Opinion Express View on BSP: Shrinking of Mayawati
The steady sinking of BSP tells a larger story of its own complicities and nimble-footedness of the BJP to steadily expand its tent
The BSP’s decline is made of several factors, and it includes the BSP's own complicities. 
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The BSP MP from Lalganj, Sangeeta Azad, has become the fourth legislator to leave Mayawati’s party ahead of Lok Sabha polls. The reasons may be different in each of the four instances, but there is one binding theme. They all underline the apparently unchecked decline of a party whose rise to power was once one of the most striking emblems of empowerment of the most marginalised and disprivileged sections in Uttar Pradesh and in India.
The unnatural silence and quietude that has settled on the BSP in UP as a new election draws closer, therefore, also speaks of the lost possibilities of an alternative politics. It may well be that stories of the BSP’s demise are vastly exaggerated, and that Mayawati will re-energise the BSP yet, or a new vehicle and leader will emerge in its place. Or that, as Dalit aspirations are encompassed by or subsumed under other parties and wholes, they will not need a “Dalit party” of their own. But for now, the steady sinking of the BSP is a space ceded and a potential unfulfilled in a country of great diversities and greater inequalities.
The BSP’s decline is made of several factors, and it includes the BSP’s own complicities. There was always a certain exceptionalism about the party that Kanshi Ram built, inspired by Ambedkarism and also diverging from it, and that Mayawati led to power in UP. The BSP had a unique style of functioning — its self-image is of a “mission”, not a party, and it sees itself as pitted against a “Manuvadi” mainstream even when it strategically allies with sections of it. But the fact also is that the BSP has looked increasingly out of step with a changing polity.
The inaccessibility cultivated by Mayawati, the seemingly air-tight control “Behenji” exerts over party activities, the keeping away from street-level mobilisations except when there is an insult to the party’s icons, and the slowness in adapting to new technologies have created a gap, taken a toll. This gap has widened most glaringly ever since the rise of Narendra Modi’s BJP. The Modi-BJP has aggressively and successfully wooed Dalits, especially the non-Jatav Dalits. Its successes in UP and at the Centre frame the inroads it is making even in Mayawati’s core constituency. By all accounts, confronted by the BJP’s many-layered challenge — combining Hindutva appeals with labharthi politics and a projection of winnability — the BSP has neither made any visible effort to re-engage with its own supporters, nor courted new or old allies.
There was a time when an energetic BSP, having mobilised Dalit constituencies, sought to widen its appeal electorally by building a core-plus social coalition, through its “bhaichara samitis” that addressed Brahmins apart from Muslims. This time, however, Mayawati’s party seems unwilling or unable to climb out of its corner. As the din and noise of parties and alliances becomes louder, the BSP’s lack of outreach is conspicuous, as is its standstill.
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