Script to fit the role

How can this not shift the paradigm of politics in UP, and of its governance too? Now that Mayawati has redefined her constituency from “bahujan samaj” to “sarvajan samaj”, can UP remain a fragmented place?

There is no room for pessimism in this rare moment. But we would be failing it if we did not acknowledge that like all such moments, it carries within itself possible closures which must be recognised if they are to be guarded against. After all, Lalu Yadav betrayed his own moment of history for 15 long years.

To begin with, what everyone calls Mayawati’s “rainbow” may not fit that description — at least not yet. All the castes that constitute it are not evenly prominent in it. According to political analyst and psephologist Yogendra Yadav, her political combine is better described as “one caste-plus” or “core plus”. This is not a semantic quibble.

The composition of the caste coalition, the relative space it offers to its various constituents alongside the dalits, will determine the political and policy latitude that Chief Minister Mayawati will have in the next five years. Though she has more room than other political actors to court a “plus” constituency, yet it will define the constraints upon her every time she reaches beyond the concerns of her core base. Of course, Mayawati can transform her strategic patchwork into a true rainbow of castes and communities in the coming years. If she does that, she would be changing the course of politics in UP — and in India — in lasting ways.

Chief Minister Mayawati must also resist and overcome the habits and syndromes in UP’s story so far. In contrast to states like Tamil Nadu or Kerala, the politics of backward caste mobilisation in UP has confined itself mostly to symbolic gains.

Though backward caste parties have occupied the state since the 1990s in UP, they have shown little ability or willingness to shrug off the “burden of inertia” that bogs down the state as dispenser of basic public services, or to draw up an emancipatory economic agenda. This failure affects castes and communities unequally — the historically disprivileged suffer more.

During the periods that the BSP has been in power in UP, Mayawati focused on a few pet programmes. But be it the Ambedkar Village Scheme, hostels for dalit students, or assistance to dalit families for weddings and other contingencies, these initiatives were not embedded in a larger reform of the state. As a result, they suffered from poor implementation. More crucially, their potential was crippled by their own narrow ambition. The benefits of these programmes went to the small and already better-off sections of the dalits and alienated the non-dalit rural poor — the MBCs — who in some areas are even poorer than the dalits.

In his essay in the book Political Process in Uttar Pradesh: Identity, Economic Reforms and Governance (Pearson Longman: 2007), Ravi S. Srivastava offers extensive data to make some sobering points: between 1983 and 1999-2000, while all groups experienced an average improvement in standards of living, conditions of employment, levels of education, etc, the relative distance between groups did not narrow and within-group inequalities increased. More dalits were concentrated at the lower end of the economic spectrum in 1999-20000 than in 1983. Dalits formed a greater percentage of the deprived in UP in 1999-2000 than in 1983. Evidently, neither the political mobilisations that the BSP carried out in this period, nor its three stints in government, had any significant impact on the growing marginalisation of the poorer dalits in the state.

To live up to the promise of her mandate, therefore, Mayawati will have to find a way to confront and to address the institutional and political causes for the failures of backward caste politics in UP. For this, it could be crucial that she is accessible to feedback from below.

Mayawati’s peremptory style with her party men and women may not have been a problem in running an election campaign — it may even have contributed to her electoral victory. There is also something refreshing about the politician who is so much an outsider and yet makes it so big — without help or hype from the giant media machine. But even as we celebrate the phenomenon, we must recognise its genuine dangers.

From what we know about her, Mayawati hardly talks to her own partymen and women. There are no BSP “leaders” apart from Mayawati. BSP MPs stay tightlipped in Parliament for fear of annoying her. Come election time and the BSP won’t release a manifesto.

Talking to the media or issuing a manifesto are not just matters of good form, or a fetish of polite society. They are necessary requirements for the long distance runner in a democratic polity. If Mayawati is to fulfill her historic mandate, she will have to be responsive, and even vulnerable, to democratic pressures and calls for accountability.

It will not be easy. The dalit movement has been nervous about internal democratisation. Historically, it has feared that it cannot afford it, that it would be coopted and swallowed up by a predatory Congress if it lets down its guard. The fear of disappearing into the ‘mainstream’ without trace has made it defer questions of inner democracy to another day.

As Mayawati takes charge in Lucknow, however, she must know that she will be judged by more exacting standards than politicians at the helm of other states. It’s the nature of her mandate. By accident or through design, she has been cast in a historic role. She must now write the script to match.