Sab Maya hai

It would be hard to turn up a moment of greater radical symbolism in recent times in India, or perhaps the world: a woman, leading a party of the most marginalised section of India8217;s highly stratified society, a party moreover that was born only a little over two decades ago, achieves a decisive mandate from the people of a state that is home to one of the largest upper caste populations in the country and continues to be scarred by the starkest social inequalities. Mayawati8217;s mandate in Uttar Pradesh is spectacular. It confirms that despite its inadequacies, India8217;s democracy remains exceptional: while democracy is widely seen to have slowed down in the West, the ballot box still midwives exciting transformations in India. It marks a welcome break in the political impasse that enveloped UP ever since the collapse of a Congress system that had long outlived its use-by date.

It is possible to draw a parallel with the new CM of neighbouring Bihar. When Nitish Kumar came to power in Bihar a little over a year ago, it was seen to be an upset in more than one sense. It was not just that a different caste combination had become winnable in Bihar. It was, much more, that he had mastered caste to actually change the subject in Bihar. After nearly 15 years, development, or the message that development matters, has climbed centre stage in Bihar 8212; that was the real upset in the election Lalu lost. Mayawati is both more and less equipped to do a Nitish in UP. Her Dalit-ness has given her politics much of its special grit and therefore it will be that much more difficult for her to transcend identity politics. At the same time, this large mandate would arguably never have come about if she had remained imprisoned in the Dalit corner in the first place. Mayawati8217;s social engineering was a much bolder experiment than anything that the pre-election Nitish Kumar tried out in Bihar. It has therefore prepared the ground for a larger paradigm shift than the one Nitish has wrought in his state.

There are two things that Mayawati must not do. One, she must not use her mandate to practice a politics of revenge. That would be a betrayal of the exciting possibilities that her fourth chief ministership promises in the state. Two, she must not immediately use UP as a springboard to the Centre. While her success in UP is bound to burnish her clout in national politics, UP deserves her full attention. This symbolic victory must now transform her state in substantive ways.