabad, some 500 km from Mumbai, Rama Kamble 24, an arts graduate, who earns a mere Rs 2,000 per month working as a driver with a private tour operator, personifies his community8217;s response. 8216;8216;I would give these leaders a bad time if they came to me for votes. Thackeray asks railways to scrap job interviews for north Indians, but has he ever asked them to restart the recruitment process?8217;8217;

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Dalit scholar Dilip Arjune links this shift in political loyalties to the first line of Dalit leaders who have split the RPI into a dozen factions. 8216;8216;Ambedkar wanted us to learn, organise and struggle. But what we do today is organise and then fight among ourselves.8217;8217;

Historian Y.D. Phadke says: 8216;8216;The neo-rich among Dalits, who thrived on quotas, haven8217;t helped the underprivileged. The affidavits of some crorepati Dalit candidates speak a lot about this disparity.8217;8217; Decisions such as the Maharashtra government8217;s move to impose reservations on promotions to class-I and super class-I jobs are seen to be merely skimming the surface of a working class comprising clerks, drivers and officeboys.

Sugalabai Dhandore 55, a domestic help, says, 8216;8216;Ours is a Hindu-Mahar family entitled to reservations. But my 28-year-old son Ravi is jobless.8217;8217; She, alongwith elder son Pramod, a peon with a private firm, support the family of seven.

Given the heartburn, Mayawati8217;s brand of Dalit politics may just be the key to a votebank that comprises over 11 per cent of Maharashtra8217;s population.